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Anti-War Legacy of Vietnam: Opponents “Invested in Defeat” in Iraq
Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal makes the point that the Dems so long for Iraq to turn into Vietnam that they are describing the fighting in Basra as George Bush’s Tet Offensive. Welcome to 1968.
Is it uncharitable to suggest that when the fighting erupted in Basra last week between Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the U.S.-trained Iraqi army, some opponents of the war hoped it would become George Bush’s Tet Offensive? That is, a battle whose military details are largely irrelevant, but whose sudden violence “proves” to voters that a U.S. military commitment is unwinnable and should be abandoned?
It was hard not to miss the antiwar spin coming off reports of the fighting, after a year of unmistakable gains from the Petraeus surge strategy.
An Obama foreign policy adviser, Denis McDonough, said it “does raise a handful of concerns as it relates to the surge and, more importantly, about the prospect of political reconciliation.” The New York Times noted that Hillary Clinton, campaigning in Pennsylvania, said the Bush commitment to keeping up troop levels in Iraq is a “clear admission that the surge has failed to accomplish its goals.”
The Democrats appear so invested in a failure that a half-week of violence erases a year of progress. What is the source of such instincts?
Walter Cronkite’s Feb 17, 1968 broadcast about the Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive concluded with words that remain famous even now: “[I]t is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.” Attend an Obama or Hillary rally and the message in those 40-year-old words echoes loudly, and are cheered again.
Democrats have a love-forget relationship with the politics of the Vietnam years. The current tranche of congressional leaders is proud of its youthful opposition to John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. It is generally agreed, though, that the antiwar legacy damaged Democratic credibility with voters in presidential elections. After the Carter interregnum, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush trumped their opponents on national security.
Most of the time, the national Democratic party is at pains to avoid the label “San Francisco Democrats” that was coined by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her devastating “Blame America, First” speech to the 1984 GOP convention. Bill Clinton’s famous 1996 triangulation strategy was designed in part to avoid this national-security virus, which is thought to sit dormant in the brains of blue-collar Reagan Democrats, always alert for an excuse to bolt right. John McCain will offer himself as that excuse. On the handling of Iraq alone, Gallup recently gave Mr. McCain a 14-point lead over either opponent.
The Democratic left never apologized for its antiwar politics. It abhorred Clintonian centrism. The newest generation of “progressives,” unabashedly descended from the San Francisco Democrats, wants the party rooted in the worldview and attitudes that came to prominence during Vietnam . . . .