Andrew Sullivan: What I Got Wrong About the War

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by davinxtk

Ouch, Kev. Have you really imbibed and digested their victim complex? Nobody wants to turn this into Bush's quagmire any more than they wanted that many Americans and Iraqis thrust into questionably motivated combat. This isn't some idiot running up on a pack of pigs and calling them ducks: this looks like a duck, smells like a duck, and literally hangs out in the general territory of endless duck wars.

I agree at this point that withdrawing our forces entirely would, at the very best, sacrifice everything we've already accomplished and at worst create possibly the most dangerous and volatile power vaccuum the Middle East has ever seen. I don't, however, think that commentary on the war is motivated by a desire for Bush to fail.

His failure is evident. Wanting it so would be pointless.

Of course not all criticism of the war is intended to deceive people into believing it is a lost cause based in evil intention, but it's pretty silly to say that none of it is. To some degree it is a lost cause, as it's pretty obvious at this point that even the greatest of success in Iraq... results beyond any neo-con hawk's wet dreams... will not have the same effect on the radical Muslim world as the fall of the Iron Curtain had on global Communism. This is just not an end-game scenario in the WOT, and we all know that. It's also readily apparent that there are other motivations to fighting this war beyond bringing freedom to an oppressed people. Our foreign policy is based entirely in self-interest. If you want to call that evil, I suppose you can.

This war has been completely politicized at this point. That is an indisputable fact, and I'm not one to say that about many things. What does that mean, then? That which hurts the Republicans helps Democrats, and since the Republicans have bet the farm on war, the Democrats would benefit greatly from that war going badly.

As Kevin has intimated, though: There is another way. The GOP has taken an offensive position. Were the Dems to offer an alternative... a defensive position... they might have a chance. Have they done that? The answer is a definitive NO.