There is a curious disconnect in the War news which seems to suggest that the struggle between wishful fantasy and reality is being lost on a daily basis. The history of warfare has shown that wars only end when one side wins and the other side loses. In situations where neither side emerges as a clear winner, peace is merely an interregnum before the next outbreak of open hostilities. Such ambiguous outcomes give rise to 30 years wars and 100 years wars. The Cold War lasted for 40 years because neither side was willing to engage in a full scale war which would have destroyed both (MAD) and neither was willing to surrender until the Soviets recognized that their failing system, based on totalitarianism and empire, was no longer tenable.
Since the 1970s we have been at war with Islamic fascism. The fact that we did not realize this for many years does not mean it wasn't true. Likewise, the fact that so many prefer to believe that our conflict with Islamic fascism is something other than a war (a police action or not a war to be won but a situation to be solved in Nancy Pelosi's marvelously disconnected locution) does not make it less than a war. Allow me to elaborate. When one side believes they are at war with you, call you the Great Satan and your ally the Little Satan and scream "Death to America, Death to Israel" at every conceivable occasion, it doesn't matter if you consider it a war or not; they do, and they are behaving in accord with their beliefs.
I am struck by this not only because the Democratic leadership seems to be in such a hurry to lose the war in Iraq but they seem to be confused about what they are advocating. Mick Stockinger at UNCoRRELATED comments approvingly (OK, sarcastically) on the possibility of Jack Murtha as Majority Leader:
Count me in for Jack Murtha as majority leader. I figure if you can't handle a softball interview with Chris Matthews, you're just about right to lead the Democrat party into a 2008 debacle. Matthews preps Murtha for a discussion on the strategic elements of retreat.
MATTHEWS: ... is the hardest thing in the world to pull off, because you’ve got to protect your rear the whole time you’re getting out. As you get weaker and weaker as you redeploy, you’ve got to make sure the last guys out aren’t attacked. Is that a threat?
MURTHA: That’s always a threat, but it’s much worse just to leave the troops there and the mission to be—deteriorate and the military to deteriorate, our strategic reserve deteriorate, and the whole world, the credibility of this country deteriorate. That’s the thing that’s happened.
I wonder if Murtha even had a clue that he was openly talking about retreat? I mean we all know that what the Democrats are about, but to my knowledge, this is the first time I've seen it put so baldly--we've got to cover our asses as we bug out.
Mick has much more about Murtha's impeccable credentials for the job (does ABSCAM ring a bell) and his post is well worth reading in full. My interest is more specifically on the underlying fantasy involved. Clearly, Jack Murtha and Nancy Pelosi do not believe we are at war. I suppose if you define war as open hostilities waged by two armies belonging to competing sovereign nations, the current conflict with Islamic fascism does not measure up. However, if you consider that our enemies represent some substantial percentage of the world's Muslim population (surveys suggest high levels of passive support for Jihad against the West, and significant levels of active support, both within the West itself, and in the Muslim world) then we are talking about an army of Jihadists that could well reach 7-9 figures. For those who are skeptical, keep in mind that the more success that Iran and al Qaeda and their various offshoots and allies have in defining the conflict as between the Infidel West and the World of Islam, the more "troops" they will be able to recruit. Furthermore, the more success they have in depicting their side as winning, the more recruits they will have. And throughout the Muslim world, the Democratic victory last week has them convinced they are winning.
The fact is that the related war theater in Iraq, and the theater in Israel/Palestine are not going well for the West. In Lebanon, the Israelis fought a war ambivalently and with PC driven limitations. They failed to achieve any of their stated objectives. In Iraq, we have tried to fight a "kinder and gentler" war and are at risk of losing because of this. Because both situations have been so difficult, there are a great many politicians looking for a way out in order to minimize the ongoing discomfort and improve their political prospects. Unfortunately, the "exit strategies" being proposed for Israel and for the United States are completely dependent on the wishful fantasy that what we are engaged in is something other than war.
Two items in particular are cause for alarm that the denial of the war is spreading through our opinion leaders on both sides of the aisle. Eli Lake in the New York Sun has the details in An Exodus of Hawks Follows Rumsfeld from the Pentagon; here are some key points:
In Washington yesterday, the State Department's coordinator for Iraq, Ambassador David Satterfield, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that America was looking at the timing for a dialogue with Iran and was prepared in principle to re-enter such negotiations with the Islamic Republic.
In the Middle East this week, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch is sounding out Arab leaders about a regional peace conference, tentatively scheduled for November 30 in Amman, Jordan, to entice Israel and the Palestinian Arabs to begin negotiating a settlement to their conflict.
In recent days, the point has been made that one talks to one's enemies when one wants to make peace. This is true, but only in a very limited sense. Talking to one's enemies in order to make peace works when the enemy wants or needs peace as much as you do; it is very unclear, though the portents are not promising, that the people making such suggestions understand that they would not be talking about peace but about a pause in hostilities.
I would feel much more sanguine about the various plans to talk if I thought our interlocutors understood their goal was merely to negotiate a cease fire in a long war rather than some fantasy about achieving "peace".
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