WFB: Iraq is the GOP's Vietnam

Buckley is right about the idiocy of the Iraq War, and it would be nice if more "conservatives" paid attention to him (and to Buchanan). But he's only partly right about the Vietnam analogy. Politically, this war has some obvious parallels with Vietnam: It's broadly unpopular because it's dragged on forever and there is prospect of real victory. The only argument for continuing it is that things would be much worse if we left.
Opposition to the Iraq War, however, is nowhere near as deep or widespread as opposition to Vietnam was. With Vietnam, we had a draft, and the U.S. casualty rate was exponentially higher. Vietnam triggered major social upheaval. By contrast, most Americans who don't have a loved one in Iraq sadly are tuning the whole thing out. The other problem with Bush/LBJ analogy: Even though Democrats launched the Vietnam War, what destroyed their party's national majority wasn't the war itself. It was the perception that Democrats became anti-military, soft on national security, and sometimes even anti-American as a result of their uncritical embrace of the Vietnam War protest movement after LBJ left office. The Party thereby managed to lose both of its two largest core demographic groups: White Southerners and Catholics. Hard to imagine the GOP pulling off that kind of ju-jitsu act.

Hmmm, well between this and Dan Savage I almost thought I was reading a conservative blog...silly me....

There will be those who call him Senile, but it won't change reality. We have a conservative movement that died years ago. The pseudo-intellectualism passing off now a days on the Right isn't much more than free-market political opportunism for short-term accomplishments at best. Traditional Americans of all stripes need to go back to square one to start crafting a real roadmap, but not before we stop drinking our own coolade and pretending like an ostrich that globally many intellectuals haven t concluded that both Liberalism and Conservatism are failed social ideologies and are seeking their replacements. Here's to hoping a real honest debate can get started or we'll spend the first half of the 21st century just watching the social order whether local, national or globally falling apart and cannibalized by different forms of tribalism. Salaam (peace),

Simon: The other problem with Bush/LBJ analogy: Even though Democrats launched the Vietnam War, what destroyed their party's national majority wasn't the war itself. It was the perception that Democrats became anti-military, soft on national security, and sometimes even anti-American as a result of their uncritical embrace of the Vietnam War protest movement after LBJ left office. The Party thereby managed to lose both of its two largest core demographic groups: White Southerners and Catholics. Wouldn't you say, Simon, that the 1972 Democratic convention, which gave the party over lock, stock and barrel to the cultural left, was at least as much to blame, and probably more? I don't think Buckley's analogy has to be exact in very respect to hold. If he means Iraq is the GOP's Vietnam because it's the shoal upon which the astonishingly cohesive movement is foundering, I think that's probably accurate. Of course it's not the only thing -- the fiscal conservatives are mad over the spending under Bush and the GOP Congress, for example. Victory in Iraq would have papered over a lot of serious differences; the failure in Iraq has exposed them.

An America that brings to its modern enemies the full firepower we brought against Germany and Japan will not send the message that we can be driven from the fight with the drip-drip-drip of car bombs and IED's. Bubba, do you have a clue what we actually did to Germany and Japan? We didn't beat those countries because of our scary air power or brilliant tank manuevers. We beat them by killing a few million people. They were willing to endure occupation and enforced reform because we killed so many of them that they wouldn't continue the fight. Is that what we should do now? Don't get me wrong, I'm a "kill your enemies" sort of guy. But slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people to send a message is senselessly brutal, especially considering that we are talking about a country that was and is no threat to us.

Rich, I hardly need history lessons from someone who believes that Saddam's Iraq was no threat to us at all. I don't believe the all-out war that we saw sixty years ago is necessary in Iraq, but I do believe that we have not demonstrated the will to win in Iraq, and that is inviting the terrorism we're experiencing there: we should probably act more decisively -- and it looks like we're doing just that with the surge -- and we should understand that our goals in Iraq cannot be achieved instantaneously.

Wouldn't you say, Simon, that the 1972 Democratic convention, which gave the party over lock, stock and barrel to the cultural left, was at least as much to blame, and probably more? I don't think Buckley's analogy has to be exact in very respect to hold. If he means Iraq is the GOP's Vietnam because it's the shoal upon which the astonishingly cohesive movement is foundering, I think that's probably accurate. I agree with you, Rod. But the same 1972 Dem convention that marked the triumph of the cultural Left also marked the triumph of the anti-War movement within the party. It's all of a piece. Buckley is certainly right that Iraq will be an albatross for the GOP, and that it exposes divisions on the right. I doubt, though, that once Iraq is over and done with it will anything like the kind of long term disastrous effects on Republicans that the Anti-War/Cultural Left did on Democrats. The next President (of either party) will ease us out of Iraq -- hopefully without a total loss of national prestige, as occurred after the appalling congressional cut-off of aid to Indochina in 1973.
Future Republican Presidents will not share the current incumbent's enthusiasm for elective wars, and that will take the issue off the table. Had the Democrats responded to Vietnam that way in the 1970s (Humphrey/Scoop Jacksonism instead of McGovernism), they would still be the natural majority party today.

We didn't win over Germans by coopting Nazis, nor did we win over Japan by making nice with the militarists.Reminder about the Great Good War-before you even begin to discuss the atom bomb, we firebombed the daylights out of Tokyo, Dresden and Berlin. There was nothing PC about it.
The message wes sent with our half measures and PC stupidity is that we aren't serious. Letting Sadr and his minions run around after Fallujah was the turning point. His head should have instead been on a stick. Blow him up in the pulpit during Firday prayers, and you get people's attention. As with all the Islamofascist leaders, they preach suicide, but don't practice it. Despite their bleating such martyrdom would be much less attractive if we killed these leaders who so advocate it, and did so very publicly. Again, if Bush wasn't prepared to FIGHT there wasn't a point to this invasion.

Despite their bleating such martyrdom would be much less attractive if we killed these leaders who so advocate it, and did so very publicly. Bugg: I don't think killing the leaders would be nearly enough. Leaders are easily replaced. You'd have to kill enough of the population, specifically military age males, to make them sick of war.

Wonder how Buckley feels about his old magazine? I do remember an article he wrote not long after the war started. He was lukewarm but he did support Bush. I doubt it will happen but I hope the surge somehow works and we can get out of there without leaving the place in complete chaos.

Where was the threat? It's been almost four years since the invasion. We've had plenty of time to find evidence. What proof can you offer that Iraq was a threat to the U.S. or to U.S. interests? Rich, it's clear that Saddam continued to have a program to develop WMD's despite the terms of the cease-fire to the Gulf War: that that program was not as far along as we feared (or even as far along as Saddam probably figured: would you want to be the scientist to give him the bad news) is a blessing that does not take away either from the fact that Saddam was doing what he could to obtain WMD's or the fact that he had a history of agression and deception and collaboration with terrorists.

Interesting that the Democrats' Vietnam, is still being fought by dope-smoking, sandal wearing, sexual hedonists that want nothing to interupt their public orgies. Now of course being planned at Starbucks instead of "cafes." They aren't called "Hippies" any longer. No, they have "moved on" to be known now as "Progressives." But behaviors don't change easily. Still harping for peace and free love in America, while not lifting a finger to stop evil genocidal murderers in anywhere in the world, the progress made by Progressives, is just a better condom and slicker abortion ads and relabeling communism taxes to help the poor. Who, by the way, are worse off in Liberal cities now more than ever. If it wasn't for the Liberal-Progressive Indoctrination Camps (LPIC) - now uncovered on Colleges and Universities as being run full force - there would be no new crop of young people to be debauched into joining the hysterical marches for peace, when peace is anything but the goal acheived. How many millions of people had to die for the hippies of the sixties to get a good night's sleep? Google Pol Pot and see. How many millions and millions of people have died around the world from Islamic terrorism while the new peace activist marches in apathetic lock step in major cities in the Western world? (The new world bobbleheads of decadence look eerily the same as yesteryears hippy-hedonist.) We'll never know the true numbers because "peace activists" do not leave the comfort of their own cities to help those being murdered for real in other countries.
No, that mission is undertaken by those on the right to attempt.
The new hippies (called Progressives today) are doing for those being murdered worldwide, what the old hippies did in the sixties.
Nothing.
Well, except blaiming the murders on the wrong people. As usual.

Bubba, Do you favor pre-emptively attacking North Korea and Iran? We KNOW they are FAR more capable than Iraq of attacking our interests, etc. How much money and how many lives are you willing to sacrifice?

Bubba, This is what Cheney said in 1996: ... the idea of going into Baghdad, for example, or trying to topple the regime wasn't anything I was enthusiastic about. I felt there was a real danger here that you would get bogged down in a long drawn-out conflict, that this was a dangerous, difficult part of the world; if you recall we were all worried about the possibility of Iraq coming apart, the Iranians restarting the conflict that they'd had in the eight-year bloody war with the Iranians and the Iraqis over eastern Iraq. We had concerns about the Kurds in the north, the Turks get very nervous every time we start to talk about an independent Kurdistan...Now you can say, well, you should have gone to Baghdad and gotten Saddam. I don't think so. I think if we had done that we would have been bogged down there for a very long period of time with the real possibility we might not have succeeded.
[I]f Saddam wasn't there, his successor probably wouldn't be notably friendlier to the United States than he is. I also look at that part of the world as of vital interest to the United States; for the next hundred years it's going to be the world's supply of oil. We've got a lot of friends in the region. We're always going to have to be involved there. Maybe it's part of our national character, you know, we like to have these problems nice and neatly wrapped up, put a ribbon around it. You deploy a force, you win the war, and the problem goes away, and it doesn't work that way in the Middle East; it never has and isn't likely to in my lifetime.
It nicely sums up my feelings prior to the current war. And, I think I've be proven correct.

Eventual confrontation? Any evidence of that?

(And you still didn't answer my question, though I've already answered three of yours.)

That doesn't answer what we should have done instead: contain Iraq into perpetuity, while some of our so-called allies undermined that containment by abusing the oil-for-food program, and while Saddam continued to seek to upgrade his status as a threat? You clearly seem to think I'm wrong for the positions I take, but the positions you take seem to be deliberately vague.