January 16, 2005
Their Hand Set Against All
As a man in my mid-twenties, I have lived through three eras of American history. My childhood coincided with the declining years of the Cold War. My Adolesence spanned the years of prosperity, and as an adult, my time is that of the post 9/11 era, the War on Terrorism.
My experience of the Cold War made me familiar with the old saws about Democrats and Liberals being weak-willed traitors. Through the years of the peace of the next decade, I would believe that slander laid to rest. I would be disappointed to discover otherwise.
We have not even been given the chance to fail our country before the old hateful criticism came across. Spurred by the power-hungry in the Republican party, by pundits willing to cash in on the new demonization of the left and the moderates, and by a president all to willing to make smirking speeches about how the Democrats would go all weak on a war universally regarded as necessary, the virulent lie has been all but manifest in the conventional wisdom.
There are many reasons for the strong opposition to Bush from the Democrats. This is one of them. In a time where many Democrats felt unity was important, the Republican party leadership chose to abuse that impulse and overwhelm it.
It puzzles me why Republicans chose to endanger that unity, at least in a strategic sense. Instead of getting the American people fully behind our foreign policy, they again turned it into a matter of controversy. Perhaps Bush foresaw the fight that the War on Iraq would produce such controversy, and thought he had nothing to lose politically by practicing demagoguery with his base.
But what he did was create friction where none existed before, to get us into a war what would cause even greater friction in the larger world. Von Clausewitz, in his book On War spoke of strength of arms being complimented by the moral strength behind the fight. By moral, he did not so much mean whether these folks kept the Ten Commandments, but whether there was belief in their cause at home and with the troops. This, he said, was an important kind of strength, one that would enable armies to fight through the chaos and fears of battle in order to secure their objectives.
Our moral strength has been diminished by this war. As with Vietnam, we are put in a situation where we can't trust the optimistic appraisals of our government, can't trust their reasons for getting into this war, and can't trust them to competently carry out the battle. They may bluff and bluster, but in the end, the naysayers have been the soothsayers, the ones who have predicted the course of the war rightly. Some may say that the critics of this war are losing it for us, but the truth is, we are not seeing our soldiers crater under the pressures of the war. They have fought bravely, fought well, and not buckled under the strain. To say that our problems in Iraq come from a crisis of discouragement in the military is to display a distinct lack of faith in their resolve. Now that means the only problem here would be with the leadership, who have the power to shape policy. But then, the discouragement would be their own fault. If the Bush administration is taking an unsuccessful tack for the benefit of the critics of the war, then they have only to get back to taking care of business to resolve that problem. People will be less critical of success and the meeting of goals than failures and shortfalls.
The administration has always had the choice to explain controversial policies in a respectful way, to elicit cooperation, rather than division. The Democrats let Bush pass most every national security package he put forward, including legislation authorizing force for both our fights in the War on Terrorism, The Patriot Act, and the legislation to found the Department of Homeland Security. Hell, we were pushing for the last Before Bush changed his mind and supported it. We were never in a mood to cut corners on our defense. We were never going to bargain with terrorists, rely on warrants and police methods alone. Our idea of a war on terrorism was a comprehensive one, where the cooperation of our allies would become a weapon to strike at our enemies, where our diplomacy with the Middle East would become our means of de-radicalizing the region.
Democrats and Republicans alike fought the Cold War, fought Korea and Vietnam, fought in World War II. Democrats and Republicans alike fight this new enemy. It puzzles me that Republicans could think that we Democrats, seeing one of our favorite cities attacked, could lack committment the War against Terrorism. We were at Ground Zero. We never forgot. I mourn the lack of faith that the Republicans have in our party. It never had to be this way. We never had to fight over this issue, and we shouldn't have. We have real enemies to fight, and they will not pause in their attacks to give us the time to sort this out by political hackery.
There are more important things than political power, and there always have been. At the same time, though, we need leadership that can use the power at hand wisely. The Democrats might be willing to settle for Republican dominance if they were to drop the take-no-prisoner's approach, and keep counsel with us, so we could take legislation back to our constituent and say we did well by them. We cannot lead this nation properly by disempowering large chunks of the population. That can only lead to reactionary political turmoil, with an accompanying deficit of competent, honest, and timely governmental action.
The disappointment of the years after 9/11 is the extent to which the leading party failed to acknowledge the common stake we had in resolving the security crisis that is al-Qaeda and international terrorism, and the extent to which that political machine has acted to exploit the crisis. The Republican leadership may continually take us to task for exploiting Iraq for political benefit, but in the end, it was Bush and the leadership who did that first, using the issue to unseat Democrats and question their patriotism.
Because he based notions of Republican superiority on the willingness to go to war in Iraq, the failures of that war, before the invasion and after are fair game for those who he slighted and slandered to get that war. He has made us more vulnerable to terrorist attack by his actions, not less. Bush and the Republican Party have been given four more years to do something about it. In fighting so hard to portray us as the inferior party in upholding America's defense, he has made an implicit promise to America- that he will do better than we could. My advice to the Republicans in the next few years is simple: Earn the support of the Democrats through your actions. Prove that Bush's reelection was a blessing on this country and not a curse. No more excuses, no more scapegoats. Now is not the time to ask of our fellow citizens "Have you forgotten?", but instead the time to ask ourselves "Do I remember?"
And what should we remember? We should remember a time when loyalty to this country outweighed loyalty to party or person. We should remember those times, because those are the times where America is strongest, and the strength of that inclusive unity is not something to be lightly thrown away.
Posted by Stephen Daugherty at January 16, 2005 09:30 AMThe Republican Party, excepting a few well known Bush adherents, are not the party of the neo-cons any more than the Democrats. The so-called Republican moderates have caved in to the fear-mongering McCarthyism that a large part (what? 51%?)of the rest of this country has obviously bought into. The Democrats for the most part have allowed the opposition to define them and run from the slander rather than to stand and fight and define themselves. Democracy in this country is a shambles. Those who know this or any other administration to be inept at best and criminal at worst and yet allow it to completely redefine Jeffersonian freedoms into corporate jingoism have lost their will to really be free.
Posted by: Bruce Peak at January 16, 2005 11:08 PMWhich came first, the accusations of Republican fascism or that of liberal’s actually rooting for American defeat?
Posted by: ericsimonson at January 17, 2005 02:06 AMIt boggles my mind that anyone could believe the Bush administration supports a strong military. In the face of manpower shortages, they’ve refused to strengthen and expand the armed forces. In fact, they’re asking the Navy and Air Force to make deep budget cuts.
When the Bush administration took power, one of its first acts was to pull the teeth of the regional CINCs, curtailing their ability to shape their areas of responsibility. This was followed by cutting veterans benefits.
I won’t even get into the half-assed way in which the Bush administration approached both homeland security and the Iraq adventure.
The morale of the armed forces, which gained such a boost from Gulf I, is taking hit after hit in Iraq: No WMD, no connection to 9/11, ineffective civilian oversight leading to Abu Ghraib and earning the enmity of the Iraqi people…
Christ. Those guys have no idea why they’re there anymore. They’re just trying to make the best of a bad situation, keep themselves and their buddies alive, and maybe help a few individual Iraqis wherever possible.
I can only imagine the heartbreak when Bush said an Islamic theocracy governing Iraq - the very kind that’s developing nukes in Iran and funding the radical anti-American madrassas that inspired 9/11 - was OK with him.
Bush strong on the military… What a crock.
Eric-
Root for America’s defeat? You’re obviously not reading my posts, especially this one. We might as well ask you why you’re trying to destroy our armies and lose us the War on Terror.
Your average Democrat and average Republican can agree on one thing: We need to win the War in Iraq, and the War on Terrorism. It is the means and the methods we debate. You may take our disagreement with you and your party to indicate disloyalty, but that index of our motivations would be poor indeed. I would even venture that Democrats are more cognizant in our concerns about the fanaticism of our opponent than Republicans are. We recognize their resolve not to soften our spines but to put steel in them. This will be a hard war, and we must use firm resolve. But we must also choose our battles so failures and intelligence failures will not dull our resolve. We continue to go after the wrong targets, it will sap our will, our means, and our support, and then we will be more vulnerable to our enemy, and less able to defeat them.
We are not the threat you must defeat. The terrorist are. It would do well for you to keep this in mind.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at January 17, 2005 11:43 AMI was referring to your characterization of Republicans actually.
You are basically saying that Republicans destroyed unity and cooperation. That Bush made a conscious decision to be controversial and confrontational rather than conciliatory. That somehow Democrats are the victims of Republican extremism.
But, you’re a little light on examples of this confrontational extremism.
I watch the news (and not just FOX), my impression is very different. Every time Bush made a gesture or a concession to Democrats, not only did Bush get burned but Democrats promptly sought out a camera to do it publicly. Openly Demagogueing him as being an illegitimate president, and even ‘something like’ a fascist.
You have your perspective I’m sure, but at least grant that Democrats in Washington do not make it easy. They are playing for all the marbles, not just some concessions, a little compromise, or national unity.
If compromise is so essential for unity, where is it? When every election is protested as fraudulent. When every vote that is not counted, at least once, is the result of rascist Republicans disenfranchising minorities and outright corruption. Every conservative policy is fought as if the ovens of Auschwitz are being lit.
The unity you are defining is the unity of complete Republican compromise with Democrats.
I recognize that you have been steadfast in your conviction that this war must be won, now that we are there. But you are the exception and not the rule. I just watched a speech on UCTV this last weekend by a journalist who said that Vietnam was good for America because it humiliated us— and we needed to be humiliated! He went on to say that we are losing in Iraq and probably deserve to for the same reason.
Face it, this is not an isolated opinion on the left. For some, America is the enemy. Not Al Qaeda. After all, the world hates us for a reason, right? Just ask Michael Moore.
Throughout the entire 2004 election the message from the left was clear. Bush is the real enemy.
Posted by: ericsimonson at January 18, 2005 03:44 PMThat’s because we’re treated as the real enemy. “A little light” on examples? how about some examples from you on this alleged reaching across the aisle. Every signal from this White House is that the administration views the reelection as a mandate to do what they want and screw anyone that gets in their way to doing it.
Bush is not the “real” enemy, but he is an enemy we stood a better chance of defeating. One that continues to act in so wrong-headed a manner as to help our enemies despite his pledge to defeat them.
Everything left is demonized, everything right is good and pure. We’re sick of it. I don’t disagree with all of the basic gist of the repub’s policies but somehow agreeing with any substantive ones on the left makes me a leftie, a traitor, a commie and whatever else invective happens to be in fashion at the moment. It’s ridiculous and it comes from the trickle-down effect of such demagogues as Rush and Ann and sniffing way our own government thinks of any dissent.
If we’re so intent on fostering democracy abroad, we should consider fostering it here. It might give us better credibility to do it elsewhere. Nearly half of this country votes against a war president and his policies, yet moderation is not in the cards. Environmental regulations weakened, SEC softened, the floating of repealing the inheritance tax in a era of massive deficit, international relations horribly damaged even among our closest allies…if the threat of terrorism is so grave, and it certainly is, perhaps we should try to approach it with the full force of ideas from both parties, from the whole government, rather than the pursuit of an idealogy that barely eeked out a win with the patriotic card to play.
Posted by: Zoffa at January 18, 2005 05:21 PMEric-
I’m not one to blame Republicans for everything, but in this case, the Republicans did destroy what unity we had.
Bush stumped for the better part of 2002 on behalf of Republican candidates, intent on getting back his majority. He let candidates use hideous rhetoric against the Democrats, including Saxby Chambliss’s monstrous commercial against triple amputee and war hero Max Cleland.
This was a man who showed great bravery in the Battle of Khe Sanh, who bent to pick up a grenade he thought had dropped from his person. The reality, as he would find out years later, was that it was somebody elses, and it belonged to somebody who had mangled the pin on it.
Oh, but what do your people do? In the spirit of unity, Ann Coulter takes the fact that he was heading off to have a beer with his friends, and says he was drunk. She alleges that his war hero status was only due to the grenade, despite the fact that he was decorated for his bravery in the hellish, lengthy siege at Khe Sanh. She alleges that the accident was his fault, compounding her lie about his soberness with an accusation of stupidity in picking up a grenade. Never mind that: a)Soldiers are not supposed to leave grenades lying around where they can kill and maim their fellow soldiers b)he thought he had dropped it, and was therefore obligated to pick it up, and c) It wasn’t his grenade, but that of a soldier who had mangled the pin on it, making him responsible for Cleland’s maiming
So your party lets him be smeared mercilessly, and compared in visuals to the villains of our time. His crime: not being in complete agreement with Bush. But then complete agreement and unity are two different things. It was your people who started identifying my side as the enemy, rather than cooperating with us. You can speak with great pathos about how Bush’s concessions have been refused, but my experience with Bush’s concessions is that they are mostly for show. He didn’t go to the UN with any respect for the process, he didn’t present a case for war with any kind of honesty. He has played for keeps himself, only now, with his re-election behind him admitting truthes. we knew all along.
Unity was in your party’s hands. It took Howard Dean to spur the rest of the party into open opposition, and Howard Dean only succeeded Because Democrats felt betrayed by Bush, and let their leaders know. How many votes did the resolution to Iraq pass by, pray tell? How many Republicans crossed party lines in comparison to the Democrats?
When we complain about your side, we have Bush’s record to back our claims of incompetence for the Republican party. When you complain about us, you just let it out, spinning webs of rhetoric with biting venom that have no more basis than pure party politics. We have become this hostile only after an extended period of humiliations and failures foisted upon us by your party. Your time to hit at us and not get hit back is over. But your opportunity to reach across party lines and govern by truth and common sense has not passed you by.
The Ball is in your court. You can be magnanimous, or you can be belligerent. One thing is for certain. As the party in power, you do yourselves no favors by continuing to goad and mistreat your opposition. You should know better, given the means by which you got into power.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at January 22, 2005 09:31 AM
