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Sunday, August 26, 2007
President is right to follow history in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Reduced to vetoes, a bully pulpit and rear-guard action against a Democratic Congress, the president has found new life during the dog days of August, rising to the challenge on Iraq.
His speech Wednesday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars should be required reading. For those not alarmed by the prospect of good news or enamored with the prospect of our defeat, the wartime president’s reminder of the parallels among World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the current “struggle for civilization” offered a much-needed reality check to the nation — and to Republicans gone wobbly, like Sen. John Warner of Virginia.
Just as Democrats are reshaping their own from-the-fringe message on Iraq in the face of measurable, albeit modest, improvements in the Iraqi security situation, Warner, the second-ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, rushes in to assert that the president should start bringing troops home by Christmas. That, said Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands troops south of Baghdad, would be “a giant step backward.”
Even Democrats are backtracking in the face of evidence that the surge is working. “It would be a tragic waste and lasting strategic blunder to let the hard-fought and important gains slip away, leaving chaos behind to haunt us and our allies for many years to come,” wrote Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) in Friday’s Seattle Times. Baird was among those who previously supported hasty retreat.
The plain fact is that Americans don’t want to lose and know instinctively that any premature abandonment, however couched, will be hell to pay for a generation to come. Projecting weakness and a lack of resolve is national suicide. The veterans to whom Bush spoke Wednesday know that and affirmed it by their enthusiastic response.
“Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror — but it’s the central front,” said Bush. “It’s the central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again. And it’s the central front for the United States and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating.” The veterans’ applause underscored agreement.
He was particularly effective in pointing out history’s unkindness to doubters and critics in the media and politics, many of whom, like Georgia’s esteemed U.S. Sen. Richard Russell, were considered sages of their time. Critics, he noted, insisted that democracy couldn’t succeed in Japan because their religion, Shinto, “was too fanatical and rooted in the emperor. Unless the emperor was put on trial, “any steps we may take to create democracy are doomed to failure,” he quoted Russell as saying.
“Today, in defiance of the critics and the doubters and the skeptics, Japan retains its religion (and its emperor) and cultural traditions, and stands as one of the world’s greatest societies,” said Bush.
In Korea, he said, “Republicans really never had a clear position. They could never decide whether they wanted … to withdraw … or expand the war to the Chinese mainland.” Critics carped about tactics and strategy, predicting doom.
But for the Americans’ “willingness to stick with the South Koreans after the war, millions of South Koreans would now be living under a brutal and oppressive regime” and “the Soviets and Chinese communists would have learned the lesson that aggression pays.”
The loss of will in Vietnam, a great stain on this nation’s honor, betrayed people who believed in us, leaving them abandoned with disastrous consequence for untold thousands. The same would happen in Iraq.
“In Iraq, our moral obligations and strategic interests are one,” Bush told the veterans. “More than 1,500 al-Qaida terrorists and other extremists” have been killed or captured every month this year.” The question, though, is whether politicians in Washington will pull the rug. His answer was clear: “As long as I’m commander-in-chief, we will fight to win.”
No matter how many Republicans bolt, nor how many commentators and Google-trained experts second-guess, Bush should heed the lessons of last century’s wars, all of which could have been declared lost before they were won. Democrats have invested in defeat. But that’s not what the American people want — and they’ll never knowingly embrace a party that offers it.
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