Surrendering for Votes

A few days ago I expressed the opinion that the electorate will turn against the Democrats if they are seen as surrendering in Iraq. The next day I saw a poll that showed around 57% of the population does support a quick pullout from Iraq. I also saw a quote indicating that Senate Majority Leader Reid's private pollster had come up with similar numbers.

That explains why Reid has done such a turn-around. Not long ago he was assuring people that he was not pushing for an immediate pull-out (there's no other way to describe a pull-out that starts in five months).

I still think that the Democrats will regret this and that they will regret it even more if they prevail. There were similar conditions in the early 1970s. A Democratic Congress acted against an unpopular president and cut funding for an unpopular war. There were loud voices insisting that our presence was only making things worse and that a pull-out would bring peace.

Things didn't work out so well in Viet Nam. The short-lived peace turned into slaughter. Many anti-war activists apologized for their part in ending the war.

But that's just stuff that happened to foreigners. Liberals have a long history of ignoring atrocities committed by communists. More important (to the Democrats), the American electorate lost faith in their ability to lead in a crisis. From the 1980s through the 2004 election they kept asking why the voters didn't trust them in a war. The simple answer is that they don't believe in war. They think that everything can be solved through "continuing dialogs", addressing "root problems" and, as a last resort, using law enforcement. Many liberals insisted at the time that the reaction to 9/11 should have been a law enforcement issue. More of them insist that now. It is the accepted opinion of the left that 9/11 was hardly worth noticing and that Bush seized on an excuse to implement his authoritarian (some call it fascist) agenda.

So, if we pull out in October, 2007 or January, 2009 and things get worse in Iraq, who is the public going to blame?

Several events are likely. Iraq will erupt into a full-fledged civil war; Iran and possibly Syria and Turkey will get involved and annex portions of Iraq; and things will get worse in Afghanistan - a lot worse. The Taliban will know for certain that they can win against America if they just keep the casualty count high enough.

All future wars will be tougher, also. Right now we are trying to prove that Viet Nam was the exception and that Americans are tough enough to win an occupancy. Failure in Iraq will prove that a small force that fights dirty enough can always outlast Americans.

And the public will blame the Democrats. They may win the presidency and increase their majority in Congress in 2008 but it will catch up with them soon enough and it will stick for decades.