Dems and the Dark Years
“Another Vietnam” in Iraq? That doesn’t seem a winning message.
“If it wasn’t already, the war is now the dividing political issue of our time. And it’s not just Iraq. Last week brought news of a foiled terror plot that aimed to knock out a group of airliners, and murder thousands, over the North Atlantic. Yesterday brought a cease-fire in Lebanon that almost certainly will not hold. Confronting the realities of these two events will require political solutions that may have moved beyond the capabilities of our two-party system. When one of the two major political parties is no longer willing to fight the protracted, hard-fought military campaign the nation desperately needs to win, whether to wage that war in a serious way will come to define the nation’s elections.
If Republicans have turned a corner in the past week, it’s likely because, although wars are often unpopular in America, losing a war is rarely a winner at the ballot box. It is here that the Vietnam experience may prove to be pivotal. After more than a decade of a hard-fought (if often restrained or ill thought out) military campaign, the America withdrew from Vietnam to watch it collapse under communist control. Many Democrats seem untroubled by this history. But few of the nonpartisans alive then or who grew up in the political aftermath of that withdrawal can be happy with the results: insurgent communist forces abroad and economic malaise and a loss of national confidence at home.”
Read the full editorial by Brendan Miniter in today’s WSJ.