May 7, 2007

Who Decided to Lose Iraq? Not the Voters

Since it’s not typical in U.S. history for one of the two major political parties to pursue America’s defeat in a war, you know that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi must have a good explanation for where they got this idea.

They do. They say they got it from you.

This serves as the Democrats’ comeback when President Bush refuses to accept a withdrawal timetable, arguing that success in Iraq is paramount to long-term Middle East peace and U.S. national security.

But . . . but . . . he needs to listen to what the voters said!

Oh. The voters said something to the effect that Bush should blow off U.S. national security? Funny. I don’t remember that. But you have to learn to think like a Democrat. Here goes the logic:

We Democrats are bashing Bush about the war. The more unpopular the war becomes, the more we bash. We got elected. Ergo, the voters must want America to give up on Iraq and leave.

Thus, according to Reid, when Bush refuses to retreat and surrender, he is obstinately ignoring the wishes of the voters.

A few problems with all this:

First, where is it written that Iraq alone turned the election? There were many reasons the Republicans lost control of Congress, most of which can be summed up as: They deserved to lose. Not so much because of Iraq, but because they didn’t get spending under control, didn’t fix Social Security, didn’t permanently cut income taxes or repeal the estate tax. When you deserve to lose, you usually lose, regardless of who is running against you.

To the extent that Iraq was an issue in the war, where does Reid get off suggesting that the voters were calling for retreat from Iraq when they put the Democrats in charge? This is certainly not what the Democrats said they were going to do during the campaign, when they continually denied they wanted to abandon Iraq. They made an issue of Bush’s management of the war, which was a perfectly legitimate case to make, but they complained long and loud whenever Republicans accused them of wanting to “cut and run.”

So how is it that, in order to win, you deny you want to cut and run, and then when you do win, you claim the voters put you there for the purpose of cutting and running?

The listen-to-the-voters argument is fatuous anyway. Bush makes his case on the basis of strategic security and foreign policy concerns. You know, the reasons you set policy? Democrats can hardly make the case that America’s interests are served by giving up and losing in Iraq, so they don’t even try. They merely claim a mandate from the voters that anyone who remembers history – as in, six months ago – can easily see is nonexistent. But even if the voters had sent a clear message to give up, would that automatically make it the right thing to do?

Losing a war is no small matter. Just because voters seem to want it, or polls suggest they want it, is not sufficient reason to wave the white flag without some serious assessment of the consequences. Where is this assessment? The voters being tired of the war doesn’t qualify. A supposed “mounting death toll” (do death tolls ever decrease?), which is still infinitesimal compared to almost every other war in this nation’s history, doesn’t do it either.

Democrats won last year because their opponents had no record of achievement, were resorting to desperation issues (bashing immigrants, etc.) and were facing the sixth year of an eight-year administration, when the president’s party almost always gets clobbered.

No one told the Democrats to lose Iraq. It was entirely their idea – born, perhaps, of a misreading of opinion polls. But theirs nonetheless. And they’ve come up against a serious president who embraces a set of principles about America’s national security priorities – and isn’t impressed by the Democrats’ entirely political position to the contrary.

Elections matter. But contrary to what you were led to believe six months ago, the 2004 presidential election still matters an awful lot. Reid and Pelosi may wield the gavels on Capitol Hill, but Bush still decides America’s role in the world. That means America still seeks victory, which shouldn’t perplex anyone. The fact it perplexes Reid and Pelosi says everything about them.