Turn Out The Lights, Dub, The Party's Over

When if's and but's are candy and nuts, Dub'll have a helluva Christmas. The boy president has exhausted the political capital of 9/11. He's not a wartime president, he's an idiot president. The writing is on the wall. The only tragedy is the loss of life among our troops in that spot of hell known as Iraq. The historical reality is that the only popular war in the U.S. was "the good war," aka WWII. Dub tried like hell to put an act as a WWII-style "war leader," but that dog won't hunt. If this is (fair & balanced) history, so be it.

Have Americans Usually Supported Their Wars?
By HNN Staff

It has seemed to come as a bit of a shock to the Bush administration that Americans are turning against the war in Iraq. Just as administration officials weren't prepared for the fierce resistance that developed to the American occupation of Iraq, neither were they prepared for a change in public opinion at home as the war dragged on. Cindy Sheehan's galvanizing protests outside the president's vacation home caught officials by surprise.

But throughout American history there has always been significant opposition to war. New England states threatened to secede from the union during the War of 1812, which severely hampered the trade carried in New England ships. The Mexican-American War was opposed by leading Whigs including Congressman Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War President Lincoln faced the opposition of the Copperheads, many of whom he had thrown in jail. The Spanish-American War triggered a robust anti-imperialist movement led by William Jennings Bryan.

In the twentieth century, as Hazel Erskine demonstrated in her widely cited 1970 article, "Was War a Mistake?" (Public Opinion Quarterly), "the American public has never been sold on the validity of any war but World War II." She noted that as of 1969--a year after the Tet Offensive and the brief invasion of the American embassy in Saigon--"in spite of the current anti-war fervor, dissent against Vietnam has not yet reached the peaks of dissatisfaction attained by either World War I or the Korean War."

Reviewing the wars of the 20th century, she noted:


In answer to quite comparable questions, in 1937 64 per cent called World War I a mistake, in 1951 62 per cent considered Korean involvement wrong, whereas in 1969 burgeoning anti-Vietnam dissent nationwide never topped 58 per cent.

Her charts demonstrated the extent of American opposition to war:

Gallup Poll — WWI 
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Gallup Poll — WWII
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Gallup Poll — Korean Conflict
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Gallup Poll — Vietnam Conflict
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Copyright © 2005 History News Network

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The Hundred Years' War Redux?

The "stay-the-course" rhetoric of the last years of the Vietnam conflict is being recycled by Dub and The Dickster. This dynamic duo is trying to keep their sinking dinghy afloat with bullshit. Senator George Aiken (R-VT) proposed an exit strategy during the late Vietnam years, "Declare victory and go home." A pox on Iraq and its miserable insurgency; their oil is not worth one more drop of blood. Prolonging this national disaster, as Dub and The Trickster rant against "cutting and running," is a war crime. Draft dodgers like Dub and The Dickster talk tough, but it's still bullshit. Representative John Murtha (D-PA) tells it like it is. If this is (fair & balanced) reality, so be it.

[x NYTimes]
Time to Leave
By Paul Krugman

Not long ago wise heads offered some advice to those of us who had argued since 2003 that the Iraq war was sold on false pretenses: give it up. The 2004 election, they said, showed that we would never convince the American people. They suggested that we stop talking about how we got into Iraq and focus instead on what to do next.

It turns out that the wise heads were wrong. A solid majority of Americans now believe that we were misled into war. And it is only now, when the public has realized the truth about the past, that serious discussions about where we are and where we're going are able to get a hearing.

Representative John Murtha's speech calling for a quick departure from Iraq was full of passion, but it was also serious and specific in a way rarely seen on the other side of the debate. President Bush and his apologists speak in vague generalities about staying the course and finishing the job. But Mr. Murtha spoke of mounting casualties and lagging recruiting, the rising frequency of insurgent attacks, stagnant oil production and lack of clean water.

Mr. Murtha - a much-decorated veteran who cares deeply about America's fighting men and women - argued that our presence in Iraq is making things worse, not better. Meanwhile, the war is destroying the military he loves. And that's why he wants us out as soon as possible.

I'd add that the war is also destroying America's moral authority. When Mr. Bush speaks of human rights, the world thinks of Abu Ghraib. (In his speech, Mr. Murtha pointed out the obvious: torture at Abu Ghraib helped fuel the insurgency.) When administration officials talk of spreading freedom, the world thinks about the reality that much of Iraq is now ruled by theocrats and their militias.

Some administration officials accused Mr. Murtha of undermining the troops and giving comfort to the enemy. But that sort of thing no longer works, now that the administration has lost the public's trust.

Instead, defenders of our current policy have had to make a substantive argument: we can't leave Iraq now, because a civil war will break out after we're gone. One is tempted to say that they should have thought about that possibility back when they were cheerleading us into this war. But the real question is this: When, exactly, would be a good time to leave Iraq?

The fact is that we're not going to stay in Iraq until we achieve victory, whatever that means in this context. At most, we'll stay until the American military can take no more.

Mr. Bush never asked the nation for the sacrifices - higher taxes, a bigger military and, possibly, a revived draft - that might have made a long-term commitment to Iraq possible. Instead, the war has been fought on borrowed money and borrowed time. And time is running out. With some military units on their third tour of duty in Iraq, the superb volunteer army that Mr. Bush inherited is in increasing danger of facing a collapse in quality and morale similar to the collapse of the officer corps in the early 1970's.

So the question isn't whether things will be ugly after American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The question, instead, is whether it makes sense to keep the war going for another year or two, which is all the time we realistically have.

Pessimists think that Iraq will fall into chaos whenever we leave. If so, we're better off leaving sooner rather than later. As a Marine officer quoted by James Fallows in the current Atlantic Monthly puts it, "We can lose in Iraq and destroy our Army, or we can just lose."

And there's a good case to be made that our departure will actually improve matters. As Mr. Murtha pointed out in his speech, the insurgency derives much of its support from the perception that it's resisting a foreign occupier. Once we're gone, the odds are that Iraqis, who don't have a tradition of religious extremism, will turn on fanatical foreigners like Zarqawi.

The only way to justify staying in Iraq is to make the case that stretching the U.S. army to its breaking point will buy time for something good to happen. I don't think you can make that case convincingly. So Mr. Murtha is right: it's time to leave.

Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Copyright © 2005 The New York Times Company

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