EGLZFAN.com - Random Neural Firings

Here’s an article about the Iraq situation that I think is superbly written, and to date I don’t think I’ve read anything on this matter with which I find myself more in agreement. And it’s an interesting position to take, too. For those too lazy strapped for time to read the article, the gist of it is that the Democrats could achieve their supposed objective - ending the war - by shifting their focus from “it’s a failure, we should cut our losses now” to “we accomplished what we set out to do a long time ago, so now we can bring our troops home and celebrate our victory”. By so doing, Niskanen argues, enough Republicans could be convinced to essentially change sides. The interesting aspect of this to me is that it highlights something I find at once obvious and little-known (or at least, little-appreciated).

There is a cliche that says “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”. Putting aside the need to catch flies in the first place, the obvious-and-yet-non-obvious point is that it is hard to get someone to do what you want them to do if all you do is yell at them and publicly call them out for their failures. That kind of crap evokes at least two knee-jerk reactions - resistance, since most people never want to admit they’re wrong or have failed, and counterargument, especially if they really can’t be objectively blamed for the perceived “failure”. Think about how many of our political leaders to whom the following might apply:

1. The Republicans fucked up.
2. You are a Republican.
3. You are therefore responsible for the fuck-up.

Seems a little unfair if all you did was vote your conscience for awhile and sit back to await solutions from those you deem more knowledgeable and/or capable to provide them, doesn’t it? But everybody can get on board with the notion that “hey, we did a great thing, and we ought not let more recent, less fortunate events detract any further from the great thing that we did - and by the way, did I mention I voted for that?”

As much as I supported the decision to go to war in the first place and sincerely believe that, for all the bad press and mismanagement (real and perceived), the Bush administration’s attitude on the war comes from a good place, there can be no real dispute that the war, or more accurately its aftermath, has been severely bungled and could have been handled much better. Having said that, I also believe the Democrats almost want the political conflict with the White House that presently exists. They got control of Congress in ‘06 basically because of their political exploitation of the mistakes made in connection with Iraq, and they are continuing to make a lot of political hay out of the continuing situation. For all of the Bush administration’s faults, can any of us really dispute that they’ve been pretty upfront about the fact that any sort of outright deadline was a dealbreaker? I may not have much use for many of our politicians, but I do think most of them - or at least all of them collectively - are smart enough to come up with something that could have resolved this matter that didn’t involve a hard-and-fast deadline. But that would have possibly parked their political bandwagon, which I’m not sure they really want.

Put it this way: As a thought experiment, suppose we woke up tomorrow, turned on the TV, and saw a big news story about how all our troops were coming home because all the violence had stopped, complete with footage of the leaders of all the various warring factions signing peace accords, and people dancing and singing in the streets, etc. What do the Democrats do now? Grandstanding about global warming? Fractured debate about universal health care? Empty platitudes about a myriad of other utopian fantasies I can usually attribute to the left? They’d have to do something - I think (and and I’m not the only one) they are in a much worse position for ‘08 than most folks realize, especially since their frontrunners for President are probably unelectable. (I’ll write about that another day.)

My prediction is that the political tug-of-war will continue ad nauseam, with no real resolution. I do think we’ll ultimately see a dramatic reduction in the level of troops, but everyone should recognize we’ll always have a presence there (we still have troops in Kosovo, for crying out loud). But just for a second, it would be nice to imagine a solution to this problem that involves politicians swallowing their predatory instincts and actually appealing to their opponents’ sense of accomplishment and pride.

And maybe one day it will rain beer.