Losing The War.

Christopher Hitchens' latest on Iraq goes into much of the same territory I have been tying to get at:

How can so many people watch this as if they were spectators, handicapping and rating the successes and failures from some imagined position of neutrality? Do they suppose that a defeat in Iraq would be a defeat only for the Bush administration? The United States is awash in human rights groups, feminist organizations, ecological foundations, and committees for the rights of minorities. How come there is not a huge voluntary effort to help and to publicize the efforts to find the hundreds of thousands of "missing" Iraqis, to support Iraqi women's battle against fundamentalists, to assist in the recuperation of the marsh Arab wetlands, and to underwrite the struggle of the Kurds, the largest stateless people in the Middle East? Is Abu Ghraib really the only subject that interests our humanitarians?

I fully understand Hitchens' disgust and impulse to indict all the rights groups and peace advocates; in fact, I have engaged in just the same thing from time to time.

And Hitchens is right when he names the left as being absent in the defense of the Iraqi people:

Isn't there a single drop of solidarity and compassion left over for the people of Iraq, after three decades of tyranny, war, and sanctions and now an assault from the vilest movement on the face of the planet? Unless someone gives me a persuasive reason to think otherwise, my provisional conclusion is that the human rights and charitable "communities" have taken a pass on Iraq for political reasons that are not very creditable. And so we watch with detached curiosity, from dry land, to see whether the Iraqis will sink or swim. For shame.

Indeed, where is the liberal counterpart to Spirit of America? And on the right, why is Spirit of America alone in its work? We are, generally, watching this war from afar, either ignoring all the good news coming out of Iraq or damning anyone who has questions about the conduct and wisdom of war.

It is assumed that because I support the Iraq war that I must believe only the good news. In fact, it is because I support the war that I want to know when things are going south. I am not so naive to believe everything that comes from the administration but I am also not so cynical to discount each step forward as a White House orchestrated charade.

Even if I had been against the war, I don't imagine that I would now be wishing for our defeat in it and certainly wouldn't be couching my opposition in "support the troops" semantics.

Hitchens is correct. Losing Iraq would be a greater defeat for the nation--and for all free nations--than just a ignominious failure for Bush. Support it or oppose it, this war must not be lost.

Comments

[Jack]

I was against the war.

And...

Last year, I participated in one of the Spirit of America fundraising campaigns at my weblog.

The wackos on the far-left are about as rational as the wackos on the far-right, so I wouldn't be expecting logical behavior from either set of wackos any time soon.

Unfortunately, the wackos are the ones who shout the loudest and get the attention.

[Daniel]

That's why I read your blog, Jack. The more the non-wackos speak up the better off we will be. Maybe the center is the center because (I'm being self-serving, here)that's where those more willing to hear and possibly be persuaded by other arguments are.

Of course, changing one's mind is now seen as being adrift or worse, dishonest.