While we and the rest of the world digest the micro and the macro environment, the rapidly-approaching election is driving the discussion in interesting directions. For example, if Iraq is killing the GOP in the polls (which apparently bothers them far more than the Iraq death toll ever did), what should they (and we) do about Iraq? It's helpful to sample the discussion in Right Blogistan to see where things stand. The interesting thing is finding agreement but watching the ideologues squirm, trying to justify doing the right thing but for reasons that (by definition) cannot be allowed to agree with ours. Why bother? Because sometimes interesting ideas may pop out. Of course, sometimes, like in the case of
Jonah Goldberg, it's simply a pleasure to see him try to justify his position and fail.
We know now that invading Iraq was the wrong decision, but that doesn't vindicate the antiwar crowd.
We now know that myriad criticisms of the Bush Administration by the left were totally accurate and proven correct (which, by the way, makes conservatives completely incorrect in virtually every assessment of Iraq from the get-go). But as many on the left have observed, conservatives think they own the word "right" and only they can use it. The Left cannot be permitted to be right, only the Right can be right (or some such nonsense).
But that's no excuse. Truth is truth. And the Iraq war was a mistake by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003. I do think that Congress (including Democrats Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller and John Murtha) was right to vote for the war given what was known -- or what was believed to have been known -- in 2003. And the claims from Democrats who voted for the war that they were lied to strikes me as nothing more than cowardly buck-passing.
He'll find some agreement there, but I wonder if that's just thrown in to get us to finish the article. That's not really Goldberg's point, anyway. If there were no WMDs and if Iraq were not invaded to build democracy at the barrel of a gun, still it's the central front in the war on terror now.
According to the goofy parameters of the current debate, I'm now supposed to call for withdrawing from Iraq. If it was a mistake to go in, we should get out, some argue. But this is unpersuasive. A doctor will warn that if you see a man stabbed in the chest, you shouldn't rush to pull the knife out. We are in Iraq for good reasons and for reasons that were well-intentioned but wrong. But we are there.
Those who say that it's not the central front in the war on terror are in a worse state of denial than they think Bush is in. Of course it's the central front in the war on terror. That it has become so is a valid criticism of Bush, but it's also strong reason for seeing our Iraqi intervention through. If we pull out precipitously, jihadism will open a franchise in Iraq and gain steam around the world, and the U.S. will be weakened.
Never mind the fact that conservatives have lost this argument with the public, specifically polled by
Boettcher and CobbThe survey reveals that opposition to the war is tied to perceptions of the current U.S. goal in Iraq. Only 25 percent of respondents view Iraq as "the central front in the war against terrorism." Indeed, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's framing of Iraq - that the United States is "promoting democracy in Iraq and the Middle East" - is almost as widely held at 24 percent.
Even more troubling for the administration is the fact that 30 percent (a plurality) of respondents indicated that the United States is in Iraq to "ensure access to oil," while an additional 15 percent of respondents volunteered their own explanation, usually tied to administration "incompetence" or "greed.
"How to get out" has become the proper point of discussion on all sides; no matter how
churlish it's acknowledged, conservatives have lost with the public. Goldberg's solution is an interesting one: let the Iraqis vote us out. Well, I'll say this. No idea on how to get out should be dismissed, even when presented by someone as thoroughly wrong about Iraq as Jonah. As they say about the lottery, hey, you never know. If conservatives come up with a reasonable exit strategy that makes a dollop of sense, or if we do and they agree, we need to go for it (and argue who thought of it first at a later date). Don't worry about them losing the argument.
They already have.