When you hear war fans talking about how the Iraq War was won on the battlefield but lost in the political process back home because the sissies won out and didn't have the "will" to see the war fought to victory, it's important to keep in mind who some of the critics of the results in Iraq are.
Or, as the war fans like to say, these are people who are undermining our country's will to fight and helping The Terrorists. This article, Growing GOP Dissent On Iraq CBSNews.com 04/08/04, explains that some of them are well-known Republicans, including: Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, pretentious conservative columnist George Will, Fox News hack Bill O'Reilly, and former Congressman and current rightwing commentator Joe Scarborough.
A template for the stab-in-the-back theory was provided by the Nixon Administration as they sought to prolong the Vietnam War. This sketch of Vice President Spiro Agnew (apparently written by antiwar Republican Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon) explains:
Throughout his first term, President Nixon was preoccupied with the war in Vietnam. By the fall of 1969, Nixon came to the unhappy conclusion that there would be no quick solution in Vietnam and that it would steadily become his war rather than Lyndon Johnson's. On November 3, Nixon delivered a television address to the nation in which he called for public support for the war until the Communists negotiated an honorable peace. Public reaction to the speech was generally positive, but the Nixon family was "livid with anger" over the critical commentary by various network broadcasters. Nixon feared that the "constant pounding from the media and our critics in Congress" would eventually undermine his public support. ...
[Vice President] Agnew already had some hard-hitting speeches under his belt. On October 20, 1969, at a dinner in Jackson, Mississippi, he had attacked "liberal intellectuals" for their "masochistic compulsion to destroy their country's strength." On October 30 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he called student radicals and other critics of the war "impudent snobs." On November 11 in Philadelphia he decried the "intolerant clamorand cacophony" that raged in society. Then, on November 13 in Des Moines, Iowa, he gave [vice presidential speechwriter Patrick] Buchanan's blast at the network news media.
These and other speeches made Agnew a hero to hardcore war fans and Southern segregationists. In 1973, he decided to resign his office to plead no contest on bribery charges stemming from his days as a Maryland politician.
His former speechwriter Pat Buchanan - yes, that Pat Buchanan - remembered his old boss fondly in later years:
From 1969 to 1973, no leader spoke out with greater courage about the issues of his time or what was best for America than this prophet without honor in his own country. While he lost his office in disgrace, Spiro Agnew is reviled today not so much for what he did that was wrong but for what he said that was right.
Of course, since it was Buchanan himself writing a lot of those well-known speeches, his tribute may be less than totally generous. (Not to mention the, uh, masochistic posture of bragging about being "reviled" for one's True Beliefs, a favorite theme of the radical right.)
In the comments to an earlier post, FDTate313 gives a more recent example of this genre, from a character even less inspiring than Spiro Agnew.
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