December 9, 2005
A 'Tet' Moment Coming
By Pat
Buchanan
All my life,
said Voltaire, "I have never made but one prayer. ... 'Oh
Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."
George Bush
must have been praying the same way lately.
In his "Plan
for Victory" address to the Naval Academy, the president
declared: "Against this adversary, there is only one effective
response: We will never back down. We will never give in. And
we will never accept anything less than complete victory."
This is
what one expects of a commander in chief in wartime, speaking
to the patriotic young midshipmen, who roared approval.
To which
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean instantly retorted,
"The idea that we're going to win this war ... is just plain
wrong."
How's that
for a Churchillian, "we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches ... we-shall-never-surrender"
moment?
Sunday on
"Face the Nation," John Kerry said to Bob Schieffer:
"There is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need
to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing
kids and children, you know, women, breaking ... the historical
customs, religious customs. ... Iraqis should be doing that."
After the
laughter died, Democratic spin-doctors were out in force explaining
that Kerry was not calling U.S. troops terrorists.
After Bush
went before the Council of Foreign Relations to report some progress
in the war, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi headed for the
cameras to sneer: "Just because he says things are improving
doesn't make it so. ... The president says the security situation
on the ground is better. It is not."
How's that
for a morale booster?
Rep. Jack
Murtha added, "Bush's plan is to stay the course and hope."
But, surely,
hope is superior to this remorseless despair and defeatism oozing
out of the Democratic Party. One wonders what Jack Murtha's old
Marine buddies think when they hear him -- day in, day out --
wail that all is lost and the U.S. Army is "broken, worn
out" and "living hand to mouth."
"They
have a right to criticize who have a heart to help," said
Lincoln. Listening to Democrats, it is hard to discern any of
the latter, outside of Sen. Joe Lieberman. Whatever one thinks
of the war, the party is revealing itself to be so steeped in
pessimism that it is unfit to lead the nation. Who could vote
for such a party?
Democrats
are again courting a perception that they are not really a loyal
opposition at all, but a party of defeat and retreat, whose worst
nightmare would be to see George Bush emerge as a victorious president
in a war they said we could not win. This is precisely the perception
Democrats created in the last days of Vietnam -- and they paid
a hellish price for it.
Half the
nation now believes the war was a mistake and wants U.S. troop
withdrawals to begin. But no patriot wants to see Iraq collapse
into chaos and civil war, and everything for which 2,100 Americans
died and 16,000 suffered washed down a sewer.
But if President
Bush is doing his duty in rallying the nation not to cut and run,
there appears to be a disconnect between his policy and reality.
If, after 30 months and 150,000 troops in Iraq, the insurgency
is not defeated, how will we achieve victory when we withdraw
20,000 after this week's elections and another 40,000 next year,
bringing U.S. troop levels to 100,000 by Election Day 2006?
While undeniably
true that the U.S. military presence is a primary cause of the
Sunni insurgency, it is also true that the U.S. military presence
alone stands between the insurgency and victory in the Sunni provinces
of the west.
As U.S.
forces are drawn down and Iraqi forces "stand up," in
Bush's phrase, we are going to face a moment when our Iraqis are
going to have to engage and defeat an insurgency we have been
unable to beat with 150,000 of the best-trained anti-insurgency
troops in the world. What leads us to believe they can hack it,
if, after three years, we couldn't?
Murtha's
depiction of the Army as "broken, worn out ... living hand
to mouth" sounds like the Army of Northern Virginia after
the fall of Petersburg. It is surely an exaggeration. But the
Army is stretched -- including Reserves, Guard and combat units,
some of which are headed back for second and third tours. This
cannot continue.
As our moment
of truth in Vietnam came in the Tet Offensive of 1968 that broke
Lyndon Johnson, Bush's "Tet moment" is coming in Iraq,
almost surely in 2006, when the insurgency appears to be growing
in strength and confidence, and the new government appears shaky.
If his generals
come to him, then, and say: Mr. President, we have to stop the
withdrawals and may need more troops to stave off a collapse --
what does Bush do? Almost certainly, we shall find out in the
new year.
Meanwhile,
Bush should keep praying Voltaire's prayer.
Copyright
2005 Creators Syndicate
