E Pluribus Unum

The Iraq Study Group is meeting with the president as I write this. Bloggers and pundits are speculating on what Baker and Hamilton will recommend. From a political standpoint they'll try to find some sort of recommendation that will not smell like "stay the course," nor "cut and run." In other words, they'll probably declare victory and call for the boys to come home.

But given what we were told we would accomplish when the we started this war, anything short of "total victory" will be judged a defeat for America. So the question then becomes: who lost Iraq? Will historians say that it was Bush and his war cabinet? Or will it be the congressional Democrats who are left holding the bag? Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid need to be giving this some serious consideration right now. Republicans and their noise machine would like nothing more to get out from under this debacle ASAP. In so doing, Republicans will underscore their contention that Democrats are weak, Democrats hate the military, Democrats stabbed the nation in the back.

Josh Manchester, in a piece called Why Intellectuals Love Defeat, says that liberals, e.g., James Carroll, believe that "the United States is deserving of defeat, and through some sort of mental gymnastics, that defeat is honorable, because it smacked of hubris to ever have fought in the first place." Manchester continues:

I contend instead that the ultimate dishonor will be to leave hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of Iraqis to violent deaths; and that this is far too large a price to pay for Mr. Carroll to feel better.

Well, never mind that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have already died and for what? For Bush to avoid the label of "loser."

There's more:

In his book The Culture of Defeat, the German scholar Wolfgang Schivelbusch described the stages of defeat through which nations pass upon losing a large war. He examined the South's loss of the Confederacy, the French loss in the Franco-Prussian War, and the German loss in World War I. He saw similar patterns in how their national cultures dealt with defeat: a "dreamland"-like state; then an awakening to the magnitude of the loss; then a call that the winning side used "unsoldierly" techniques or equipment; and next the stage of seeing the nation as being a loser in battle, but a winner in spirit...The only problem for those such as Mr. Carroll is that we have not yet lost.

Jeez -- talk about a "dreamland"-like state.

That said, I lived through the Vietnam war years (I even had a draft lottery number) and I don't recall anything along the lines described by Schivelbusch and subscribed to by Manchester. If anything it sounds more like the train of thought followed by the South after the Civil War.

Manchester, again:

Like it or not, this mentality of permanent defeat plays a large part in the Democratic Party. It is now up to President Bush and the new Democratic congressional leadership to see that it does not become dominant.

What condescending BS. Bush and the rubber-stamp Republican Congress own Iraq. Whatever has happened there so far has happened on their watch.

How to do so? A charm offensive is not quite what is necessary. Instead, perhaps a combination of sobering events that will impress upon Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid the gravity of our current situation would do the trick. Why not invite both Pelosi and Reid to the White House every morning until the new Congress is sworn in - and ask them to listen with the President to his Presidential Daily Brief, describing what Al Qaeda has cooked up of late? Or, why not invite them along with the President to one of his private sessions with the families of those who have paid the ultimate price overseas? Speaking of those overseas whose lives hang upon American policy, Pelosi and Reid could be participants in the next conference call that Bush has with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki.

Presidenting is hard!

Seriously, leave Pelosi and Reid out of it -- they have their own jobs to do. Fact is, we elected one man, George W. Bush, to be president. If he isn't up to the job, he should resign.