Bush Prepares the Domestic Battlefield

We’ve said here repeatedly that the one thing that the Bush administration needs to do on Iraq is hand it to the Democrats in January 2009.  The only mistake he can make is to get the US out of Iraq before then.  Because if he does that then he gives the Democrats a generational sound-bite.  “Bush Lost Iraq.” 

But with the qualified success of the “surge” and the inability of the Democrats to demand an immediate withdrawal, Bush has achieved his strategic objective.  American troops will remain in strength in Iraq in January 2009.  Immediately after Gen. Petraeus made his report to Congress, President Bush announced a minor troop withdrawal, report Jon Ward and Sara A. Carter.

The president’s troop reduction, which will be announced in a nationally televised speech at 9 p.m. tomorrow, will be a few thousand less than the 30,000 advised by Gen. Petraeus, a White House official told The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity.

There will be some draw down, but not much.

This puts the Democrats just where the president wants them.  The party is suspended between an Angry Left that just doesn’t believe in using the power of the US armed forces for anything except rooting racists out of the South and the mainstream of America that believes the president should “make us safe.” 

And the war on terror, or World War IV, or whatever, goes on.

Could Bush Have Brought Dems Aboard?

Six years after 9/11 Jonah Goldberg reminds us that if he had written on 9/12 that six years later a Democratic presidential candidate would be “ridiculing the idea of the war on terror as a bumper sticker” or that “a third of Democrats would be telling pollsters that Bush knew in advance about 9/11” they would have called him mad.

But, Goldberg writes, George Bush must take some of the blame for the Democrats’ checking out of the war on terror. 

Bush lacked the political imagination to keep the Democrats within the tent.

This might sound unfair, but if George Bush had been a better president, John Edwards would never have dreamed of calling the war on terror nothing but a bumper sticker... That is not a sign that President Bush has adequately led the country or prepared it for the struggles ahead.

But has any president ever united the country for a great struggle unless the danger was up close and personal?  Isolationists were active right up to the day of Pearl Harbor, and Democrats checked out of the Cold War half way through. 

The fact is that the Democrats are on board in practice.  The Democratic candidates are playing to the Angry Left right now but they know that the American people expect them to deal with terrorism.  But they are afraid to actually implement a withdrawal from Iraq, at least in a way that advertises their responsibility.

The only way that the Democratic base will come inside the tent is through an utter collapse and discrediting of their secular religion.  But the whole point about a religion is that it is a closed system.  It is a program for living that is based on faith and not upon empirical verification. (And that goes for Richard Dawkins too).

The best way to bring the Democrats inside the tent is to give them the presidency.  Then we’ll find that the only problem Democrats had with the war on terror was that President Bush was in charge.

Americans Get the Big Picture

Today as Gen. Petraeus reports to Congress on the limited results of the “surge”—that it is reducing insurgent activity but not solving the political situation in Iraq, it is helpful to look at the big picture, as Michael Barone does.

He notes that independents join with Democrats in blaming President Bush for the conduct of the war in Iraq.

And he notes that independents side with Republicans in agreeing that the threat from Islamic fundamentalists will not go down once President Bush leaves office.

But you don’t see such a partisan division when the question is whether the next generation of Americans will be less safe from foreign threats than we are now. Americans agree by a 57 percent to 39 percent margin — the margin of agreement is statistically identical among Republicans (17 percent), independents (19 percent) and Democrats (18 percent).

So the American people understand that this is a long war.  But they are also frustrated by the lack of progress in Iraq.

You could argue that the real strategic purpose of the “surge” is to make sure that the Democrats get handed the Iraq hot potato in January 2009. 

What they’d like is to force Bush out of Iraq before 2009 so that they could say that Bush lost Iraq.

What Republicans want is for Democrats to put up or shut up.  And that will only happen when a Democrat is in the White House.

Then we’ll know what they really mean to do about the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism.  And that will be good for all Americans.

Being Unserious about Don Rumsfeld

If you were given the opportunity to interview former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, what would you want to ask him?  Something like this, I would think:

• What have we achieved in the last six years?
• What is the nature of the Islamist enemy?
• How do you think the US national security establishment should approach the future?
• How do you think the US military is adjusting to the reforms you put in place?
• How would you address the American people about what to expect in the future?

But that’s not what Lisa DePaulo asks Don Rumsfeld in a lengthy profile in GQ magazine.  She’s interested in the snarky stuff: “75-year-old package of waning testosterone,” “rudely banished from the kingdom,” how he sleeps at night, and so on.

Of course, Rumsfeld doesn’t really want to discuss policy in the interview. He can’t, since anything he says will be taken and used in evidence against the Bush administration.

So all we get is snarky liberal atmospherics, like what does he think about gay marriage and abortion, and how does he sleep at night.

The difference between a liberal writer and a man like Rumsfeld who has actually made life-and-death decisions is palpable.

But, of course, the liberal writer is writing for readers who have never run things or made life-and-death decisions either.  What do they want to know about Rumsfeld? 

They just want him to apologize for making them so angry.

One useful take-away.  The hardest time in Rumsfeld’s life was as White House chief of staff for President Ford.

"Because [Ford] stepped into a flying airplane, with no crew! And to come in and be his chief of staff was just a terribly difficult assignment... The environment was just polluted. It was just rotten in our country."

That’s something that it is easy to forget.  It was actually worse in the 1970s.

Mortgage Mess Hits Real Economy

Stocks are in broad retreat today on the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly Employment Situation Summary.  As Jeannine Aversa of Associated Press writes:

Employers sliced payrolls by 4,000 jobs in August, the first such decline in four years and a stark sign that a painful credit crunch that has unnerved Wall Street is putting a strain on the national economy.

As usual, the MSM is writing about the summary’s Establishment Data, the change in employers’ payrolls, rather than the broader Household Survey.

And the Household Survey has shocking news.

Jul-Aug Change Civilian Labor Force -340,000 Employment -316,000 Not in Labor Force 592,000

These are shocking numbers.  And let’s face it.  They are probably just the beginning. 

Pavarotti: Singers on The Voice

Luciano Pavarotti, primo tenore assoluto of our times, died September 6 aged 71. Pavarotti was a baker’s son from Modena in Emilia Romagna and had a remarkable voice.  It was immediately recognizable in any recording. 

But what did his peers, the headline opera singers, think of his voice?  For that is the only thing that really matters about a great tenor: The Voice.  The London Daily Telegraph gathered some quotes.

Placido Domingo:

I always admired his divine voice, with its unmistakable timbre and complete vocal range.

Jose Carreras:

A good poker player.

Joan Sutherland:

The quality of the sound was so different. You knew immediately that it was Luciano.

British tenor Russell Watson:

His voice was so distinctive you only needed to listen to a couple of bars and you knew it was him, he had incredible power and control.

British soprano Lesley Garrett:

Absolutely everybody knew his sound. That is what every singer dreams of, that you will be known for the uniqueness of your sound. It was a pure, clear, beautiful sound, and we will simply never hear the like of it again.

Australian baritone Robert Allman:

My memories of him are of him being the greatest tenor I ever heard. The voice was so incredibly beautiful, his top register was infallibly good.

And they say that Pavarotti never learned to read music.

Chuck Schumer Doesn't Get It

Many conservatives have reacted with outrage to the remarks by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).  Sen. Schumer asserts that the pacification of Anbar province has occurred despite the “surge” mounted by the US Armed Forces.  As Hugh Hewitt reports, to Schumer:

The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. It wasn’t that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords took peace here, created a temporary peace here.

Well, that is certainly a good partisan Democratic way of looking at it.

But let us think of this more from the point of view of Mao ZeDong, generally considered to have written the book on guerrilla warfare.  In his view the whole point of a successful insurrection was for the fighters to “swim” in the sea of the countryside.  If they did that, and obtained the protection of the rural people, then they could never be defeated.

In the Maoist approach therefore, it doesn’t matter why the Sunnis tribes in Anbar decided to switch sides.  They might have switched because the US provided assistance to them.  They might have switched because they didn’t like life under the Al-Qaeda fighters.  They might have switched because they didn’t like the Al-Qaeda fighters taking their daughters as wives.  We don’t care.

The goal of the United States is to drive Al-Qaeda out of Iraq.  To do that it is necessary to drain the swamp so that there is no water to swim in.

But maybe Chuck Schumer doesn’t get that.  Maybe he’s never read any books on guerrilla war strategy.

No reason why he should.  That sort of thing isn’t going to get him elected to be United States Senator from the state of New York.

But President Bush does read books.  And so he’s probably a bit more educated on guerrilla war strategy than Chuck Schumer.