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Blood On His Hands: “The Reid Surge”
Mac Owens, a military historian and professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College, has dubbed the escalation in defeatist rhetoric by the Dems as the “Reid Surge.” And just as ideas have consequences, words do as well.
Over at National Review Online, Owens writes:
“Our enemies know that the war that counts is the one for the American mind. If we believe that the war is lost, they win. They have an incentive to keep fighting and to kill as many people as they can. In a gun battle with American troops, the insurgents lose. So they concentrated on killing as many Iraqis as they can in the hope and expectation that the news will demoralize the American public.”
Professor Owens provides some historical perspective: “Lincoln noted that in a democratic republic, ‘public sentiment’ is critical. During the Civil War, Robert E. Lee was an assiduous reader of Northern newspapers. By 1864 he understood that the only hope for the Confederacy was that war weariness in the North would lead to Lincoln’s electoral defeat. The Confederates put a great deal of hope in the ‘Copperheads,’ the so-called ‘Peace Democrats’ who did everything possible to obstruct the Union war effort.”
“During Vietnam,” Owens continues, “the Tet Offensive of 1968 was a military defeat for the North Vietnamese communists, but a public-relations victory that helped turn the American public against the war. In audiotapes released by the insurgents over the last couple of years, their leaders such as the late and unlamented Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have demonstrated that they understand the lessons of Tet very well.”
There’s no way to know for sure, but Owens is convinced that, “[T]he bomb attacks in Iraq that caused such carnage in recent days are the expected consequences of the Democrats’ efforts to undercut the president’s new team and the changed strategy represented by the so-called ’surge.’ We know what the Bush surge is. I think a good name for the increasing body count in Iraq is the ‘Reid surge.‘”
Impeach Reid and Pelosi!