Posted by
Josh Todd on Sunday, September 09, 2007 9:23:22 PM
Having its origins in partisanship against the Bush Administration, the current crop of Iraq War opponents—which includes members of both parties—has turned a 360 in the populist mold.
During the late 2002, early 2003 debates leading up to the war, the vast majority of politicians supported some sort of interdiction in Iraq. Quickly the country started evolving into two camps. Initially, the opposition camp was comprised mostly of Democrats who, for obvious reasons of partisanship leading up to the 2004 election cycle, began to turn from President Bush in only a matter of months.
As the war progressed, the allied and American efforts were plagued by, well, war, which is always difficult and unpredictable. The war’s leadership certainly made strategic errors, and the opposition ran with them to increase their ranks. Most notable among these strategic errors was the failure of foresight on the part of the government’s intelligence agencies to see an insurgency.
When the 2004 election strategy failed to place John Kerry in the White House, the opposition mounted a counteroffensive of sorts. The assault on Fallujah was painted as a brutal American offensive. Images of Abu Ghuraib reappeared again and again. In 2005, during my tenure in the Fertile Crescent, the unit to my immediate north, 3/1 Marines, was engaged in what was to become known (in 2006) as the Haditha affair.
Each incident was described as a sign of failure. Partisanship seemed to take on a streak of vengeance. Soon, we were told that Bush lied, that American troops were terrorizing Iraqis, starting a civil war, and otherwise harming the entire situation, among other things.
(Think back on the descriptions of Abu Ghuraib and Guantanamo Bay as Saddam Hussein’s prisons reopened under US management or their equations to Soviet gulags as if US intentions were so gruesome and her soldiers so dastardly.)
This year, as sectarian violence spiraled out of control then came under control before and during the recent surge, the opposition blossomed. Now, a majority of Americans oppose the war or support a troop withdrawal of some sort. Likewise, most politicians now seek redeployment, including prominent Republicans like John Warner.
In fact, the opposition has come so far that Senator Charles Schumer said that US troops are incapable of defending Iraqis and their grand efforts in Anbar Province did nothing to soothe the violence there. Instead, it was the tribes, Schumer said, that made the “temporary peace”—he must forget that those tribes were either indifferent or outright opposed to the US presence. In 2005, the so-called mythical al Qaeda in Iraq so brutalized localities that locals would not cooperate with Iraqis or Americans, prompting major tribes to start armed forces. Likewise, my unit was part of an Anbar offensive that began in late 2005 and has probably lasted through to this day (i.e. it takes time for a surge to bear lasting fruit).
Recently, Hollywood has lobbed another volley into the mix with Brian DePalma’s film “Redacted,” which will supposedly depict a US squad that rapes a girl and murders a family.
Thus, it seems that the war that began in a wave of populist fury over four years ago has now devolved into a populist assault on the very concept of victory, so much to the point that the upcoming report General David Petraeus is being dismissed out of hand, some calling it the “Bush report,” because, apparently, the mission deserves no second thought. Sadly, the initial opposition has held out longer than the war’s original supporters. Now, the war, once popularly supported, is now unpopular and seemingly hopeless.
Somehow, a minority of opponents hung around long enough to convert about half of everyone else to its cause. Those who will lose will be the Iraqis, who face the prospect of a prolonged civil war to fill a power vacuum possibly involving Iran, and all the Americans and our allies who sacrificed blood and treasure for a greater idea. And the beneficiaries will land in power in Washington—that’s all.