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Mr. Bush’s War

I don’t know whether Scarborough meant the last part rhetorically, but regardless he has picked up and extended a critical meme of modern liberal thinking – it’s President Bush’s war.  This couldn’t be more wrong, both factually and morally.  Regardless who started it and how it began, it is now an American war. ~Dean Barnett Of […]

I don’t know whether Scarborough meant the last part rhetorically, but regardless he has picked up and extended a critical meme of modern liberal thinking – it’s President Bush’s war.  This couldn’t be more wrong, both factually and morally.  Regardless who started it and how it began, it is now an American war. ~Dean Barnett

Of course, it is Mr. Bush’s war.  He launched it arbitrarily and illegally.  He perpetuates it every day that it goes on.  He can end it any time he wishes, and he does not.  He received a meaningless resolution that “authorised” him to start a war and violate the Constitution, but the resolution actually authorised nothing.  It was simply a capitulation, a symbol of Congressional weakness and timidity, an abdication of the duties of the legislative branch.  He who would govern as an autocrat must accept the responsibility for what he unleashes upon the world.  It is Mr. Bush’s War, and in the last analysis it belongs to him more than to any other.  This is why “the people” do not have an obligation to continue this war, and why we are not bound by the promises of an arbitrary executive.  There was no real consultation with and consent of the people in the beginning, and there never has been.  The people do not accept responsibility for Mr. Bush’s War, no matter what twaddle Gov. Huckabee may offer on its behalf.    

Barnett refers to this Joe Scarborough post.  Like Scarborough, I think MoveOn.org was phenomenally stupid to run the Petraeus ad.  Worst of all, the attack ad is irrelevant.  MoveOn targeted Petraeus for criticism because it saw him as a threat, but his testimony changed absolutely nothing in public opinion.  As antiwar conservatives have come to expect from this sort, they shot themselves in the foot for no reason. 

Rather than thinking in terms of smart political strategy, MoveOn went for the viscerally satisfying put-down typical of the left-wing netroots set.  They are, of course, an embarrassment to opponents of the war, and above all they are a joke, which is what you would have to expect from an organisation that was founded on the principle that Bill Clinton was a good President. 

I have yet to understand the thinking of progressives who want to fight their political foes on such unfavourable ground.  The clever line of attack would have been to stress Petraeus’ relative successes while emphasising how futile and impossible the overall mission still was.  Didn’t these fools learn the basic rules of American politics: whatever you do, hands off the military, which you shall not criticise in any substantial way.  It doesn’t matter right now whether this is a desirable state of affairs (it would horrify the Founders)–it is the political reality that we have.  Publicly criticising a combatant commander is political suicide.  Small children know this.  The brain-damaged know this.  Dogs know this.  MoveOn apparently does not.  

It is, of course, tempting to accuse domestic supporters of the war of the same things they routinely accuse us of doing: treason, subversion and all manner of villainy.  It is very tempting sometimes.  You have no idea.  It is tempting to come up with arguments why they deserve those accusations, but it is wrong.  Many of them may espouse loyalty to an abstraction and a myth, but I think they are not willfully disloyal to their country.  They are dishonourable enough to accuse many others of disloyalty, but that is something else.  Accusing other people of treason over political differences is the act of an ideologue, a commissar, the very sort of person who has promoted this war and backed this administration to the hilt. 

Even so, leveling such accusations at military personnel is utterly and in all ways foolish and misguided.  First of all, it is almost certainly false, it is a show of disrespect to men who are in almost every case trying to carry out an impossible task assigned them by their civilian masters, and it is politically buffoonish.  Tragically, it helps the administration’s apologists and the supporters of prolonging the Iraq war.  With friends like MoveOn.org, the antiwar movement needs no foes.

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