I never thought I'd hear the convoluted logic behind right-wing support for the Iraq war put as explicitly as John Hood puts it today in a post at The Corner:
[T]he best way to reduce violence in Iraq, and secure an eventual American withdrawal from a successful intervention, would be for politicians of both parties to make a clear and resolute statement about U.S. intentions. The statement would be that America will not abandon an ally as long as it is under constant, lethal attack by a foreign-back insurgency. Every time an American senator, representative, or presidential candidate suggests that we might withdraw our forces soon, the enemy is emboldened and innocent people die.
Basically, anti-war Democrats think that their statements and policy proposals are a response to an impossible situation in Iraq. They have it backward. Their statements and policy proposals are a main reason why the situation in Iraq is so dire. Like it or not, the enemy is counting on them — it is trying to manipulate American public opinion, because it can't win on the battlefield. Their goal is an ignominious American retreat. It cannot be in our interest to comply.
Normally the screeds over at The Corner--by lobbing one or many of the typical and nauseating right-wing attacks against withdrawal advocates--elide argument altogether. Unpatriotic appeasers want America to lose or some other similar crap. Normally, they leave it to us to infer that the substance of th pro-war position is that America is losing the war only because people keep saying that America is losing the war. Normally, we do this all too happily--to point out that this way of thinking is as peculiar as it is dangerous and dishonest.
But occasionally, they just come out and say it for us, and say it with enough conviction that it makes one wonder whether they know how ridiculous they sound. It's the sort of insane logical inference that brings into great clarity just how tragic it is that the right has won--at least for now--the national security rhetoric battle. I can't imagine that if a politician announced--unironically and without evidence--an official policy of not considering anything other than continued warfare so as to frustrate the enemy's will to fight, that anybody with any sense would think that person wise about foreign policy. And yet, they cloak this logic so thinly that it's appaling that the left has been so unsuccessful at upending it after so many years.
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