Albert Camus wrote “The innocent is the person who explains nothing.” This rather opaque observation describes the left’s increasing stridency when alluding to their guiltlessness in undermining the morale of the American people for carrying on the War in Iraq. In fact, liberals are employing a strategy that attempts to obscure their stated desire that the United States lose the war while at the same time, deflecting attention from a 4 year effort to convince the American people that trying to bring democracy to Iraq was a hopeless exercise in wishful thinking and that the war has been a lost cause from the start.

They deny it, of course. In fact, they get downright nasty if you even try and point it out. They will whine that their criticisms of the war effort have been misconstrued. They were simply trying to help win the war by pointing out the incompetence and wrongheadedness of the Bush Administration. They really had the US interests at heart all along.

Yes, I have an eight foot invisible rabbit as a friend too.

Never wanting for originality and creativity in seeking to defend themselves, the left is employing a tactic that in another time and other circumstances, they profess to abhor. They have adopted the doctrine of preemption while at the same time, using a tried and true favorite analogy that ties the right’s criticism of their curious sense of patriotism to the Nazis.

They claim the right is sharpening their knives in anticipation of employing a “stabbed in the back” defense for our inevitable defeat in Iraq.

It is gratifying that the left has adopted this meme preemptively. Perhaps they can be persuaded to apply pre-emption to other, more important areas of debate such as the well being and survival of the United States. Then again, I haven’t seen any pigs flying lately so I would guess we’ll have to do without any change of heart in that quarter.

This won’t be the first time the left has employed preemption as a tactic in order to go on the offensive against the Bush Administration and the right. You will recall in the immediate – and I mean immediate – aftermath of Katrina, the left was in full throated howl regarding the incompetence and uncaring nature of the relief effort less than 24 hours after hurricane force winds had died down in the stricken city of New Orleans. At a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans were paying attention to the victims of this natural disaster, the left chose to open a vicious personal attack on the President that was unprecedented in modern history in the aftermath of a calamity. Relying on media reports that later turned out to be bogus as well as trotting out the racial angle, and an anti-war meme about the National Guard to boot, the Katrina Narrative was born. The left was able to define the parameters of the debate over the relief effort simply by getting there first with the most ammunition – whether that ammo was based on facts or not.

But this latest attempt at preemption is designed to fulfill the dual purpose of defending the indefensible and changing the dynamic of any postwar debate by raising the specter of conservatives as Nazis. I must say it is a brilliant strategy in that it seeks to completely absolve liberals from any kind of responsibility for undermining the confidence of the American people in the President and the war as well as making themselves appear as the victim of conservative storm troopers.

As far as I can tell, this meme first saw the light of day a year ago in an article by Kevin Baker in Harpers. After helpfully giving the reader some background on the origin of the “stabbed in the back” legend – a legend not started by the National Socialists but rather by the German High Command’s Luddendorf and Von Hindenberg to excuse their defeat by blaming “socialists” in the new Weimer government – Baker connects the theme to modern conservatives and the idea that the very first use of the stabbed in the back (dolchstosslegende) attack on the left was the result of the right’s paranoid fantasies about a “betrayal” at Yalta by FDR:

The right wing’s dolchstosslegende was a small but fateful conspiracy, engineered through “secret diplomacy” at Yalta. Its linchpin was Hiss, a junior State Department aide at Yalta who was now described as a major architect of the pact. Hiss was a perfect villain for the right’s purposes. He was not only a communist and a spy; he was also an effete Eastern intellectual right down to his name—and, by implication, possibly a homosexual. He had been publicly exposed by that relentlessly regular guy, Dick Nixon, as an unnatural, un-American element who had used his wiles to sway all of his superiors in the Crimea.

Just how he had accomplished this was never detailed, but it didn’t matter; specificity is anathema to any myth. Bullitt and an equally flamboyant opportunist of the period, Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce, offered a more general explanation. The Democrats, Mrs. Luce had already charged, “will not, or dare not, tell us the commitments that were overtly or secretly made in moments of war’s extermination by a mortally ill President, and perhaps mortally scared State Department advisers.”

The idea of the “dying President” at Yalta was plausible to much of the public, who had seen photographs of Roosevelt looking suddenly, shockingly gaunt and exhausted throughout much of the last year of his life. To the right wing—which had conducted a whispering campaign against Roosevelt throughout his term in office, claiming that his real affliction was not polio but syphilis, and that he, his wife, and various advisers, including Hopkins, were “secret Jews” and Soviet agents—it all made perfect sense. To the many Americans who still loved Roosevelt and whose votes the Republicans needed, FDR himself could now become the Siegfried figure, a dying hero betrayed by the shady, unnatural Hiss.

Note that Baker skillfully mixes legitimate criticisms of Yalta with the paranoid right’s insistence of a conspiracy. For instance, Baker relies on FDR admirers to debunk the notion that Roosevelt was in any way hampered by his declining health. But historians are not of one mind on the issue, most notably Michael Beschloss

Roosevelt’s illnesses toward the end of the war were well known to his inner circle, and Stimson and Secretary of State Cordell Hull were openly defying the president by late 1944. And though Beschloss says in his book that Roosevelt wasn’t as easygoing with Stalin as some have suggested, he acknowledges that FDR’s health couldn’t help but affect talks at the 1945 Yalta Conference and afterwards.

“At the very end, Roosevelt was not what he was,” he said. “But he felt he should delay [making certain policy decisions] until the last possible minute.” The catch was, when FDR died in April 1945, nobody knew exactly what he had planned to do, which forced Truman into a quick learning curve.

Baker’s point about Yalta – that it was the best deal that could be gotten at the time – was true up to a point. Should FDR have known that Stalin had no intention of abiding by certain terms of the agreement relating to free elections in Eastern Europe? Roosevelt was no starry eyed worshipper of Stalin and knew perfectly well what the Soviet dictator was capable of. Since we can rule out naivete we are left with cynicism – signing a document that FDR knew would be honored in the breach. This, in fact, was the responsible criticism of the agreement coming from the right. I happen to agree (others don’t) that FDR got the best deal possible at Yalta and that it is over the top to suggest we “sacrificed” Eastern Europe. But there is little doubt that the agreement itself gave Stalin a free hand to meddle in post war elections – especially in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

We could go on about Yalta as an historical event but Baker used it to highlight what he saw as the original version of the stabbed in the back theme used by the right. No doubt the Birchers, the isolationists, and even some mainstream Republicans signed on to this paranoia. But to compare the right at the time of Robert Taft to the right of today is extraordinarily stupid. With the exception of a few mossbacks, conservatism has evolved far beyond the narrow strictures of the 1950’s with its deadening conformist orthodoxy to become a dynamic intellectual force for change. Even today, with the movement in disarray and the Republican party without a clue, there is incredible dynamism to be found in conservative thought. How that will translate into change and reform is still an unknown but to compare today’s conservatives with the “Who Lost China?” crowd is repulsive and ignorant to boot.

Baker could care less if his exaggerated myth making about conservatives is accurate because he’s not out to prove anything about Yalta, or Viet Nam, or any other historical event except as they can be used to buttress his thesis that the coming post-war debate on Iraq will try and pin the blame for any defeat on the left. But there is a subtle yet significant difference that Baker and others on the left are failing to make clear when preemptively accusing conservatives of contemplating perfidious accusations regarding the left’s loyalty. And that is quite simply, no responsible conservative I know is blaming the left for the monumental blunders, mistakes in judgment, errors of omission and commission made by the Bush Administration in the prosecution of the military aspects of the war in Iraq. The blame there rests solely and exclusively with the President and his people.

What I and I hope other conservatives will blame the left for is a deliberate, coordinated effort to undermine the confidence of the American people in the war by carrying out a campaign of personal destruction against President Bush while positing several crazy, paranoid conspiracy theories of their own.

(Note: I am not going to accuse the media of the same tactics because I believe reporting from Iraq – which has been abominable – can be explained by the fact that this conflict has proven to be impossible to cover in any traditional sense. With 74 journalists killed in Iraq since 2003, the western press has not only been forced to rely on stringers of unknown ability and whose loyalties can only be guessed at but also, they have been extremely limited in their ability to supply background and context to the story of the war. This is a story begging to be told and I suspect it will be soon enough.)

Dinesh D’Souza (I know he’s a bomb thrower but I’m only quoting his research into leftist thoughts on Iraq) supplies some of the evidence to make my case:

It seems that there are many on the left who want Bush to lose in Iraq. “The United States needs to lose the war in Iraq as soon as possible,” Gwyne Dyer writes in a recent book. Michael Moore claims that “the Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not ‘insurgents’ or ‘terrorists’ or ‘the enemy.’ They are the Revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow—and they will win.”

Moore may be right, but what’s striking is that he appears to be cheering them on. He is not unique in his sentiments. “I have a confession,” Gary Kamiya wrote on salon.com after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. “I have at times secretly wished for things to go wrong, wished for the Iraqis to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage.”

Indeed there are many on the left who seem to hope and work for the war in Iraq to end in dismal failure. Susan Watkins, editor of the New Left Review, affirms that “U.S.-led forces have no business in Iraq” and “the Iraqi people have every right to drive them out.” Political scientist Robert Jensen argues that the U.S. is losing the war in Iraq “and that’s a good thing. I welcome the U.S. defeat.” Sentiments such as this have been expressed by leftists like Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Markos Moulitsas.

I agree with Glenn Reynolds that much of this defeatist wish making – a theme that has endured since the war even started – is really all about Bush and the left’s utter and complete hatred of anything and everything he has ever done.

They have posited conspiracy theories involving the wildest, most ridiculous charges of vote stealing in both 2000 and 2004. In fact, one could say that the number one goal of the left these past 6 years has been to delegitimize the President of the United States as the rightfully elected leader of the country. The exaggerated and bogus narratives liberals have used to “explain” why we went into Iraq – from enriching Bush and his cronies to revenge for Saddam’s attempt on his father’s life – would have been laughed out of existence a decade ago but have been given credence by both rabid dog bloggers and mainstream Democrats alike. (The paranoid nature of these conspiracy theories mirror the same nonsense brought out by Baker above.)

And it has worked like a charm. The integrity of the President, his motives, and everything that a Chief Executive depends on to carry out the duties of his office, has been systematically undermined by the most hysterically overwrought charges of “fascism” on the home front and “misleading us into war” overseas. It is an easy step to make from there to preemptively defend yourself using what is basically a Nazi analogy while denying something that no one is actually accusing you of doing. If the war is to be “lost” (and liberals will make damn sure that no matter what happens, they will find themselves in agreement with the enemy and a loss it will be), the strategies of the Bush Administration will be to blame. But please don’t play the innocent when it comes to trying your damndest to destroy the American people’s confidence in the integrity of the Administration.

I’m not ignoring the correlation between everything that has gone wrong in Iraq and a loss of will of the people to continue what by all accounts has been a botched effort to win the peace. But one is forced to wonder if the people would have been more forgiving of the blunders and would be sticking with the Administration today in much larger numbers if the left hadn’t been insidiously chopping the President off at the knees by falsely accusing him of every perfidy known to man.

Jonah Goldberg wonders if the stabbed in the back meme isn’t just a lot of puffery. He responds to a Ross Douhat post where the Atlantic Online blogger uses the Nazi analogy approvingly:

Now, it’s nothing new for liberals to draw invidious comparisons between American conservatives and Nazis, but I’m not clear why Ross so gamely goes along with it. If you read his post today, he uses the “stabbed in the back” phrase uncritically. Why? Why not just talk about the Vietnam syndrome? Or media bashing? Which, after all, is what he’s really talking about anyway. I’m not reflexively opposed to the comparison to the end of WWI Germany, but nobody’s really tried to make it in any serious way. The assertion has simply caught on. In that sense it really is a meme, an idea that spreads around because of its superficial seductiveness alone. (Oh and please spare me the emails from people who seem to know what I write in my book better than I do. You don’t).

And speaking of the Vietnam syndrome, I think Ross is basically wrong when he says that the Vietnam syndrome didn’t help conservatives. Vietnam saturated American politics in myriad ways that helped the Reaganite Right, particularly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, become the party of American confidence. “Morning in America” makes little sense without Vietnam. This is not to say that I think blaming the liberal media is a particularly persuasive explanation on the merits for failure in Iraq (if we fail), but it’s far from clear that an American defeat in Iraq helps those Democrats who seemed, fair or not, determined to make failure a self-fulfilling prophecy. He may be right that if we fail in Iraq, conservatives will shrink their appeal if they blame anyone but themselves. But my guess is that the psychological and geostraategic fallout from failure will be sufficiently enormous and complex that nobody can predict who comes out a winner or a loser from it.

Does the constant drumbeat from the left predicting failure or saying outright we’ve already failed have an effect on the people’s morale and consequently their support for continuing the effort in Iraq? Are they seriously trying to deny that this hasn’t been a deliberate effort to sap the confidence and will of the American people? I think they are. And the way they are doing it is by changing the subject to one where they posit themselves as victims of the right wing smear machine not as perpetrators of actions that by any standard has given aid and comfort to the enemy – who, after all actually counted on the left to perform in this manner since it was the only possible way they could be victorious.

Nice try but it won’t wash.

Every action taken by al-Qaeda, the insurgents, and the militias has been with one eye glued to western media to see how their useful idiots on the left have been reacting to the heartless brutality in killing so many of the innocent thus making Iraq an extraordinarily difficult place to govern. Their strategy has worked to perfection. The left has predictably played their role as destroyer of the people’s will while the Bush Administration has obliged them by committing one mistake after another in trying to defeat them. The combination has been unbeatable – for the enemy.

So yes, blame Bush and his people for what they should be blamed for; the incompetent prosecution of an ill-planned war. But if blaming the left for deliberately seeking to break the will of the American people to carry on the struggle to at least the point we could leave behind some semblance of a viable Iraqi state means that I will be called a back stabber, allow me to coin a phrase: Bring It On.

Okay, so I’m an ass.

Today, I feel vindicated in my beliefs and analysis about the war in Iraq and I don’t mind letting people know that their bitter recriminations and name calling directed against me are proving to be the shallow, ignorant postulates of the blindly partisan I always said they were. In the end, I am being proved correct and they are being proved wrong. And rather than disagreeing with me as grown up adults, so many of them chose to indulge themselves in a childish orgy of vicious name calling in comments, emails, and on their own blogs to the point that it became a travail to even write about Iraq. And whenever I did, I only ended up driving more of my conservative readers away.

I knew this at the time but felt that it was necessary for conservatives to wake up and smell the coffee about Iraq rather than swallowing the Administration’s line (and their legions of defenders) who were saying that a military “victory” was still possible when all the signs pointed to a disaster in the making. I could very well have continued finding silver linings in dark clouds in order to make the case for “staying the course” but in the end, that approach wasn’t tenable given the reality of what has been happening on the ground in that bloody country.

It’s just that when everything that I’ve put into building this site up has basically gone for naught because so many of my friends on the right have abandoned reading this blog – mostly because my position on the Iraq War has diverged from GOP and conservative orthodoxy – that I now feel compelled to do a little fist pumping because more and more Republicans are saying exactly the same things I’ve been saying for months; that it’s time to start redeploying our troops so that we can salvage something short of an unmitigated disaster from this military adventure:

Republican support for President Bush’s Iraq war policy suffered a significant crack Monday evening when Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana urged the president to change course in Iraq “very soon.”

The well-respected GOP voice on foreign affairs took to the Senate floor to urge Bush to avoid further damage to America’s military readiness and long-term national security.

“Our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond. Our continuing absorption with military activities in Iraq is limiting our diplomatic assertiveness there and elsewhere in the world,” he said.

Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also sounded a pessimistic note on the prospects for internal political progress in Iraq.

He said he sees “no convincing evidence that Iraqis will make the compromises necessary to solidify a functioning government and society, even if we reduce violence to a point that allows for some political and economic normalcy.”

The senator said continuing military operations in Iraq were putting a damaging level of stress on U.S. forces, “taking a toll on recruitment and readiness.”

“The window during which we can continue to employ American troops in Iraqi neighborhoods without damaging our military strength, or our ability to respond to other national security priorities, is closing,” he said. “The United States military remains the strongest fighting force in the world, but we have to be mindful that it is not indestructible.”

Lugar also said he believes the chances for success of Bush’s strategy of boosting troop levels in Iraq to try to get the security situation there under control is “very limited within the short period framed by our own domestic political debate.”

Every single conclusion reached by Lugar in the above excerpt was reached by me late last year. The lack of progress by the Iraqi government in dealing with their problems making the surge an exercise in futility; the toll on our military; and the ticking clock of public support for the war were all pointed out by me – for which I received the most vile criticism imaginable from some of my erstwhile friends.

Lugar isn’t the only Republican who is saying this, of course. Last month, a group of GOP House members confronted the President over Iraq in the White House and told him basically the same things. But when the ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee – a man whose judgement on foreign and military affairs has been respected in Washington, D.C. for more than 20 years – tells the President of the United States on the floor of the US Senate that he’s got to change course, Bush better listen. Otherwise, Republicans will be forced to work within the timetable framework offered by the Democrats. And that could only mean a catastrophic end to our involvement in Iraq as the artificial deadlines pulled more and more troops out of Iraq allowing the terrorists and militias to take over.

What Lugar wants is a sensible redeployment that will allow our troops to maintain a presence so that the country won’t fall apart completely:

Despite his call for a course change, Lugar said he did not support calls by some Democrats for a complete U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, which he said “also fails to meet our security interests.”

Rather, he said a “downsizing and redeployment of United States military forces to more sustainable positions”—in rural locations of Iraq, Kurdish areas or possibly Kuwait—might better serve American security interests.

And to make my vindication complete – and even sweeter – is Lugar’s call for a bi-partisan consensus on Iraq:

“The president and some of his advisers may be tempted to pursue the ‘surge’ strategy to the end of his administration, but such a course contains extreme risks for United States national security,” Lugar said. “The president and his team must come to grips with the shortened political timeline in this country for political operations in Iraq.”

“A course change should happen now, while there is still some possibility of constructing a sustainable bipartisan strategy in Iraq. If the president waits until the presidential election campaign is in full swing, the intensity of confrontation on Iraq is likely to limit [options],” he said.

While a handful of other Republican senators have broken with the Bush administration over Iraq, Lugar’s call for a course change—which his spokesman, Andy Fisher, said was “months in the making, weeks in writing”—is likely to have particular resonance, given his stature as one of the party’s elder statesmen on foreign policy.

I know I shouldn’t feel this way. It’s petty, juvenile, and will serve only to make people madder at me. And I also know that the minute I hit that “publish” button, I’m going to regret putting this post up.

So be it. If I can’t be a sonuvabitch on my own blog, and tell people who have accused me of being a “traitor” and worse to go screw themselves, then to hell with it. I might as well take up tiddly winks or some other non-contact sport. Because what this site has been about since its inception has been a full frontal assault on the stupidity of the left. May as well throw some righties under the bus while I’m at it.

UPDATE: FROM THE “SEE WHAT I MEAN” FILE

Glenn Reynolds:

535 COMMANDERS-IN-CHIEF: Now it’s Richard Lugar calling for a new strategy. Maybe we could do something to stop Iranian troops entering Iraq? I don’t think he has anything so useful in mind, though.

UPDATE: Fresh back from Iraq, J.D. Johannes posts a wrapup. And he emails that he’s got a rant about Senators on the way: “you know, we could have this thing all but won and still declare defeat. That is sickening.” Our political class isn’t known for bravery or discipline.

First, Confederate Yankee has debunked the “Iranian troops entering Iraq” story pretty thoroughly. Secondly, I will ask a question of Mr. Johannes: Just what is it you think we have “all but won” in Iraq?

The insurgents defeated? Al Qaeda destroyed utterly? Foreign fighters vanquished and prevented from entering the country? Iraq at peace and a stable society? The Iraqi government building a multi-sectarian democracy?

That’s a start as far as barometers for “victory.” And we’re nowhere near achieving any of them!

Not one.

So I will ask again. Just what is it you think we are on the brink of winning in Iraq if only we allow the American military to continue our current strategy?

It could be that in my doddering years, my mind demands the simplicity of a Pier Six brawl in order to maintain its interest in anything. With my White Sox tanking in the standings, I have lost all interest in watching baseball on TV - except when a good old fashioned bench clearing brouhaha erupts at which point I rouse myself from somnolence to cast a still jaundiced eye at the action.

Truth is, I’m bored. And if you’ve been following the race for the presidential nomination in both parties, I’ll bet you a dollar to navy beans that you’re bored too.

Has there ever been such a ponderously dry, stodgy, stuffy, tiresome group of candidates ever assembled? They don’t even make good stand up comedy material. How many jokes can you tell about John Edward’s hair? How many variations of Hillary the Harridan can be photoshopped? How many pictures of an empty suit can you show representing Obama?

The Republicans aren’t any better. Mitt Romney – the Stepford Candidate. The guy is so automatically smooth we should probably cut him open to see if he bleeds or blinks on and off.

And what about John McCain? I’ve seen trees with more animation. “Wooden” doesn’t begin to describe his personality much less his oratorical style.

Rudy is feistier but hardly what I’d call mesmerizing. The guy has been married three times for God’s sake. If his wives don’t find him very interesting, why should I?

And Fred? Thompson is like dark matter – we know he exists but we’re not quite sure what he’s made of. But those of you pining for a reincarnation of Ronald Reagan will almost surely be disappointed. Fred will make “stolid” a new Republican virtue, hopefully replacing “out of control avarice” as a the impression people have of the party.

Again, it’s probably just a product of my creeping senility that has me so down on all the candidates. Memories of exciting, vital campaigns from the past with roaring crowds and candidates speaking with passion on the significant issues of the day seem to overwhelm the ghostly images of today’s lackluster crew flitting across the TV screen participating in canned appearances before canned audiences. About the only excitement generated this entire campaign season so far has been to wonder if Hillary is going to get booed by the rabid base of her own party. Secret Service protection precludes pie throwing incidents so we will have to forgo the pleasure of seeing Hillary (or more likely some Republican) with Butterscotch Cream all over their carefully, cosmetically enhanced faces.

There have been few sparks generated in the debates – except the ones that lit Ron Paul on fire and sent his campaign up in smoke. Why should there be any fireworks? The two parties have become as orthodox and predictable as a Michael Moore fakeumentary. And the reason for that is the base of each party holds the whip hand in determining who will stand at the podium at the convention accepting the nomination. next summer.

The fact that those most committed to the party and to a particular candidate also tend to be on the fringes of American political thought, far removed from The Great Center, has all the candidates paying homage to one group’s agenda or another. And God forbid you end up offending one of the major interest groups in either party. Not passing one of a half dozen litmus tests will mean almost certain defeat in the primaries.

This situation is largely born of good intentions gone horribly bad. Back in the 1960’s, the Democrats began a series of reforms to bring “the people” into the nominating process. It was done to take the choice for President out of the hands of the party bosses and make the nominating process as open as possible. (The Republicans, God Bless ‘em, were always 4 years behind these reforms but felt they had little choice given the potent political weapon these reforms became when Democrats directed attacks against the GOP for having such a “closed” nominating process.)

The result of these reforms was entirely predictable. By 1972, the McGovern campaign had been well and truly hijacked by the far left. Viet Nam was the least of the candidate’s worries. He had radical feminists, Black Panthers, the Grey Panthers, the American Indian Movement (AIM), the nascent gay rights lobby, and a host of new left activists who had gone from campaign hangers on to maneuvering themselves into a position of influence in party circles. It was a disaster.

It took 20 years but activists were finally able to wrest control of the Republican party in 1992. The social conservatives had been an important cog in the GOP machine for two decades but it wasn’t until the “Buchanan Brigades” lost in the primaries but won the convention that the GOP careened as far to the right on many of their issues as the Democrats skewed to the left on theirs.

And here we are in 2008, reaping the whirlwind of reform, counter-reform, and an ever deepening sense of ennui on the part of the average voter who is sickened by the bickering, the sniping and carping that goes on between the two parties. Political combat is, by its nature, for keeps. The stakes are incredibly high and when both sides believe passionately, the rhetoric can get nasty – even personal. But unlike the past, there is a sickening sense of the debate getting beyond the point where compromise can be achieved – or even contemplated. I constantly get taken to task for partaking in this combat. I plead guilty.

But in the end, there are some on the left that I respect and can actually agree with on occasion. My bomb throwing is directed solely against the unreconstructed Stalinists, fantasists, conspiracists, and socialists whose policy prescriptions would make us less free, less wealthy, and place us under the heel of a nanny state government that would dictate every facet of our existence all in the name of acting in the best interests of “the people.”

Considering that many of these same knuckleheads gave us the “reforms” that have led us to our current political situation in nominating presidents, I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them.

It used to be that the conspiracy bug was almost exclusively confined to right wing extremists – Birchers, Klansmen, McCarthyites, and a mish mash of anti-government, anti-communist (where many believed the commies had already taken over the US government), and anti-UN psychopaths. According to the eminent historian Richard Hofstadter’s brilliant essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics , these pathetic people felt that they had no control over their lives, that “an invisible hand” was directing their destiny and the destiny of the nation.

Scholar Daniel Pipes expounded on this theme more recently with his book Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From. Pipes traces the history of conspiracy mongering from the Middle East, to Western Europe (where regular pogroms against the Jews were the result) and it’s arrival here in America with its roots in the anti-Masonic, anti-Illuminati groups of the 19th century.

Now James Piereson, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, president of the William E. Simon Foundation, and former executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin Foundation, has written a book that posits the theory that the JFK assassination “compromised the central assumptions of American liberalism” thereby devastating the left as no other event did before or has since. This led American liberals to several wrong historical conclusions which gave flight to a conspiracy culture of their own.

The book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, is not the first effort to use the Kennedy Assassination as a starting point to show where liberalism lost its way. Theodore H. White’s brilliant autobiographical In Search of History made basically the same point; that the unfulfilled promise of the JFK presidency haunted liberals down to this day. From tragedy, there emerged a culture of paranoia that saw the “invisible hand” at work – not of Masons or Communists, but of right wing extremists both in and out of government. White also commented on the takeover of the liberal ideology – his ideology – by hard left Stalinists as New Deal Democrats like Humphrey were marginalized as a result of their support for the Viet Nam war.

John Miller interviewed Piereson for the National Review. It should be noted that Piereson is a well respected academic whose main interest over the years has been to promote an ideologically neutral atmosphere in our educational system – in other words, a “classically liberal” education. While he is generally identified as being a moderate conservative, Mr. Piereson has not been shy about taking on the right over issues such as teaching evolution in classrooms and prayer in schools.

Miller begins the interview by asking how the JFK assassination changed American politics:

JAMES PIERESON: Kennedy’s assassination, happening the way it did, compromised the central assumptions of American liberalism that had been the governing philosophy of the nation since the time of the New Deal. It did this in two decisive ways: first, by compromising the faith of liberals in the future; second, by undermining their confidence in the nation. Kennedy’s assassination suggested that history is not in fact a benign process of progress and advancement, but perhaps something quite different. The thought that the nation itself was responsible for Kennedy’s death suggested that the United States, far from being a “city on a hill” and an example for mankind, as Kennedy had described it (quoting John Winthrop), was in fact something darker and more sinister in its deepest nature.

The conspiracy theories that developed afterwards reflected this thought. The Camelot legend further suggested that that the Kennedy years represented something unique that was now forever lost. Liberalism was thereafter overtaken by a sense of pessimism about the future, cynicism about the United States, and nostalgia for the Kennedy years. This was something entirely new in the United States. It was evident in the culture during the 1960s. George Wallace tried to confront it in the electoral arena in 1968, as did Richard Nixon — though it was somewhat difficult to do so because neither Lyndon Johnson nor Hubert Humphrey represented this new orientation. It was not until this mood of pessimism was brought into the government during the Carter administration that it could be directly confronted in the political arena, which is what Ronald Reagan in fact did.

Miller challenges Piereson on the notion that 11/22/63 meant more than 9/11:

We know from looking back over the decades that Kennedy’s sudden death cast a long shadow over American life, which I have tried to describe. Many of us thought that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 would also have great consequences for the way Americans looked at politics, the parties, and national security. In particular, some felt that the attacks might drive out of our politics the tone of anti-Americanism that had been a key feature of the American Left from the 1960s forward. That did not really happen. The liberal movement today remains far more the product of the 1960s than of the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. Indeed, the terrorist attacks now seem to have had very little effect on the thinking of American liberals who view the war on terror and the war in Iraq through the lenses of the Vietnam War. That is not true of conservatives. In that sense, the terrorist attacks have simply deepened the divide between liberals and conservatives. What is surprising, then, is what little enduring effect the terrorist attacks have had, particularly for liberals.

I have written many times on this site with all the earnestness that I can muster that it is absolutely imperative that if we are going to survive as a nation and win this war against the terrorists and the states that continue to enable them, the left simply must join this fight. Until liberals embrace the notion that the War on Terror or whatever you choose to call it is real and not some political ploy designed by President Bush to win elections, or set up a dictatorship, or destroy the left itself, we have no hope of either confronting the menace or winning through to victory. The intellectual framework for the survival of the west has always been best outlined by classically liberal writers and thinkers. Today, they are missing in action and it hurts the cause terribly.

Piereson believes a large part of the problem is that the left has their eyes focused on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza:

Liberals who were rational and realistic accepted the fact that Oswald killed JFK but at the same time they were unable to ascribe a motive for his actions. They tended to look for sociological explanations for the event and found one in the idea that JFK was brought down by a “climate of hate” that had overtaken the nation. Thus they placed Kennedy’s assassination within a context of violence against civil rights activists. They had great difficulty accepting the fact that Kennedy’s death was linked to the Cold War, not to civil rights. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in his 1,000-page history of the Kennedy administration, published in 1965, could not bring himself to mention Oswald’s name in connection with Kennedy’s death, though he spent several paragraphs describing the hate-filled atmosphere of Dallas at the time — suggesting thereby that Kennedy was a victim of the far right. The inability to come to grips with the facts of Kennedy’s death pointed to a deeper fault in American liberalism which was connected to its decline.

Gerald Posner points out in his conspiracy debunking book on the assassination Case Closed that theorists have gone to extraordinary lengths to absolve Oswald of any connection to the crime at all. He traces the theories on Oswald’s involvement from the notion that he was an assassin hired by the CIA or FBI through the “patsy” phase to where now, Oswald is thought of by many conspiracists as an innocent bystander. Anything but the truth about Oswald’s political leanings.

To be fair, it is doubtful that Oswald really understood Communism or any other ideology for that matter. He embraced it because it set him apart, made him different. And for someone as brutally neglected as Oswald was when he was young, basking in the glow of attention as a result of his contrarian political stands – especially in the Marine Corps – it must have given him an enormous amount of satisfaction.

As historian William Manchester points out in his seminal work on the assassination Death of a President, “Lee Harvey Oswald shot the President of the United States in the back to get attention.” Rather than looking for complex, multi-level reasons for why Kennedy and Oswald’s paths crossed that tragic day in Dealey Plaza, sometimes the simplest explanations are the most plausible.

Piereson weighs in on Oliver Stone’s fantasy film JFK:

The Oliver Stone movie was foolish to the extent it was held up as an account of the Kennedy assassination. Using Jim Garrison as a credible authority on the Kennedy assassination is akin to citing Rosie O’Donnell as an authority on the collapse of the Twin Towers. It is not possible to claim that Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll without at the same time claiming that the autopsy (which said he was shot from the rear) was wrong or fabricated. The conspiracy theories do not arise from any evidence but from a need to believe that Kennedy was shot by someone other than Oswald.

Garrison, the ambitious, homophobic New Orleans DA who prosecuted Clay Shaw for the murder of JFK made Mike Nifong look like a pillar of legal rectitude. The fact that the jury returned a verdict in 45 minutes of not guilty should tell you everything you need to know about Garrison’s out of control prosecution. (One juror said after the verdict that the reason they took so long was that several jurors had to use the washroom.) Making Garrison out to be a hero in the film was perhaps the most outrageous calumny in the history of Hollywood. The damage done to the historical record by Stone should never, ever be forgotten.

Finally, Miller asks Piereson about Jack Ruby:

MILLER: Would liberals have had an easier time of it if Jack Ruby hadn’t killed Oswald?

PIERESON: If Ruby had not intervened, Oswald probably would have tried to stage some kind of “show” trial in which Kennedy’s policies in Cuba would have been raised as a central issue. Oswald proudly acknowledged that he was a Communist. If the case had been brought to trial, Oswald would have certainly been convicted. In that case, it would have been far more difficult for liberals and the Kennedy family to maintain that JFK was killed because of his support for civil rights. There would have been less talk of conspiracies; less anti-Americanism from the left; perhaps it would have further reinforced the anti-communism of post-war liberalism. There is no question that Ruby changed the equation a great deal.

Recent theories about the Mafia’s involvement in the assassination include not only Ruby as silencer but Oswald as trigger man thanks to a distant uncle of Oswald’s who worked for New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello. The thought of any one of those gabby losers working for the Mafia on a hit the magnitude of the Kennedy assassination is outrageous on its face. Besides, federal agents had Marcello, Sam Trafficante, and Sam Giancana – all three implicated by conspiracists in the assassination – under close surveillance for years prior to the death of Kennedy and not a word was uttered by any of them that would prove they had anything to do with the murder.

I think Piereson is right. I believe that the assassination so unbalanced the left that they have yet to find their way back. Spinning ever more fantastic conspiracy theories to explain electoral losses, describe their political enemies, and generally view the world with a suspicion and paranoia once reserved for the mouth breathers on the right, the left has truly lost their way. Perhaps it will take someone like Senator Obama – a sunnyside up sort of liberal – to reinvigorate the movement and bring it back down to earth.

And then perhaps, we can all go to war together rather than the left hanging back while seeing monsters under the bed.

As the race for the Republican presidential nomination heats up, it becomes more and more apparent that the GOP hopefuls are convinced that President George Bush suffers from some kind of highly contagious, debilitating disease. The way they seek to distance themselves from he and his policies would generally point to one of two things; either Bush has contracted some exotic malady or his poll numbers are so low that he has become the “Typhoid Larry” of electoral politics:

Recent polls have shown Bush’s popularity—which has long been in the tank with independents—suffering significant erosion even among GOP base voters, largely due to a backlash over the president’s stance on immigration.

The decline, according to some Republican strategists, has flashed a green light for lawmakers on Capitol Hill and presidential candidates to put distance between themselves and an unpopular president—a politically essential maneuver for the 2008 general election that remained risky as long as Bush retained the sympathies of Republican stalwarts.

Now that those sympathies have somewhat cooled, the effects are visible: Republican House members upset about immigration policy have spoken of Bush in disparaging terms. And presidential contenders like Rudy Giuliani are striking change-the-course themes in their rhetoric, even while continuing to back Bush over the Iraq war.

Much has changed since that first debate at the Reagan Library in California when each GOP candidate in his turn gave lip service to supporting the President. But lately, the Republican front runners especially have made it a point to make their differences with the President known to the voters. Even on Iraq, Senator Sam Brownback has broken with the Administration, calling for a partition of that bloody country into three separate federal entities; Shia, Sunni, and Kurd. And all the GOP frontrunners except John McCain have excoriated the President over his immigration proposal.

In fact, the debate over Bush’s “amnesty-that-really-isn’t-amnesty-because-I-say-so” bill is being blamed for this erosion of support. But I believe that to be much too simple an explanation. There are a large group of Republicans and GOP leaning voters who have had it up to here with Bush and have been waiting for a chance to stick it to this President for a variety of perceived failings including his out of control fiscal policies, his advocacy of big government programs like the Prescription Drug Bill, and even Iraq where some of the GOP faithful believe that Bush has been negligent in both defending our efforts there as well as prosecuting the war with sufficient competence and vigor.

Whatever the reason for this sudden movement away from Bush by the GOP field, all must take great care not to cut the cord completely. Bush still commands the support of more than 60% of the party and abandoning the President entirely carries the risk of sounding too much like a Democrat, much less giving offense to millions of conservatives who still view the President with affection and admiration. It remains to be seen whether or not Bush can even maintain that level of support given his nearly suicidal attacks on opponents of his pet amnesty project. No one likes to be called a bigot in so many words. And if he keeps that up, about the only supporters he’ll have will be the bedrock Republican faithful who would support anyone with an “R” after his name on the ballot.

But all of this slipping and sliding away from Bush by the GOP field will probably go for naught anyway. That’s because whoever emerges to claim the nomination will have to face the fact that just about every time a Democratic campaign commercial comes on TV next year, it will show the GOP nominee on one side of the screen and some unflattering picture of the President on the other. The Democrats are going to connect the Republican Presidential hopeful to Bush like superglue. And by the time they’re done, voters will think that Bush running for a third term.

So what’s the point of breaking with the President if the other party isn’t going to let voters forget George Bush? If the other candidate’s name is Clinton, the Democrats are going to have their own problems in breaking with the past. Looked upon with great affection by Democrats and left leaning independents, Bill Clinton is a lot less beloved in many parts of the electorate vital to the Democrat’s prospects for success. The idea of “The Bill and Hill Show” coming back to the White House does not sit well with about half of all independents. And Hillary’s negative rating – an astronomical 49% in the last Rassmussen poll – would seem to indicate that a GOP counter strategy of tying Hillary to her husband’s scandal plagued administration could end up making the entire issue of running away from Bush a wash.

The most marked retreat from support for the President among the frontrunners has been by Rudy Guiliani, who invoked the name of Reagan in an unflattering comparison to the current President:

But the willingness of leading Republicans to draw distinctions with Bush goes beyond immigration. “The thing that concerns me the most is that 74 percent that thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction,” Giuliani said last week at a Flag Day ceremony in Wilmington, Del., in a reference to recent polling. “What we’re lacking is strong, aggressive, bold leadership like we had with Ronald Reagan.” Later, he sought to downplay the apparent shot at the incumbent, underlining the awkward balance GOP candidates must strike in establishing independence from Bush without expressly repudiating him.

You can’t come much closer to a “repudiation” than that. Calling the ostensible leader of your party a weak and failed leader with 74% of the country believing we’re headed in the wrong direction cannot be construed in any fashion as a love note. By appealing to the memory of Saint Ronald, Guiliani softened the blow to those bedrock Republicans who like Bush but worship Reagan. And his backtracking later was hardly an apology for misspeaking. By referencing his statements to campaign strategy, Guiliani reinforces the belief that while he recognizes the balancing act he must perform, there is little doubt that he feels the need to get as far away from Bush as is practicable.

The closer we get to the primaries, the more we will probably see the GOP field edging away from the President. But there are going to be moments when the eventual nominee will be forced to stand with Bush, such as the Republican convention next summer. You can’t keep a sitting President from speaking no matter how unpopular he might be. But whoever ends up in the Republican’s winner’s circle, they may be wishing for a sudden power outage at the Xcel Center in St. Paul when it comes time for the President’s address if his poll numbers keep dropping the way they have these last few months.

Ezra Klein, one of my favorite lefty bloggers, is challenging liberal hawks to be more specific on whether or not they support military action against Iran. He thinks that their previous support for Iraq has made them gun shy and they are therefore carrying on an intellectually dishonest game of refusing to dialogue with liberal doves over any possible causus belli regarding Iranian nukes.

Today’s liberal hawks are engaged in a slightly subtler game. The Iraq war is an acknowledged catastrophe. The same group-think and bandwagon effects that once pushed them so irresistibly towards embracing the invasion is now similarly forceful in pulling them to abandon it. The question, for many, is how to finesse that flip without losing one’s reputation for unparalleled foreign policy seriousness. The answer is Iran.

The new approach is not to refight the battle over the Iraq war, but to argue that those who got it right, or who got it wrong but eventually came to the right answer, are now in danger of overlearning the lessons of the war—and missing the danger posed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. An elegant entry into this burgeoning genre comes from Ken Baer in the latest issue of Democracy. “[A] president’s past mistakes,” writes Baer, “can so preoccupy political leaders that they lose sight of the dangers ahead or the principles they hold dear.” In the conclusion of his piece, he warns that progressives must “not use anger at one war as an excuse to blink when confronting a future threat head on.”

The liberal hawks’ exculpatory proof for their support of the Iraq war is based on what Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias termed “The Incompetence Dodge”: a focus on the war’s mismanagement and poor administration rather than on the question of whether it could have ever succeeded in the first place. The dodge enables opposition to the war’s continuation without a conceptual reevaluation of the war’s worth, which means there’s no conceptual reevaluation of preventative wars in the Middle East more generally. Now, in order to avoid turning the Iran question into just such a first-order conversation but instead use it for another round of more-serious-than-thou point-scoring, many liberal hawks are relying on a different tactic altogether: sheer vagueness.

First of all, any rational discussion of the case for going to war in Iraq must include the initial balance sheet of pluses and minuses. This, after all, is what serious people base serious decisions upon; evaluating the cost/benefit ratio of any potential actions in order to reach a reasonable conclusion about the chances for success or failure.

Put aside the knee jerk dove position that no war (save fighting off invasion of the United States) is worth fighting and indeed, is an immoral exercise in enforcing the will of the stronger over that of the weaker. May as well also closet the knee jerk neo-con argument that war is a necessary adjunct to the pursuit of American interests and that where there is any chance – Cheney’s “One Percent policy – that a nation state is a threat to the United States, that threat must be neutralized.

Both arguments are relatively simple minded and don’t really describe hawks and doves anyway. The question I am asking is prior to the invasion, was there a legitimate, defensible argument for going to war and overthrowing Saddam Hussein?

The answer is obviously yes. Doves might counter that they warned us of this dire consequence or that but the fact is, that’s Monday morning quarterbacking. The weight given to those specific probabilities prior to the invasion could have legitimately been much less for a hawk than it was for a dove. After all, there were many predictions about the war made by doves that turned out to be laughably – even incompetently – wrong. There were not 10,000 dead Americans coming home in body bags as a result of the predicted street fighting in the “Battle for Baghdad.” There were not thousands of dead Americans because Saddam used his chemical weapons. There were not millions of Iraqi refugees as a result of the fighting (what has transpired since is an entirely different matter with 750,000 internally displaced people, driven from their homes for sectarian reasons).

And there were as many as 5 different times that doves asserted as fact that Iraq was in a civil war beginning as soon as a month after Saddam’s statue fell in Baghdad. Even today, while the bloodletting on both sides of the sectarian divide is grim, Sunnis and Shias are serving in the army together as well as sitting side by side in a freely elected parliament – another dire prediction of failure by doves that never came true. There is certainly a civil war between some Sunnis and some Shias. But others are fighting to control that violence and begin the process of national reconciliation (would that they would get some help from the Iraqi government).

But does Klein have a point when he talks about “the incompetence dodge?” Is laying the blame for the current situation in Iraq on Bush or on any one of a variety of critiques that point up the perceived incompetence of the Administration or the Pentagon a legitimate reason to change one’s position and come out against the war? Again, we return to the continually evolving cost/benefit analysis for an answer. And there is now a legitimate, logical case that can be made that because of many mistakes and blunders made in the last 4 years by Bush and the military, the downside of staying in Iraq with our current force structure and mission has tipped the scales in favor of some kind of redeployment. Klein thinks that this kind of thinking doesn’t lead to “conceptualizing” the error of the hawk’s ways. I beg to differ. By constantly evaluating and re-evaluating the case for war, such analysis deepens understanding of both the original factors that animated the hawk’s initial position as well as fleshing out any change in thinking caused by changing circumstances in Iraq. The rigid kind of thinking espoused by Klein leaves no room for such flexibility.

But Klein isn’t necessarily arguing the illegitimacy of this change of heart among liberal hawks. Rather he connects “the incompetence dodge” with the lefty hawk’s vagueness on the issue of going to war with Iran as another sign of dishonesty:

The remarkable thing about the growing liberal hawk literature on Iran is its evasiveness—the unwillingness to speak in concrete terms of both the threat and proposed remedies. The liberal hawks realize they were too eager in counseling war last time, and their explicit statements in support of invasion have caused them no end of trouble since. This time, they will advocate no such thing. But nor will they eschew it. They will simply criticize those who do take a position.

Iran raises several complicated questions, but also a simple one: Do you think military force is called for in preventing Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons? Some, like me, say no. Some also, like me, do not believe the evidence supports the contention that Iran is a fully totalitarian society under the rule of a crazed and suicidal Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, and in fact think that such portrayals should be resisted and identified as part of a larger, pro-war narrative. This is how I ended up in Baer’s article as a convenient straw liberal who “excuse[s] the Iran regime, all the better to deny the very existence of a threat.”

Is Klein mistaking caution for “evasiveness?” In something of a surprise to me, Senator Obama has come out and said that the military option against Iran is not off the table. Clearly, some liberals – even those who could be called doves on the War in Iraq – can see that Iran is threatening enough that totally abandoning the military option would not be wise. And as far as I know, there are few serious advocates for military action against Iran who has made the case that Iran is “a fully totalitarian society under the rule of a crazed and suicidal Mahmoud Ahmadenijad…”

Ahmadinejad is a mystic – and a cipher. He is also, for lack of a better word, a fanatic who is using proxies throughout the Middle East to sow discord and kill innocents. And Iran’s Supreme Leader’s only check is the Assembly of Experts who can overrule him only if they can agree that his decrees run counter to the Koran. The fact that candidates for that body are chosen by The Guardian Council – half of whose membership is appointed by the Supreme Leader – means that you don’t get to run for the Experts Assembly unless you are pretty much in the Leader’s pocket.

While not a “totalitarian” government in the traditional sense, the power in the Iranian state is concentrated in very few hands. And the power of the Supreme Leader is enormous. Rival factions vie for his support and blessing, jockeying for position by trying to be more Catholic than the Pope, so to speak. And while Ahmadinejad has displeased Supreme Leader Khamenei with his over the top rhetoric at times, his anti-corruption campaign and now his cultural revolution has the Leader’s 100% backing.

None of this reveals intent. Just what does the Iranian regime intend to do with nukes if they get them. Israel doesn’t want to find out and will almost certainly attack – even if the prospects for success are slight. The Jewish state simply cannot afford to dismiss the Iranian President’s eliminationist rhetoric directed against Israel. And any Israeli attack will be seen as an attack by America by the Iranians. If that is to be the case, there would be tremendous pressure on Washington to either carry out the attack itself or assist the Israelis in their war effort. “In for a penny, in for a pound” rings true in this case. If the Iranian reaction to an attack by Israel would be the same whether we join in or not, we may as well assist the Israelis or carry out the attack ourselves to give it a better chance to succeed.

Whether Klein believes Iran is building nukes or not or whether he thinks they are a potential threat doesn’t matter in this case. There is no more important American ally in the Middle East than Israel. To abandon her at what she clearly feels is a moment of supreme danger would be a betrayal of monstrous proportions.

However, it should be pointed out that we have time to try other measures short of war. The latest news on the Iranian nuclear program is that simply put, they are stuck. They have been unable to grow their program and make the leap from the experimental enrichment of uranium to the industrial production necessary to construct a bomb. They could still be three years away from being capable of enriching enough uranium to high enough levels to build a nuclear device.

And sanctions are really beginning to bite. Beyond that, the threat of further sanctions has the Iranian economy in a tailspin that is causing great unease among the people. The recent crackdown on dissent as well as the announced return to 1979 revolutionary values is most likely a means to distract the people from what may be a faltering economy and a failure of leadership.

So liberal hawks, rather than being vague or evasive, sound to me as if they are simply exercising good judgement and remaining cautious. But Klein complains that this precludes engaging in argument and dialogue:

It is possible that some self-described progressives agree with them. If so, they should speak up, and we can have an argument. The mantra of “seriousness,” however, is disingenuous. Progressive intellectuals are not diplomats or politicians, actively in search of better positioning or a negotiating posture . Insofar as Iran is a serious foreign policy issue—and it is!—those who pride themselves on their seriousness in such matters should be honest in offering their answers. The “dovish” view is that a military campaign against Iran would be a seriously bad idea. It is a view shared by many generals, most foreign policy experts, and, according to some reports, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Liberal hawks seem to dispute that conclusion, but won’t quite say why. The danger of Iraq, it turns out, is not that too many liberals overlearned its lessons, but that too many liberals didn’t learn them at all—and instead have merely become more circumspect in their saber-rattling.

For those who object to that characterization, and whose public hawkishness is more of an affectation than a real substantive agenda, this is not a time for self-righteous posturing or rhetorical toughness; it is a time for those who do want to prevent war with Iran to, well, oppose war with Iran. That doesn’t mean supporting their nuclear ambitions, or developing a misplaced affection for an ugly regime. But it does mean speaking forthrightly about what a catastrophe a military attack would prove to be. Liberals, after all, do not control the government. George W. Bush is still the Commander in Chief. The best liberals can hope for, then, is to influence the discourse and shift the spectrum of opinion deemed “acceptable.” But they will be unable to do even that if they refuse to speak clearly.

I would say that it is not only a dovish view that military action against Iran would be a bad idea. As Klein points out, there are active duty military people who oppose an Iran strike. Unless West Point has gone soft on us, I hardly think you could make the claim that doves are the only ones resisting the call to battle the Iranians.

But Klein errs when he blames liberal hawks for proceeding more cautiously in their advocacy of military action against Iran than they did – in his mind anyway – with their support to take down Saddam. Is it really a case of sensitivity to the public perception that their “sabre rattling” got us in trouble with Iraq? Or is the case for war against Iran such a close call that it is difficult to formulate a position and stick with it?

I myself have been back and forth, hot and cold on war with Iran. The threat is real but by no means imminent – at least to the United States. But the idea that the only thing worse than attacking Iran would be Iran with nuclear weapons is still something serious people should think about carefully. I’m not sure that statement is true. Nor am I sure it isn’t. And my hesitancy is reflected, I think, by liberal hawks who are having a similarly hard time trying to evaluate the pluses and minuses. There are so many troubling elements to both the Iranian regime and the thought of attacking it that what Klein sees as a kind of disingenuousness on the part of liberal hawks is nothing more than a realization that the consequences of both action and inaction against the Iranian regime could be enormous.

It’s days like this that make blogging so much fun…

We on the right have had precious little to laugh about lately. The Republican party seems intent on going ahead with the suicidal Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that is guaranteed to comprehensively alienate the base while comprehensively leading to a Democratic sweep at the polls in November of 2008.

We were promised a comprehensive reform of the Republican party. What we didn’t realize is that it would involve shrinking its numbers and losing elections – comprehensively, of course.

And of course, the din from the netnuts over the continued non-scandal at DOJ, the Scooter Libby sentencing, and a variety of other “ethics witch hunts” as Goldstein refers to them, has contributed to the overall feeling of ennui felt by most conservative bloggers. Especially since it is clear the GOP brought much of this upon themselves due to their unmitigated arrogance. Not breaking the law and acting ethically are not mutually exclusive, although making each mini-breach of ethics into a threat to republican government is as silly as it gets.

So here we are, our “black dog” getting the better of us as Winston Churchill liked to say, when all of a sudden, a gift from heaven. Harry Reid tells liberal bloggers that retiring General Peter Pace is “incompetent” and makes similar observations about General Petreaus. This according to Politico - a publication already derided by the netnuts as part of the right wing noise machine. That may be true. I have yet to see any acknowledgement that the dozens of conspiracy theories spouted by the left have any validity on that publication. So obviously, they are right wing Rethuglican theocrats.

But did Harry Reid really say that about our generals?

Not so fast says Greg Sargent of Election Central at TPM Cafe:

The story has already sparked an uproar, and the conservatives have jumped all over it. It was linked on Drudge, and John McCain sent out a press release attacking Reid over it. And White House press secretary Tony Snow use it to hammer Reid as anti-military in today’s White House briefing. Snow brought up the Politico story himself, saying that it was “outrageous” for Reid to be “issuing slanders” toward commanders “in a time of war.”

But we’ve just spoken with three of the prominent liberal bloggers who say they were on the call, and they all say they don’t remember Reid saying anything like this. One flatly denies that he said it.

And just to set this delicious story up a little more, here’s what those “prominent liberal bloggers” told Mr. Sargent about their teleconference with Harry Reid:

We asked Joan McCarter, who blogs at DailyKos under the name McJoan and wrote about being on the call here, if she recalled Reid calling Pace “incompetent.”

“I don’t remember him saying anything like that,” she answered. “I can’t swear he didn’t say it. But I have no memory that he actually did. It’s not in my notes.”

Asked if Reid had disparaged Petraeus at all, McCarter said: “No. He said something about [Petraeus] coming back in September to deliver a report.” But on the question of whether he’d said something disparaging, McCarter said: “Not that I recall, no.”

“I don’t even recall Pace’s name specifically being mentioned,” adds Barbara Morrill, who blogs at Kos under the name BarbinMD and says she was on the call. “If it was, he did not say that he was incompetent.”

Asked if he’d criticized Petraeus, Morrill said: “Not that I recall. I checked my notes,” and there was nothing like this. “He mentioned the report that Petraeus is supposed to be coming out in September. I only recall him saying something along the lines that the Bush administration had run the war poorly. Any criticisms were against the Bush administration.”

Finally, here’s what MyDD’s Jonathan Singer, who wrote about the call here, told us: “I don’t remember him calling Pace incompetent.” He added that while he couldn’t promise that he hadn’t done it, “I just don’t recall those statements.”

There are more “I don’t recalls” above than there were at the Scooter Libby trial. And that guy was trying to remember stuff that he said 4 years ago not a couple of days like these tireless champions of truth and justice.

Case closed. After all, if you can’t trust a liberal blogger to tell you the truth, who can you trust?

And based on those denials, the netnuts went absolutely ballistic on conservative bloggers who dared quote the Politico story as if it were – well, a story. They skewered Politico reporter John Bresnahan, basically accusing him of being a liar.

Except it turns out, the story was true:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed Thursday that he told liberal bloggers last week that he thinks outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is “incompetent.”

Reid also disparaged Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of Multinational Forces in Iraq.

The netnuts, forgetting that their original triumphalism about catching conservative bloggers goosing a false story, were quick to respond that even if Harry did say it, the fact is, it’s true isn’t it?

Everyone is now going to be talking about the “context” of Reid’s remarks, which is important. He has supposedly told Pace to his face what he thinks of him. Good for Reid, that’s what any person of character should do. Senator Reid has many supporters in the military. He’s earned them and I’m sure those who support him will continue to do so.

However, it doesn’t make this event any less newsworthy. “Context” doesn’t matter to most people when you hear the quote. Reid said it. It’s confirmed. Cable news and talk radio will now be using it forever against Reid and the Democrats. In addition, when you weigh the Congress, which has a 23% approval rating, against what the American people think of the U.S. military, let’s just say Congress loses. You don’t get anywhere by calling a chairman of the Joint Chiefs “incompetent.” If you’re going to level a charge make it specific and cite the situation in which the soldier failed. Letting bin Laden go at Tora Bora comes to mind. But blanket charges just won’t get the job done.

Even my level headed lefty friend Taylor Marsh fails to mention what Reid said about General Petreaus. Evidently, our Harry has more information about what is going on in Baghdad sitting on his ass in his Washington D.C. office than General Petreaus has by virtue of him actually being in Iraq:

The Senate majority leader took aim yesterday at the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who until now has received little criticism from Capitol Hill over his statements or performance.

Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) charged that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took command in Iraq four months ago, “isn’t in touch with what’s going on in Baghdad.” He also indicated that he thinks Petraeus has not been sufficiently open in his testimony to Congress. Noting that Petraeus, who is now on his third tour of duty in Iraq, oversaw the training of Iraqi troops during his second stint there, Reid said: “He told us it was going great; as we’ve looked back, it didn’t go so well.”

Reid seemed most provoked by an article in yesterday’s edition of USA Today, which quoted the general as saying that he sees “astonishing signs of normalcy” in the Iraqi capital. “I’m talking about professional soccer leagues with real grass field stadiums, several amusement parks—big ones, markets that are very vibrant,” Petraeus told the newspaper.

Did Reid make similar criticisms of Petreaus to the netnut bloggers?

The Politico story would seem to indicate the affirmative. There is silence on the matter from those who actually were involved in the call in addition to the “non-denial” denials of Reid calling Pace incompetent.

I share some of Reid’s concern about Petreaus glossing over the violence in Iraq but at the same time, the General has a point. Baghdad is a very large city and it is more than probable that big parts of it are returning to “normalcy” as a result of the increased troop presence. So far, that increase hasn’t stopped the terrorists although it has apparently slowed down the death squads. What the surge hasn’t done, of course, is get Prime Minister Maliki to give up his imitation of a bronze statue and move his government toward meeting the political goals he agreed to with President Bush last year in Jordan.

But the real kicker in this story is what Reid told the press after admitting he referred to Pace as incompetent. “”I think we should just drop it,” the leader of the Majority Party in the United States Senate said.

Good advice. I recommend that the following should be “dropped” from discussion on the internet:

“Bush lied people died.”
“No blood for oil.”
The Administration “twisted” pre war intel on Iraq.
Dick Cheney actually runs the government, not Bush.
Diebold helped the Republicans steal the election of 2004.
Gore actually won Florida in 2000.
9/11 was an inside job.
Bush is trying to set himself up as a dictator.
America is now a theocracy – or almost there.
Conservatives are racists.
Glenn Greenwald never used sockpuppets.

I could think of a couple of dozen more, but you get the picture. Why not leave your “Harry Reid Sanctioned Dropped Memes” in the comments? It just may make you feel better today.

UPDATE

I’ll give Bryan at Hot Air the final word:

Sen. Harry Reid is a dishonest shill for the nutroots whose approval rating stands at 19%. He is the incompetent leader of a pathetic Democrat-led Senate, the approval rating of which stands at a whopping 23%. For Reid to disparage either Gen. Peter Pace or Gen. David Petraeus, both of whom have given their entire adult lives in service to their country, is a disgrace.

If Reid had any sense of honor or decency, he’d resign. Which means he’ll be in the Senate until the voters of Nevada finally tire of him, or he retires at a ripe old age.

There is a very good reason I don’t write about the war as much as I used to. Well, there are actually a couple of reasons.

First, I don’t have much of anything to say. Those of you who have stuck with me on this site know my ambivalence about the current mission; that I have absolutely no faith in the Iraqi government to validate the sacrifices our troops are making by doing the things vitally necessary to create a viable, multi-sectarian Iraqi state. The last time I looked, this is still the goal of the mission in Iraq and the government of Nouri al-Maliki is doing everything it can to help that mission fail. The Shias are in control and have no desire to share power. Thus, every single political benchmark that the Administration has laid out for the Iraqi government to achieve in order to measure success is not being met.

It remains to be seen whether Bush will make good on his promise to the American people that if the Iraqi government failed to achieve the political goals he and Maliki agreed upon in Jordan last year, he would start withdrawing the troops, leaving the Iraqi Prime Minister hanging, hoisted on his own sectarian petard.

Another reason I don’t write about the war is that the commenters on this site are broken records. They say the same things in support or opposition of our efforts time and time again regardless of what I write about. That is why comments have been disabled on this post. I’m sick of hearing for the gazillionth time that Bush is an idiot or I’m an idiot for not supporting everything our President does. Not one iota of originality seeps into the discussion. Not one.

Perhaps this is what the American people are sick of regarding the war. The same arguments made by the same people over and over again about who’s to blame, who supports to the troops, who’s a traitor, who’s an unthinking Bushbot.

Reminds me of the movie Airplane! where people start getting sick then committing suicide listening to Stryker’s hard luck story about “Macho Grande” over and over again.

I’m an enabler, of course. No matter what the news from Baghdad, my analysis remains basically the same. The surge is working in some places, not so well in others. The entire Iraqi government – the cabinet, the legislature, religious leadership – is failing to budge on oil revenue sharing, constitutional changes that have been promised, National Reconciliation, and the rest. The troops continue to perform well. There are signs of hope, signs of despair, and signs that when we leave, all hell will break loose. Iran and Syria are still meddling despite our efforts at “dialogue.” Al-Qaeda still sets off car bombs in Baghdad whenever they wish in order to maximize new coverage. And our western press continues to assist them in that endeavor.

At least this time, there is news to report. The Shia holy shrine at Samarra was bombed. On second thought, that’s not really news. It’s happened before. The same appeals for calm are coming from the same people. And the same kind of retaliation can be expected in the coming days that occurred in February of 2006.

Then there are the Democrats who, in a brazen attempt to practice a little self-fulfilling prophecy, have declared the surge a failure. This on the eve of what apparently will be a massive offensive by American troops against death squads, insurgents and al-Qaeda:

Across the main war zones, American formations bolstered by the troop increase are reaching full operational readiness for what the commanders have described as a summer offensive against Qaeda-linked insurgents and Shiite death squads. But the commanders have spoken of intelligence reports pointing to plans by Al Qaeda for a “catastrophic” attack similar to the one at Samarra last year, setting off a new round of mass sectarian killings, driving a deeper wedge between Sunnis and Shiites and thwarting American hopes for greater stability.

At least the Democrats have been consistent. They’ve done everything possible to undermine the war effort to this point. Why stop now?

The real news is contained in a 46 page report compiled by the Pentagon every quarter about violence in Iraq and political progress by the Iraqi government. It is not the slanted coverage offered by the media. It is not a report written by left wing loons or Democratic defeatists. It is written by the military itself. And it does not paint a pretty picture:

Iraqi leaders have made “little progress” on the overarching political goals that the stepped-up security operations are intended to help advance, the report said, calling reconciliation between Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni factions “a serious unfulfilled objective.” Indeed, “some analysts see a growing fragmentation of Iraq,” it said, noting that 36 percent of Iraqis believe “the Iraqi people would be better off if the country were divided into three or more separate countries.”

The 46-page report, mandated quarterly by Congress, tempers the early optimism about the new strategy voiced by senior U.S. officials. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, for instance, in March described progress in Iraq as “so far, so good.” Instead, it depicts limited gains and setbacks and states that it is too soon to judge whether the new approach is working.

Sectarian killings and attacks—which were spiraling late last year—dropped sharply from February to April, but civilian casualties rose slightly, to more than 100 a day. Despite the early drop in sectarian killings, data from the Baghdad morgue gathered by The Washington Post in May show them returning to pre-”surge” levels last month.

Suicide attacks more than doubled across Iraq—from 26 in January to 58 in April—said the report, which covers the three months from mid-February to mid-May.

Violence fell in Baghdad and Anbar province, where the bulk of the 28,700 more U.S. troops are located, but escalated elsewhere as insurgents and militias regroup in eastern and northern Iraq. In Anbar, attacks dropped by about a third, compared with the previous three months, as Sunni tribes have organized against entrenched fighters from al-Qaeda in Iraq, the report said.

Overall, however, violence “has increased in most provinces, particularly in the outlying areas of Baghdad province and Diyala and Ninewa provinces,” the report said. In Diyala’s restive capital of Baqubah, U.S. and Iraq forces “have been unable to diminish rising sectarian violence contributing to the volatile security situation,” it said.

Not very cheery news. And then there is this about our brave allies, the Iraqi military:

While most Iraqi units are performing “up to expectations,” it said, some Iraqi leaders “bypass the standard chain of command” to issue orders on sectarian grounds. It cited “significant evidence” of attacks on Sunni Arabs by the predominantly Shiite government security forces, which have contributed to the displacement of an estimated 2 million Iraqis from their homes.

Shiite militias, which have engaged in the widespread killing and sectarian removal of Sunni residents in Baghdad, now enjoy wide support in the capital, the report said. “In Baghdad, a majority of residents report that militias act in the best interests of the Iraqi people,” it said, while only 20 percent of respondents polled nationwide shared that view. Maliki’s promises to disarm militias have not produced a concrete plan, the report said.

Mass-casualty attacks on Shiite targets by Sunni insurgents, including the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, have increased Shiite wariness of reconciliation, the report said. “The Shi’a dominated government is vulnerable to pressure from large numbers of economically disadvantaged, marginalized Shi’a” who offer “street-level support” for Shiite militias.

Peachy. Our own military is basically saying that rooting out the death squads and disarming the militias, will involve going in without the support of the street level population of Baghdad. I leave it to your imagination what kind of problems that little bit of information can cause.

Al-Maliki is still frozen like a department store manikin, unwilling or unable to move forward with reforms. The Sunnis see the endgame approaching and are desperate for the Americans to stay or at least give them modern arms in order to stave off an even bigger tragedy than the one occurring now. The Kurds continue to tweak the Turks with PPK attacks across the border, making Ankara do a slow burn over both the attacks and our inability to stop them. And Shias in the south are rapidly starting to choose sides in what promises to be a fight for dominance between Iranian backed militias and equally fanatic SIIC cadres.

And we’re worried if the surge is “working?”

But this is not news. It’s been going on for at least a year and nothing we have done or are doing currently is slowing down the momentum of this bloody country careening toward disaster. Yes, things are that bad in Iraq. Our own military says it. Maybe it’s time for the President of the United States to start saying it and at the same time, tell us what he intends to do to stave off disaster.

I would say to my one note lefty friends that removing the troops is not – repeat, is not – the complete answer to this problem. Of course, if your only goal is to see the United States humiliated in order to validate your worldview and make political hay out of the ensuing tragedy then I can see why you’d support such a position.

And I would also say to my equally boring righty friends that the surge may not be a failure but it is irrelevant when placed alongside everything else that is wrong in Iraq. The time has passed for any efforts of our military to make the difference between success and failure in Iraq. The Iraqis themselves have seen to that.

I am rapidly approaching the point of supporting efforts to somehow contain the conflagration so that it doesn’t spill over and start a general Middle East war. This obviously would require a substantial redeployment of our troops. I would like to see them placed somewhere they could prevent a humanitarian catastrophe involving the Sunnis but that might not be possible. Any way you splice it – with the political will for carrying on as we have virtually gone on the Hill in both parties as well as out in the hinterlands among the American people – we better be prepared for a bloody aftermath in Iraq. And we also better get used to the idea that there’s not too much we can do to stop it.

It was a debate that almost tore the young nation apart. Where to put the Capitol city?

In 1789, Congress was charged with the difficult task of locating a Capitol city that would satisfy the concerns of the two sections, north and south. The current Capitol of New York was deemed unacceptable by most – except New Yorkers for the most part. Congress had earlier carved out some land near Trenton, New Jersey to serve as the Capitol but southerners put their foot down and refused to appropriate any monies to build anything on the site.

The Senate compromised by moving the Capitol to Philadelphia following the second session of the new Congress while the permanent Capitol would be built along the Potomac at the boundary between Virginia and Maryland. So beginning with the legislative session of 1790 until the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1800, Philadelphia served as our nation’s temporary Capitol.

President Washington, ever mindful of his place in history and enormous popularity, made the journey between New York and Philadelphia something of a whistle stop tour. Every town and hamlet he entered with his impressive carriage drawn by 2 beautiful white mares became an occasion those townfolk were not likely to forget. From miles around, everyone would turn out to see him. He made few speeches, usually some words of thanks for the host and asking people to support the new government.

What the people didn’t see was the rest of Washington’s entourage. It included several wagons of trunks and furniture. It also included the 9 slaves George Washington was bringing with him to Philadelphia.

It was never officially acknowledged that Washington brought slaves with him to the new Capitol. That’s because Philadelphia was the birthplace of the Abolitionist Society and was very touchy about the issue of slavery. Therefore, it came as no surprise that archaeologists, uncovering the remains of house where George Washington (and John Adams) lived while the Capitol was located in Philadelphia, have unearthed a secret passage used by Washington’s slaves that kept them out of sight of visitors to the Presidential mansion:

Archaeologists unearthing the remains of George Washington’s presidential home have discovered a hidden passageway used by his nine slaves, raising questions about whether the ruins should be incorporated into a new exhibit at the site.

The underground passageway is just steps from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. It was designed so Washington’s guests would not see slaves as they slipped in and out of the main house.

“As you enter the heaven of liberty, you literally have to cross the hell of slavery,” said Michael Coard, a Philadelphia attorney who leads a group that worked to have slavery recognized at the site. “That’s the contrast, that’s the contradiction, that’s the hypocrisy. But that’s also the truth.”

Coard, a local attorney, hip-hop aficionado, and activist, led a letter writing campaign to force the US Park Service to recognize a small building adjacent to the house as slave quarters for those held in bondage by our first president. The Park Service, who is in charge of the archaeological dig unearthing Washington’s house, was originally only going to put a plaque at the site, not acknowledging its role in housing Washington’s slaves. Now, there will be a memorial at the house not only acknowledging its history but also naming the 9 slaves Washington took with him to Philadelphia.

This is all well and good. It is fitting and proper to recognize the history of the site in this manner. But great care must be taken lest perspective on the heritage of the site be lost leaving only the grim reminders of what Coard calls “the hypocrisy” of that history.

I’ve always thought what truly makes America a different place – “exceptional,” if you will – is this searing dichotomy from our past; that a nation so in love with liberty would have begun its history by holding 3 million people as chattel slaves. Is it “hypocrisy” as Mr. Coard contends? Or is it more like schizophrenia, where the afflicted have only a vague awareness that something is wrong with them? How could Thomas Jefferson write something like the Declaration of Independence -a document quoted by revolutionaries down to this day in calling out tyranny and crying for liberty – while holding hundreds of human beings in bondage?

These are questions asked since the beginning of the republic and even prior to our founding. The English literary giant Samuel Johnson was heard to remark following the Stamp Act troubles in the 1760’s, “Why is it we hear the loudest yelps for freedom from the drivers of Negro slaves?” And Jefferson, perhaps seeking to assuage his own guilty conscience, tried to blame the introduction of slavery in America on the King of England in the Declaration. It was voted down by southerners who knew better than anyone that slavery was America’s sin and blame could not be foisted on any other person or country.

Even casual readers of history know most of these things. They are certainly aware of Washington’s slave owning. But to hear Coard and others talk, one would think that American history is locked away in a closet guarded by CIA agents 24 hours a day:

Archaeologists have served as guides, answering visitors’ questions. Cheryl LaRoche, a cultural heritage specialist, said she enjoys educating people about how even a prominent statesman like Washington could own slaves.

“We’ve been striving to present a balanced view of history that stands apart from what’s been taught in history books,” LaRoche said.

That’s out and out ridiculous. There isn’t a history book that’s been published in the last 50 years which fails to highlight the slave owning of the Founders. It’s the “Ive got a secret” view of history promoted largely by racialists and “cultural heritage specialists” who probably never paid attention to history in school and therefore would be shocked to learn what they are teaching today’s kids about the Founders.

But my beef isn’t necessarily with the LaRoche’s of this world. It is with those who would sacrifice the narrative power of America’s history on the altar of political correctness and multi-culturalism. Teaching that slavery was an evil, brutal institution is easy. But supplying a little perspective on what that institution meant to the south, to the north, and how it so enmeshed the country in its cultural, economic, and even religious tentacles is a real challenge.

By the time Washington moved into the house they are currently digging up in Philadelphia, slavery had well and truly trapped our country in a hellish nightmare of violence and economic necessity. Parse it any way you would like, but the fact of the matter is that when all is said and done, freeing the slaves at that time would have impoverished the south and turned loose 3 million people to find their way all by themselves.

Many, no doubt, would have stayed on to work the fields as their grandchildren did 70 years later following the Civil War. Many more would have been lost – adrift in an unfamiliar world with few marketable skills and not many friendly faces. There may be something to the idea that living in wretched poverty while free was much preferable to the security of the slave quarters. But that idea doesn’t put food in people’s bellies or give them the skills necessary to feed themselves and their families.

It took a gigantic war to free ourselves from slavery’s iron grip. To this day, that cataclysmic event shapes our politics and our history. Its influence is seen in the controversy over Washington’s house. There is talk of not including the ruins of the House in an exhibit marking the site due to the slavery issue:

The findings have created a quandary for National Park Service and city officials planning an exhibit at the house. They are now trying to decide whether to incorporate the remains into the exhibit or go forward with plans to fill in the ruins and build an abstract display about life in the house.

Making that decision will push back the building of the exhibit, which had been slated to open in 2009. But the oversight committee won’t rush into construction, said Joyce Wilkerson, the mayor’s chief of staff.

“We never thought we’d be faced with this kind of decision,” she said. “We would’ve been happy to have found a pipe! And so we don’t want to proceed blindly or say, ‘This isn’t in the plan.”’

The care being taken to decide what to do is commendable but I think misplaced. Clearly the site has great historical value and filling it in to erect an “abstract display” of some kind reeks of political correctness. Let’s tell the whole story of what went on in that house. Not just the fact that the first President owned slaves but also through the sheer force of his personality as well as his unquestioned personal integrity, George Washington created the office of the presidency and with it, the new nation he served so well. That’s the kind of history that is not being told in school books today. Without the “indispensable man,” the US experiment in self-government may very well have been stillborn. The forces of separation threatened several times over those first 8 years to tear the country asunder. It was only Washington’s steadfast support for the new constitution and his presence in the government as chief executive that kept the nation from flying apart at the seams.

Will that story also be told in these ruins? Can’t we find room to tell both vital and necessary stories about our first President. Should they include the fact that Washington’s will freed his own slaves upon the death of his wife? What other aspects of our first President’s life and his relationship with his slaves would be appropriate to highlight in order to give a complete picture of the man, the institution, and his times?

These are questions I’d like to see the City Council take up. Alas, in the political world inhabited by most, such questions would undermine the narrative story that the racialists and others would like the public to hear. Such perspective would leave people thinking that Washington was a great leader and flawed human being rather than a one dimensional slave owner and hypocrite.

This articile originally appears in The American Thinker

Peter Rodman, one of the architects of our military and political policy in Iraq and William Shawcross, liberal hawk now branded traitor by the left for his support of the Iraq War, have written what I believe to be an extremely important Op-Ed in the New York Times on why walking away in defeat from Iraq would be an unmitigated disaster:

SOME opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat. A number of them are simply predicting it, while others advocate measures that would make it more likely. Lending intellectual respectability to all this is an argument that takes a strange comfort from the outcome of the Vietnam War. The defeat of the American enterprise in Indochina, it is said, turned out not to be as bad as expected. The United States recovered, and no lasting price was paid.

We beg to differ. Many years ago, the two of us clashed sharply over the wisdom and morality of American policy in Indochina, especially in Cambodia. One of us (Mr. Shawcross) published a book, “Sideshow,” that bitterly criticized Nixon administration policy. The other (Mr. Rodman), a longtime associate of Henry Kissinger, issued a rebuttal in The American Spectator, defending American policy. Decades later, we have not changed our views. But we agreed even then that the outcome in Indochina was indeed disastrous, both in human and geopolitical terms, for the United States and the region. Today we agree equally strongly that the consequences of defeat in Iraq would be even more serious and lasting.

So true. The only problem is, there is absolutely no way forward at present that would bring what the Democrats, the world media, the Arab Street, and the America-hating left would be willing to call “victory” in Iraq. These groups have a vested interest in an American defeat – economic, political, strategic – and will proclaim our surrender (along with Osama and his crew) no matter what the military or political situation when most of our combat troops are removed, probably before the 2008 election.

It is maddening to read the pious pronouncements from the left about how desperately they wanted American to succeed in Iraq (this despite the fact that they opposed the war in the first place) all the while deliberately undermining support for the war by the American people. And by “deliberately” I mean they had a game plan, a narrative that they have pushed for the last 4 years with the stated purpose of weakening the resolve of voters so that Democrats could ride the anti-war sentiment into power.

Readers of this site know that it hasn’t been the left alone that caused this drop off in support by the American people. Our war policies have been flawed from the get go and until recently, nothing we tried seemed to stem the violence in Iraq and indeed, made it worse in some respects. But there is a huge difference between mistakes made in planning and policy and the cold, calculated effort by the left to work to crush the morale of the American people so that they could use the Iraq War to vault back into power.

But if the left is trying to convince us that their withering criticisms of the justification for the war, its subsequent prosecution, and all the ancillary issues that have arisen because of it as well as vicious personal attacks on the President were only for the purpose of improving our policies so that we could achieve victory, only little children who still believe in Santa Claus take them at their word. Therefore, one must conclude that their stated reasons for wishing an American defeat in Iraq – that we “deserve” it or that it would teach us a lesson in “humility” – are a true reflection of their beliefs and thinking.

And that kind of thinking, as Rodman/Shawcross point out, is sheer, unadulterated lunacy. It would repeat the mistakes we made in getting out of Viet Nam:

The 1975 Communist victory in Indochina led to horrors that engulfed the region. The victorious Khmer Rouge killed one to two million of their fellow Cambodians in a genocidal, ideological rampage. In Vietnam and Laos, cruel gulags and “re-education” camps enforced repression. Millions of people fled, mostly by boat, with thousands dying in the attempt.

The defeat had a lasting and significant strategic impact. Leonid Brezhnev trumpeted that the global “correlation of forces” had shifted in favor of “socialism,” and the Soviets went on a geopolitical offensive in the third world for a decade. Their invasion of Afghanistan was one result. Demoralized European leaders publicly lamented Soviet aggressiveness and American paralysis.

How does this lesson travel across the years to become relevant in Iraq:

Today, in Iraq, there should be no illusion that defeat would come at an acceptable price. George Orwell wrote that the quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. But anyone who thinks an American defeat in Iraq will bring a merciful end to this conflict is deluded. Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate. Perhaps that is why so much of the current debate seeks to ignore these consequences.

As in Indochina more than 30 years ago, millions of Iraqis today see the United States helping them defeat their murderous opponents as the only hope for their country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have committed themselves to working with us and with their democratically elected government to enable their country to rejoin the world as a peaceful, moderate state that is a partner to its neighbors instead of a threat. If we accept defeat, these Iraqis will be at terrible risk. Thousands upon thousands of them will flee, as so many Vietnamese did after 1975.

No word from the Democrats or the left on what to do with these brave Iraqis who are constantly at risk of being assassinated for helping us and their government. In their world, they don’t exist or worse, are stupid dupes fooled by us evil Americans into helping to legitimize a puppet government. And our government has shamefully denied most Iraqis visas, setting a strict limit on the number of Iraqi immigrants who can come to this country (a total of 692 so far). While security concerns are paramount, it would seem to me that Iraqis who have served American interests should have their visa applications expedited. Indeed, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has just recently put procedures in place that will do just that, allowing 7,000 more Iraqi citizens the opportunity to live in the United States.

Rodman/Shawcross conclude by pointing out the necessity for maintaining our credibility:

Osama bin Laden said, a few months after 9/11, that “when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” The United States, in his mind, is the weak horse. American defeat in Iraq would embolden the extremists in the Muslim world, demoralize and perhaps destabilize many moderate friendly governments, and accelerate the radicalization of every conflict in the Middle East.

Our conduct in Iraq is a crucial test of our credibility, especially with regard to the looming threat from revolutionary Iran. Our Arab and Israeli friends view Iraq in that wider context. They worry about our domestic debate, which had such a devastating impact on the outcome of the Vietnam War, and they want reassurance.

When government officials argued that American credibility was at stake in Indochina, critics ridiculed the notion. But when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, he and his colleagues invoked Vietnam as a reason not to take American warnings seriously. The United States cannot be strong against Iran — or anywhere — if we accept defeat in Iraq.

Already, a chorus is growing on the left that Iran is not a threat, that evidence for their aggressive intentions has been fabricated “just like the evidence that got us into Iraq.” To call that kind of myopic twaddle “suicidal” gives bridge jumpers a bad name. We may very well end up going to war with Iran – or not. But to dismiss them as a threat to the United States, our friends, and our interests is childish and stupid.

Even Barak Obama sees Iran as a serious threat and has not taken the military option off the table. Nor has Hillary Clinton or any other serious Democratic candidate for President. Only those who live in their little Bush-hating cocoons and view every action taken by the government as more evidence of the President’s deviousness can possibly believe we are “manufacturing” evidence in order to justify military action against Iran. Why bother? The Iranians have supplied us with plenty of justification without us having to manufacture anything.

We must find a way through to a satisfactory ending to our involvement in Iraq. There is no alternative. Even if the rest of the world crows about our “defeat” in Iraq when our combat troops depart, governments in the region – including Iran – will know better and base their actions on what is going on in the real world and not the desperate imaginings of fanatical jihadists, the anti-American Arab street, and bitter leftists whose desire to see America humbled has so unbalanced them that it is impossible to tell the difference between the language urging the defeat of the United States used by our enemies and the rhetoric that emanates from supposedly respectable liberal quarters in Congress and on the internet.

That too, evokes memories of Viet Nam, the last time our “humiliation” was seen as a good thing by the left.