In The Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti has some illuminating reminders about the recent history of our involvement in Iraq, The Surge, and who was saying what when about our best course of action. “In January 2007,” Continetti writes,

with Iraq in flames and Democrats set to take over Congress, President Bush had two options. He could side with Senator Barack Obama and begin a gradual drawdown of American troops in Iraq, leaving the Iraqis to a grim fate and dealing a serious and consequential blow to American interests in the Middle East and beyond. Or he could side with Senator John McCain and change strategies, sending additional troops to Iraq in an effort to secure the population and assist the Iraqis in their fight against al Qaeda and the Iranian-backed Shiite militias–the so-called “surge” policy. This latter option was the one Bush eventually adopted, of course. And for that, he deserves the thanks of Americans, of Iraqis, and indeed the world.

The surge is over. The last of the reinforcements sent to Iraq have returned home. The Iraq those troops leave behind is an utterly transformed place. Since their first offensive operations began in July 2007, overall attacks have been cut by 80 percent. The sectarian bloodshed staining Iraq in 2006 and 2007 has almost entirely abated. American casualties have fallen dramatically, with U.S. combat deaths in Iraq in July 2008 the lowest monthly total since the war began more than five years ago. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been routed, and the global al Qaeda organization faces what CIA director Michael Hayden calls a “near-strategic defeat” in Iraq. Shiite radical Moktada al-Sadr remains “studying” in Iran, while his militia has been cut to pieces by U.S. and Iraqi troops. The Iraqi army is progressing admirably; more than two-thirds of Iraqi combat battalions now take the lead in operations in their areas.

But wait, didn’t Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid loudly repudiate the Surge? Did they not write to scold President Bush, telling him that “As many had foreseen [and who do you suppose those sages were?], the escalation has failed to produce the intended results. The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation”? And did not Obama first oppose the Surge and then repeatedly announce that it wasn’t working: “My assessment is that the surge has not worked,”etc. etc. (For a recap of Obama on Iraq see this excellent roundup at Powerline.)

Now suppose the President had listen to Pelosi/Reid/Obama. Suppose he had said, “OK, I give up. You guys win. We’ll pack up and go.” Continetti lays out a plausible result:

Had Bush listened to Obama and decided to retreat last year, not only would the progress we see today not have occurred, but it is quite likely that the situation in Iraq would be much worse than it was at the end of 2006. Bereft of U.S. security, Iraqis would have turned to the nearest sectarian militia for protection from the widening civil war. An empowered and belligerent Iran would have moved to fill the vacuum America left behind, thus allowing the mullahs in Tehran to pursue unchecked their policy of “Lebanonization” in Iraq. And Al Qaeda in Iraq would have continued its barbaric killing spree, using the departing American soldiers as a recruitment tool, evidence of American weakness and unreliability. It would not be al Qaeda but the United States facing a “near strategic defeat” on Osama bin Laden’s chosen front. And a defeated America would have led to a more dangerous world.

Fortunately, none of this came to pass. Bush sided with McCain, who had been calling for additional troops and a counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq since late summer 2003.

In other words, on Iraq McCain offered policies that resulted in a Change We Can Believe In, a “Yes, We Can” attitude, and pointed the way to genuine Progress. And Obama?

Comments

Look through some notes, I stumbled upon an excellent little piece by the British journalist William Rees-Mogg regarding the wisdom of John Locke on the subject of tolerance: “As usual, the great John Locke got it right,” Rees-Mogg wrote in the London Times. “The world ought to be more tolerant but some things remain intolerable.” Rees-Mogg is thinking in particular of the contemporary pertinence of Locke’s brief but immensely influential tract, A Letter Concerning Toleration.

In that work, Locke directly addresses a subject that is at the center of debate today: “how can people with different beliefs live with one another in peace?” How indeed? Locke’s short book is a bible of liberalism, all the more valuable because it sketches not only the desirability of tolerance, but also its limits. Locke was full of incautious phrases praising “absolute liberty” and condemning “narrowness” of spirit. But he also understood that liberty, if it is to be genuine, must be defended, which means that it must on essential issues be circumscribed. As Rees-Mogg notes, Locke is is “careful to specify when toleration becomes impossible.” And it is here, perhaps, that Locke is most pertinent to our current situation. “In recent years,” Rees-Mogg writes,

governments have repeatedly come up against these limits. Locke did not believe that governments could always tolerate “opinions contrary to human society, such as manifestly undermine the foundations of society”. It is not clear what Locke had specifically in mind, but terrorism would surely be covered. In the 20th century both Nazism and Leninism were “opinions contrary to human society” in this sense — they were simply intolerable.

He also warned against trying to tolerate certain doctrines that 17th-century Protestants attributed to the Jesuits. These included the teaching that “faith is not to be kept with heretics”, and that “kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms”. Locke thought that “a Church has no right to be tolerated” whose members have to obey a foreign prince because that would mean that the ruler allowed “his own people to be listed, as it were, as soldiers against his own Government”.

Seventeenth-century Islam was included in the criticism. “It is ridiculous for anyone to profess himself to be a Mohametan (sic) only in his religion, but in everything else a faithful subject to a Christian magistrate, while at the same time he acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the Mufti of Constantinople, who himself is entirely obedient to the Ottoman Emperor.” Fortunately, the Papacy no longer claims the right to excommunicate and depose monarchs, there is no Ottoman Emperor, and if there still is a Mufti of Constantinople he certainly has no universal authority in Islam. But Osama bin Laden really is a dangerous man who does claim obedience of his followers.

Read the entire essay here.

3 Comments

Like most conservatives, I applauded when Boris Johnson, former editor of The Spectator, beat mad, bad “Red Ken” Livingston in the race to become Mayor of London. Livingston was a thuggish, left-leaning politician of the old school–a sort of neutered British Brezhnev whose orbit was a single city instead of a crumbling empire–whereas Boris brought a pixieish Toryism to bear upon his ever-so-slightly farcical public performance.

Boris is an amusing man. Also a slyly intelligent one. His talent for public for bemusement is, I feel sure, a finely calculated construction. So is his reputation as a disheveled, blond-haired Bertie Wooster, an expensively educated but essentially clueless fop who somehow stumbled into public life. So when Boris Johnson, Tory politician, publicly endorses Barack Obama, I am not only disappointed, I wonder what behind-the-scenes calculation he made. This morning, the London Telegraph reports his public reasoning: “If Barack Obama can do it, it will be the most fantastic boost, I think, for black people everywhere around the world.”

That, of course, is precisely what Barack Obama keeps suggesting, hinting, adumbrating, even as he (officially) presents himself as the candidate who will finally move us “beyond” race.

In fact, Obama has subtly but unmistakably insinuated race into the center of his campaign, and his fans have eagerly conspired to reinforce the racialist overtones of his campaign. The basic line was articulated with admirable clarity by The New York Times a day or two ago when a reporter said that Obama’s candidacy confronted the American electorate with “what may be the ultimate test of racial equality–whether Americans will elect a black president.” But as I pointed out in a comment on that article, the reporter’s “ultimate test” is really a racist examination, for it assumes that if Obama loses it will because of his skin color, not because of his policies.

Boris Johnson’s announced rationale for supporting Obama is cut from the same bolt of cloth. What would be “the most fantastic boost . . . for black people everywhere” is the same thing that would be fantastic for white and yellow and red people everywhere: a President who promulgates policies that conduce to economic growth, the rule of law, and social maturity. The color of his skin is irrelevant, and to pretend otherwise is to perpetuate a paternalist, quota-based racialist thinking.

I referred to Boris’s “announced rationale” for supporting Obama. Is it also his real rationale? I doubt it. The Telegraph says that the endorsement of a Democratic candidate “would usually be considered unusual for a Conservative.” But that is not wholly true. I’ve noticed two sorts of Tories who are eager for the victory of Obama. One is the bitter, old-school anti-American Tory who resents American power and influence and who look forwards to whatever will circumscribe it. An Obama presidency can be counted on to do precisely that, and so it is not surprising that that such chaps have clustered round him.

The second sort is the “worse-therefore-better” brand of Tory who is a true conservative and therefore regards the prospect of a McCain presidency with dismay. McCain, the imperfect conservative, has disappointed conservatives on campaign finance reform, on immigration, on environmental policy, even, at least intermittently, on taxes and judicial policy. Therefore, reason these clever chaps, he would be a poor steward of the Republic. Of course, Obama would be much, much worse, but (so they reason), let him have a spin at the helm for four years: he’ll bollocks up things so badly that a grateful electorate will welcome us true conservatives back with open arms.

I suspect that Boris Johnson inclines more to the former than the latter, though item four in Victor Davis Hanson’s answers to the question “Why Do Europeans Love Obama?” probably also plays a part:

4) Style, style, style. Remember socialist Europe is where we get our designer eyeglass frames, Gucci bags, and French fashions. Instead of a strutting, Bible-quoting Texan, replete with southern accent and ‘smoke-em’ out lingo, they get an athletic, young, JFK-ish metrosexual, whose rhetoric is as empty as it is soothing. The English-only Obama lectures America on its need to emulate polyglot Europe; while a Spanish-speaking George Bush is hopelessly cast as a Texas yokel.

Victor makes the “modest prediction,” were Obama to be elected, “in 5 years, Europeans will prefer George Bush to a “We are right behind you” Obama.” I do not believe Obama will be elected. That will become clearer, I believe, as we approach the first week of November. And by then, I modestly predict, folks like Boris Johnson will discover that, upon mature consideration, they have always really supported John McCain after all.

5 Comments