Turns out Mort Kondracke said it already:
In this respect, there is a real danger that Iraq could become like Vietnam – a self-inflicted defeat. Public support for the war is down, and even conservative columnists such as David Brooks and George Will are implying that Bush’s aims are unachievable.
Just as we lost Vietnam in the newsrooms and not on the battlefield, Iraq will be quagmire or success depending on America’s attention span.
Via Matt Welch.
Ha!
So the implication is that it’s not the *war* that is failing, but only the public opinion that is making it *appear* that it’s failing ? Riiiiggghhht.
Public opinion doesn’t stop kids coming home in coffins.
We won WW II after several kids came home in coffins, Mike – nobody’s figured out how to fight a war without people dying, but some of our best scientists are working on the problem in laboratories outside Washington, DC. And while it’s not very nice that people die in war, it turns out they die without war as well, and in especially large numbers in places like Saddam’s Iraq.
But the dead people Saddam killed don’t bother you, do they?
Ha, again. my point apparently shot upwards, just north of your understanding.
you said: “Iraq will be quagmire or success depending on America’s attention span.”
my point is that Iraq will be quagmire no matter what public opinion is, or Americans attention span, as you say. It will be what it will be. Just because people don’t pay attention doesn’t mean it’s not happening, Richard.
Just like the GDP/employment announcements…anti-Bush folks can not pay attention to it, or not, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true, and that the economy is picking up. See ? It goes both ways.
I’ll re-word my point: creating new definitions of “quagmire” or “success” in describing Iraq.
While public opinion has no real relevance to the success or failure in Iraq, let me come back to the topic of public opinion…
Many Americans don’t even know why we went there, which I think is the bigger issue. Many people believe we went there for pre-empting Iraq using their WMD, not to liberate Iraqis. Instead of fighting that argument that it *wasn’t* the point of going there, why not figure out why people think that in the first place ? I mean, there has to be a reason why people think that. What do you think ? Public opinion is formed this way, and has nothing to do with whether we “win” the war in Iraq.
Some background…poll, in
“What was the most important reason for going to war with Iraq?”
-60% said “the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction,”
-19% said “the evidence that Iraq was working with the terrorist group al’Qaeda.”
-20% said the reason was “the fact that Saddam Hussein was an oppressive dictator.”
So where did 60% of them get that idea that the most important reason was WMD ? TV ? Papers ? are the only ‘smart’ ones polled the 20% that thought it was about Hussein.
Mike, I think we have to define what the word “quagmire” actually means. We were in Vietnam for 20 years, and by the end it was a quagmire. We haven’t been in Iraq for 20 months, but the media have already declared it a “quagmire”, which is just a tad premature according to any reasonable assessment.
Prior to the invasion, the Administration gave three reasons for liberating Iraq, and the rank ordering is fairly inconsequential.
Liberation was only one of the reasons…there weren’t three reasons for liberating. “Fairly inconsequential” sounds like code for “whatever…it’s not that important, even when it’s pointed out to be important with regards to public opinion”.
It’s the insistence of defining “win”, “quagmire”, and “failure” that is the problem, not the definitions themselves. Quagmire does _not_ equal Vietnam.
You didn’t argue my point about public opinion, so I assume you agree.
I think that public opinion is more important to the success or failure of the liberation than military tactics, frankly. Any undertaking of this sort is going to take a while, and if the public’s not patient, they’ll demand we pull the plug before we’re done.
Last time I did that to a computer, it killed the hard drive.