lonely voices of reason

Today’s NYT describes the result of “legislative quagmire” in the Senate and the “impasse” in the “war debate” in Congress—more, and more fervent, partisanship [e.a.]:

[L]awmakers and their allies are shifting to what has proved to be more solid ground when it comes to the war: political recriminations.

Every twist and turn of this week’s grinding Senate stalemate was accompanied by a new round of political advertisements and accusations. Republicans were portrayed as putting loyalty to President Bush before support for strained troops, while Democrats were characterized as being beholden to the ultra-left, as embodied by MoveOn.org. The partisan clamor will grow louder as the policy fight recedes.

Indeed, and that’s because empty barrels make the most noise, as reflected by today’s letters to the editor. Five out of six correspondents to the Times, in a section the paper calls “Is There Any Way to Support the Troops?,” lambast the Dems as “feckless,” “pusillanimous,” etc. and Reps for “blindly supporting” Bush and his “neocon cohorts” in the “continuing catastrophe” of Iraq. Blah blah blah.

The sixth letter, however, makes an important point that I believe Dems will need to take into account sooner or later [e.a.]:

When will the Democrats learn that the ordinary person on the street wants the Iraq mission to be a success, not the failure that they are hungry to heap on this administration?

While there is seemingly no end in sight to the blundered Iraq crisis, the one thing that is clear is the will of people to see this struggle through to a better day.

There is no doubt at all that we Americans have come to hate this war and that we are sick of it, and heartsick about it (those of us who have hearts, that is—and I have my doubts about the new breed of “progressives”). However, there is no evidence—none at all—which suggests that Americans want to turn tail in Iraq and call it a day.

It is a fundamental characteristic of American society at every level that we idolize winners and despise losers. Moreover, everything in our social culture—from college sports to high school cheerleading to the Oscars to the Pulitzer Prize to the Miss America pageant to the Fortune 500 to Little League to National Merit Scholarships to Eagle Scouts to the 4H-Club to the bestseller list to the box office to employee-of-the-month awards to the 100 Most Powerful People in Hollywood issue of Entertainment Weekly, to name just a few American institutions and endeavors—is a contest in which the screamingly obvious goal is to win.

Partisan Democrats who fail to grapple with this reality—that Americans want to win in Iraq, just like they want to win everywhere else in life, and not go down to a humiliating, ignominious, and disgraceful defeat—are, I believe, not only misreading the political landscape. They’re also misreading Americans.

In fact, these political partisans themselves want so badly to win against Bush that they’re trying to convince Americans that we’re going to lose in Iraq no matter what, and furthermore that it’s okay to lose in Iraq, that there’s no dishonor in losing, that there’s no cost to America if we lose, that the best way to support the troops is to get them home, that we shouldn’t care about refereeing someone else’s civil war, that washing our hands of the mess we made and leaving others to resolve it is fine and dandy.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think these clearly defeatist, wrong-headed, and juvenile—not to mention immoral—”arguments” are going to win the day.

Where is the famous “can-do American spirit” in these arguments?

Where is America stumbling badly and then redeeming itself in these arguments?

MoveOn is selling a narrative of American defeat in Iraq—with no possibility of redemption.

This will not only not win over centrist, moderate, swing-voting Americans. It will alienate them. I can’t prove it, of course, but I can read it in the culture, as could anyone who bothers to look at America with a sociological rather than a strictly partisan political eye: Americans are not anti-war. They are anti-losing.