Posted by
ClearCommentary.com on Friday, August 01, 2008 2:57:39 PM
It's curious, that as violence in Iraq has steadily declined, and the prospects of continued troop withdrawals brighten, an entire cohort of Americans seem to be living in an alternate universe, one with an impermeable intellectual membrane. For evidence, we look to a convincing argument for denial of reality by Noel Koch, writing in the Huffington Post.
Using the bitter legacy of Vietnam as his rhetorical backdrop, Koch concludes that the loss of that war wasn't due to those who served, but rather, "It was America's misguided leadership that was the agent of those losses." Well, let's start by filling in the blank he conveniently left open--that would be Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and it was the latter's masterful bungling of the war that led to Richard Nixon's withdrawal of forces, in a war that most historians believe was winnable.
But on to the real subject of his apologia for appeasement, the war in Iraq, as he excoriates McCain for his criticism of Obama's apparent indifference about winning it:
It is inexplicable, as the war in Iraq itself is inexplicable, that Senator McCain should charge that Barack Obama "is willing to lose a war in order to win the presidency." Buried near the surface of that discreditable allegation is the insistence that America must put still more of its best at risk in order to redeem those it has already lost.
Before descending in to this twisted polemic, it's healthy to condition such liberal arguments with the fact it's rare that a liberal will admit that any war was worth fighting, some even taking issue with the American Civil War. So, given their habitual diffidence towards confronting evil, be it Joseph Stalin or Saddam Hussein, it's hardly a revelation to hear Koch tell us that continuing a war that in their view was ill-advised to begin with is the height of folly.
A corollary of the left's bell jar approach to the advances the U.S. has made in Iraq since the start of the counter-insurgency is its hearing-impaired approach to definitions of 'victory,' as Koch asserts that, a "definition of 'winning' has still to be offered by the authors of this fiasco and their supporters." There are far too many links that would refute this imbecilic statement, but suffice it to say that a stable Iraq able to defend its borders and maintain internal security has been the standing definition among officials and leaders in and out of the Bush Administration.
We've asked this perplexing question before, but it bears reiteration, and that is whether liberals believe anything is worth our blood and treasure, for instance, the 25 million Afghanis and 26 million Iraqis who now at least have the opportunity to construct a government by and for the people. Indeed, the left's professed support of democratic values notwithstanding, there seems to be clear evidence of a studied reticence to expend the effort necessary to allow it to flourish, especially when it's in admittedly inhospitable places such as Iraq.
That's why the likes of Koch lionize Obama for his adamantly obtuse determination to leave Iraq, noting with astonishing ignorance that his "fitness to be Commander-in-Chief is reaffirmed by his determination to end this folly."
Koch completes his ingeniously misguided piece with a metaphor as rich in imagery as it is contrary to common sense:
However much American blood is shed in that sour soil, it will not be sweetened sufficiently to nurture up the seeds of democracy.
Overlooking the fact that a rudimentary form of democracy has already taken root in Iraq, we must question why liberals routinely bring such unbridled pessimism to their arguments? The only logical conclusion is that, given their blinkered allegiance to defeat, the notion of victory would both define them as strategic myopics and be politically disastrous.
As the colloquialism goes, "bring it on."