Some hawkish types are already making up blustering excuses for the possibility of a fiasco in the Iraq War.
I know I just linked to Josh Marshall, but he's pursuing an important observation on the emergence already of a rightwing "stab-in-the-back" theory that explains failure in Iraq as a loss of nerve by weak-kneed civilian wimps back home. Donald Rumsfelds's comment in Ireland that critics of the war are helping them terrorists has gotten a lot of publicity.
But I've noticed signs of this prior to now. On the cruder side, country singer and rightwing pamphleteer CHARLIE DANIELS tried out the idea in one of his Soapbox rants last month:
If you listen to the mainstream press these days you are inundated with stories which make it sound as if our troops in Iraq are ready to mutiny to get out of there and come home.
Now, Chuckie didn't cite any sources for this. But he goes on, relying on an alleged letter from an unidentified American soldier in Iraq, to explain how our fightin' men can win this thang as long as them there media "pukes" don't give everybody the wrong impression about the war.
He concludes, "It seems that we are being told what the media wants us to know and not what is actually happening." Presumably, Chuckie isn't referring to Fox News or the Washington Times in saying that.
A more highbrow version appeared in the Los Angeles Times from Max Boot:
As long as we keep our nerve, we will prevail. As in Vietnam, so in Iraq: Only defeatism on the home front can stop our soldiers.
One thing to watch with those making this argument is what they are willing to support in actual policies. Are they willing to put 50,000 more American soldiers in Iraq? 100,000 more? Did they support Bush's proposals this summer to cut our soldiers' combat pay and death benefits? Or are they just getting pseudo-patriotic excuses ready if the war they cheered keeps going badly?
- Bruce Miller
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