Your Crusade Is Just a Losing Fight

Michael Swartz replies to my post mocking his grasp of foreign policy. Sadly, there is not much of a learning curve. Of the various polls I cited showing widespread public disapproval of the war in Iraq, Michael writes:

All this tells me is that the constant beatdown by the partisan media has borne fruit and turned Americans against the War on Terror. As I noted before, back on September 12, 2001 we couldn’t wait to turn our guns on whoever knocked over the Twin Towers. But Americans now seem to be cursed with a short attention span and the enemy is smart enough to see how the steady drumbeat of criticism is yielding results much as the antiwar slant in the media eventually doomed South Viet Nam to a Communist takeover.

Or, call me crazy, maybe the American people have grown weary of an increasingly violent conflict that has killed and maimed so many Americans, and has no clear mission or any tangible relationship to the national interest. Everyone was for going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere; after all, they were the ones who attacked us. What invading Iraq had to do with that, however, was always rather shadowy, and the Bush adminstration had to lie, deceive, and bully the American people into going along. How many people were called traitors and appeasers for having the temerity to think going to war with Iraq was a bad idea, especially since we hadn't even caught Osama bin Laden yet? Then when the war came, it turned into an occupation that has dragged on and on and on, managed in perhaps the most incompetent manner possible by this administration, which intends to drag this war on and on interminably in the same incompetent manner. You can see why so many Americans have become angry at this President.

So it's rather appalling that Swartz attributes this change of sentiment to the "partisan media," as if Americans couldn't make up their own minds about Iraq. As if the mounting casualties and sectarian violence have all been just the inventions of editors in a newsroom. Swartz and the other dead-enders in the Republican Party may not be willing to admit it, but the American people are done with this war. And no, that doesn't mean doing nothing, as Swartz alleges. It mean stopping an insane policy that has made this country less safe, and trying something that works. Withdrawing our troops from Iraq is just a start.

Tags: iraq middle east conservatives