Number two

There was another of those tearing-out-the-hair, slumping-in-the-chair experiences this past week. Because this one is a bit subtler, I’ll make an exception and include this one link to a relevant site, in this case Media Matters for America, because it’s a bit hard to demonstrate clearly otherwise.

Okay. On April 19, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said at a press conference after meeting with the Cacoepist-In-Chief about Iraq that “this war is lost.” He was slammed and excoriated in the usual terms (ho-hum) by the usual suspects (ho-hum). None of that was surprising; it was also not surprising that the condemnations were based on an incomplete rendering of what he actually said. As the MMFA link above properly points out, he also said “the war, at this stage, can only be won diplomatically, politically, and economically.”

All well and good and a fair criticism of the slams, a criticism echoed in other places in similar terms. So what’s my problem?

Just this: The defenses of Reid all had an undercurrent of, indeed seemed to be driven by, the desire to insist that Reid hadn’t said what he actually had.

“Oh no gasp choke,” the attitude went. “He didn’t say the war is lost, he just said we can’t win this way. In fact, he really said the war can be won! He’s for victory! And so are we! No defeatism here! No cut and run there! We can win win win! Just not Bush’s way.”

But when people talk about a war won or lost, they aren’t thinking of “a diplomatic solution” or a “political settlement,” they’re not thinking of economic reconstruction or humanitarian relief or building good will. They’re thinking in military terms. Of battles, of victories and defeats marked with casualties and blood and shattered landscapes. And that war is lost. And Harry Reid did say that. And we should not be running away from it.

In fact, a number of what would have to be considered very establishment voices agree it’s lost.

- In February, General William Odom (ret.), a former head of Army intelligence and NSA director under Reagan, said that the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq was “a declaration of defeat.”

Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result.

- In its March 22 issue, Rolling Stone reported that

[t]he war in Iraq isn't over yet, but - surge or no surge - the United States has already lost. That's the grim consensus of a panel of experts assembled by Rolling Stone to assess the future of Iraq. "Even if we had a million men to go in, it's too late now," says retired four-star Gen. Tony McPeak, who served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War. "Humpty Dumpty can't be put back together again."

- Early this month, even war criminal emeritus Henry Kissinger admitted in an interview with AP that a military victory “is not possible.”

In fact, the situation is so bad that even the optimists, ones who still spin fantasies of military victory, are pessimists. In a Washington Post article on April 8, John Hamre, described as a former deputy defense secretary, was quoted as saying “the time scale to succeed is years." And an unidentified official in Iraq said that maybe by the summer the escalation could “begin to turn the tide” but defeating the insurgency “is a five-to-10-year project, minimum.”

Kissinger, for his part, said the fighting “is likely to continue for years.” And even Optimist-in-Chief General David Petraeus, who got his job because he was willing to parrot Bush’s assurances that all was well in Iraq, told PBS's Jim Lehrer the beginning of April that “it will be months ... before we see real indicators of progress" from the escalation and more recently answered CNN’s Kyra Phillips’ softball request for a response to Reid by saying, according to her,

“It’s not that simple. I define winning as certain pockets of progress.”

The “pockets of progress” theme was then echoed in Phillips’ report by CENTCOM commander Admiral William Fallon, who told her

“It’s not that easy ... but I can tell you about areas of Iraq where they feel they are winning [sic].”

What’s most notable about this methodology is that it apparently does not involve balancing those “pockets of progress” against the jacketfuls of failures and devastation and loss. The technical term for this procedure is “desperation.”

And the public is fully aware of how badly things are going.

- In a NY Times/CBS poll in March,

[t]hree-quarters of those polled say things are going badly for the United States in Iraq, and only 23 percent say the efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq are going well.

Seventy percent, including 52 percent of Republicans, say there is not much the United States military can do to reduce the sectarian fighting in Iraq.

- A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll in mid-April reported that 69% of us say things are going badly for the US in Iraq and only 29% thought that the escalation would help in that regard. Meanwhile, a new USA Today/Gallup poll found 57% saying the Iraq war was a mistake.

- Finally, a Washington Post/ABC News poll, also from mid-April, had a number of interesting results, such as that 66% said the war in Iraq was “not worth fighting,” including 54% who felt that way “strongly.” For another, 57% have disconnected “winning in Iraq” from “success in the war on terror.” For a third, the proportion of respondents who feel “angry” about the war has increased 24 percentage points since it began and the proportion who feel “hopeful” has dropped by 29 percentage points over the same time.

But what’s most significant right now is that 53% said the US is losing the war (with another 12% volunteering the option that it’s a “tie”) and 51% say it ultimately will lose the war (with another 11% volunteering a stalemate). Only roughly a third of the public sees any chance of victory.

The war is lost! It probably never could have been won - Ah, the memories, how sweet! Remember "Mission Accomplished" and how most troops would be out by the fall of 2003? Remember “dead-enders?” And how about “last throes?” Those were the days! - but no matter what, it clearly is lost now. And people know it! And Harry Reid said it!

So why, by all that’s humanly reasonable, morally supportable, and politically rational, are we trying so hard to run away from it?

The answer is as obvious here as it was in the previous item: Rank, craven, political cowardice, cowering fear of being labeled “soft on defense” or “soft on terrorism” or just soft, period. Even when the facts on our side, we run away. Even when the public is on our side, we run away. And we run away, oddly enough, to claim we really are quite macho.

Footnote: In the comments on the MMFA item, a couple of people made the good point that we should not be referring to the Iraq “war” but to the Iraq “occupation.” Not only is that a good example of framing (because people will react differently to the two terms, with the former in some way linked to “defense” and the latter somehow to “aggression”) but also because it simply is more accurate. I intend to try to follow that advice in the future; I didn’t here because Reid used the word “war” and his quote was what prompted the reactions.

A second footnote: I was going to use the reference to “turning the tide” in the above to link to the story of King Canute - but unfortunately, all the links I found got the actual story right: Contrary to the popular notion, Canute did not order the tide to turn back in order to show his power but to demonstrate to fawning courtiers the futility of such an effort. Damn those accurate sources.