The War's End?

Nothing is over!!! Nothing!!! You just don't turn it off! It wasn't my war! You asked me, I didn't ask you!

--Rambo: First Blood

The juxtaposition of David Brooks and Peter Beinart both opining that nobody cares about Iraq any more right before a New York Times poll came out revealing that "more people cite the Iraq war as the most important issue facing the country than cite any other matter" sure is odd. Equally odd, in many respects, is the logic Beinart used to reach his conclusion:

Last month, Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times live-blogged the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. As the discussion bounced from subject to subject, she marked the topic and the time, then gave her thoughts. At 8:34 p.m., it was driver’s licenses; 8:55, Pakistan; 9:57, the Supreme Court. By night’s end she had 17 entries totaling almost 1,500 words. And she hadn’t typed “Iraq” once.

Basically, the evidence for Beinart's side is that media elites who control the debate questioning process don't want to talk about the war. Conversely, the public does seem to think the war is very important. This is particularly interesting since historically elites care a lot more about foreign policy questions than does the public at large, which tends to be more focused on so-called "bread and butter" issues.

This seems akin to what I wrote about over the summer in the LA Times when we had a spurt of calls for a lowering of the partisan temperature over the Iraq issue. And, of course, we saw something similar about a year ago when all the little people were supposed to hush up and let the Iraq Study Group sort things out for us.

There is, in essence, a powerful desire to avoid an "accountability moment" in which the people who played a role in bamboozling a large swathe of the public into backing the war are called onto the carpet. There's a desire to believe that there's only one strategy the United States could possibly be pursuing in the world and that, therefore, the only debates to be had are boring tactical ones that couldn't possibly engage the public mind. Invading Iraq was, perhaps, an error -- but an unavoidable one, something that just happened. Then mistakes were made in the implementation, but now better implementation is at hand, so the debate is over. After all, if Bush has now largely adopted the tactics the liberal hawks once criticized him for not adopting, what could there possibly be to argue about? And so how could the public possibly care? After all, there aren't any questions about it in Kit Seelye's notebook?

Obviously, though, this is a big deal. To observe that monthly casualty rates for American soldiers are now lower than they once were (2007 is still the deadliest year) s neither here nor there -- one big, obvious virtue of the "let's leave" alternative is that it gets our troops' fatalities down to nothing. Meanwhile, the small mercy of this war has always been that fatalities among our soldiers have been pretty low by historical standards. But despite that there's the small issue of whether or not we should really be proceeding on this course. Of course it's a big deal!

Comments

As someone that opposes the war, it pains me to agree with those that say the war is "over" as a political issue, but, absent a game-changing event (which could certainly materialize) it does seem to be a fair statement.

Allow me to explain.

People may tell pollsters that the war is a big issue, but honestly, do you feel a groundswell of opposition to the war? Do you see the Hillary campaign getting demolished day in and day out based on her support of the war? Do you feel as though there is any momentum whatsoever for getting our troops out of Iraq? Yeah, me neither.

Absent a large and active voting bloc that demands an end to the war, the Democratic politicians like Hillary will continue to triangulate to their advantage. And after all, why should they, as politicians, take up a cause that most Americans seem unwilling to take up? I wrote about this very issue recently when the news of a possible place for Colin Powell in a Hillary administration was floated in the press. To me, the mere thought of such a move represents quite a big fuck you to the anti war wing of the party, and it's a tacit admission that the anti war wing has failed. I hate to say it, but it's true. There is no momentum, nor any critical mass around the idea that we need to get our troops out of Iraq. When people say the war is "over," as a political issue, i think this is what they mean.

http://myfriendscallmenikkos.blogspot.com/2007/11/team-hillary-some-experience-required.html

Posted by nikkos | December 11, 2007 4:45 PM

"the small mercy of this war has always been that fatalities among our soldiers have been pretty low by historical standards."

the dirty secret of this war is that there are twenty thousand soldiers coming home with brain injuries.

many of those are lives totally destroyed, even if they don't get counted in the fatality column.

so it's not just the 3.5 k killed so far. the human cost of this war is far, far greater.

Posted by kid bitzer | December 11, 2007 4:50 PM

I wonder if the reason that the Presidential debates haven't talked much about the war is that _both_ parties think it's a losing issue for them. The Republicans would be scared because they supported something that hasn't worked out, and the Democrats are afraid of looking weak because historically the Republicans have done an effective job of making anything other than a kill 'em all attitude look like wussy pacifism.

Posted by Galen | December 11, 2007 4:55 PM

The problem is that the public perception of the war is not "visceral", it's the same crap you get from any poll with a limited number of issues. The fact that the average American is clueless about foreign policy issues merely means that Iraq is the biggest one they've heard of - so it's "more important" than, say, Iran - which they've heard of but don't understand - or Pakistan, which they probably have barely heard of.

And the real problem with the "low casualty rate" (compared to WWII or Korea or even Vietnam) is that as long as we stay there, it will continue to get bigger. And eventually, Iraq will explode in a REALLY serious effort to get rid of us and the casualties will explode. Or Bush will start the Iran war, the Shia militias will shift sides (al-Sadr is currently rebuilding his militia to be leaner and better and continues to demand the US leave Iraq NOW) and casualties will explode. Or Iran itself could conceivably roll up a large body count in Iraq or Iran in such a war.

The only reason casualties have been low so far is that it was never much of a "war" but an insurgency. A very effective insurgency, but casualties are always low in insurgencies. Vietnam's casualty rate only when up when US troops began engaging North Vietnam regular military in pitched battles.

Most importantly, of course, is the simple fact that the news media are pushing the elections now. Iraq has dropped off the front page. People in this country are always more interested in domestic issues than foreign ones.

When things heat up again in Iraq - and they are guaranteed to do so since nothing has been resolved to anyone's satisfaction there - the public will swing back somewhat to being concerned.

By then, of course, it will be too late.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 11, 2007 5:03 PM

"Then mistakes were made in the implementation, but now better implementation is at hand, so the debate is over." Maybe it's as simple as the elites are terrified of really, truly withdrawing all troops from Iraq. To them, loss of hegemony = death. So it's easier to try to preempt ALL discussion--i.e., Petey Binart's petulant "Iraq is SO OVER as an issue"--than let the people (and the dirty fucking hippies) think they could force an end to US military involvement in Iraq.

Posted by dr. giraud | December 11, 2007 5:05 PM

Nikkos, I think you're pretty much wrong. what you have in the Clinton campaign is a lot of peopel basically lying to themselves and firmly believing that Hillary is committed to ending the war in Iraq. They have pretty much told themselves that the only thing that needs to be done to end the war is to get GWB out of office.

The problem is, by the time they realize they were wrong it's the Democratic party that will be holding the bag and they will likely pay the political price as for it as well.

Posted by Soullite | December 11, 2007 5:08 PM

"The problem is, by the time they realize they were wrong it's the Democratic party that will be holding the bag and they will likely pay the political price as for it as well."

It's worse than that. "The Surge is Working" narrative will be huckstered by the republicans as the "winning hand" they left the democrats, making it even riskier for the democrats to leave.

The democrats' decision to support the war in 2003 was their fatal mistake. It's real hard to back out now.

Posted by kafka | December 11, 2007 5:23 PM

I love it when warhawks point to the lower fatality rates as success, as if the goal of the whole Iraq adventure was to lower fatality rates among our US service personnel.

Like Matt said, there is a GREAT way to lower our fatality rates to zero...

Posted by CKT | December 11, 2007 5:35 PM

Soullite-

I'd be in a better position to respond to your criticism that I'm "pretty much wrong"if you would point out that with which you disagree. I'd be happy to respond but I'm not sure what it it you are objecting to, either in my comment here or the post to which I linked.

Thanks!

nikkos

Posted by nikkos | December 11, 2007 5:50 PM

I fear that as long as the Beinarts and the Brookses of the world keep pushing this new narrative, and as long as their cohorts like Tim Russert fail to raise the war in the debates, and as long as the emmessemm disappears the war from its nightly newscasts, the public will indeed begin to lose interest in the war as an issue, simply because we aren't hearing about it anymore. One of those self-fulfilling prophesy thingies the pundits are so good at.

Posted by bobbo | December 11, 2007 5:52 PM

Shame! Shame! Shame!

Shame on the American people for not following Peter Beinart's and David Brooks' foretold conclusions.

Posted by gregor | December 11, 2007 6:03 PM

First point: it was pretty obvious to honest observers during the 2006 campaign that there wouldn't be any withdrawals before Bush fucks off back to the pig farm, and that while Dem pols campaigning on 'ending the war' weren't lying, they were offering no more than aspirations.

I think we're now at the stage, after a year of Bush wielding his veto Sharpie, where there's a weary realisation that the next thirteen months offer more of the same, and that the thirteen months after that will be little different.

When there is fuck-all to do, and fuck-all to be done, thanks to the interminable election calendar and to people like BoBo saying 'it's over as an issue', what's left is a kind of chronic political pain. It hurts, but the only thing on offer is Vicodin. (As opposed to, say, invasive surgery to remove fuckhead hawks from the debate.)

Of course, BoBo and Prime Fighting Age Beinart might be talking differently if their asses were on the line.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 11, 2007 6:23 PM

I think the point here is that the Democrats and the MSM need to keep Iraq out of the news rather than that people aren't interested in the liberation of Iraq. Don't ask and don't bring it up.

The liberation and democratization of Iraq is going very badly now for the Democrats, better to pretend it doesn't exist.

You can see this in the lack of Iraq posts on Kos or Washington Monthly or Huff Post. Remember this war was lost, LOST, 2 years ago.

Now we also see that the Democrats think we are not torturing people brutally enough.

Posted by mark | December 11, 2007 6:32 PM

"Of course, BoBo and Prime Fighting Age Beinart might be talking differently if their asses were on the line."

See, now, that's what might have happened if I was running my old terrorist routine from back in 1993 today. (Assuming I was still alive, which is debatable - in fact, unlikely.)

Their asses would be on the line - my line.

Momentarily.

That's what I call "invasive surgery to remove fuckhead hawks from the debate."

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 11, 2007 6:36 PM

You don't get any more bread and butter than when your brother comes home with a prosthetic limb, or when the father of your child is too suicidal and depressed to function as a husband and daddy, or when your daughter comes home raped and humiliated by private contractors, or worse, when they don't come home at all.

This kind of thing doesn't happen to many elites. I suppose it's only natural that they'd misunderstand the concerns of the masses, no matter how much their heart may be in the right place. But they should make a better effort to imagine.

Posted by Jalmari | December 11, 2007 7:31 PM

You don't get any more bread and butter than when your brother comes home with a prosthetic limb, or when the father of your child is too suicidal and depressed to function as a husband and daddy, or when your daughter comes home raped and humiliated by private contractors, or worse, when they don't come home at all.

This kind of thing doesn't happen to many elites. I suppose it's only natural that they'd misunderstand the concerns of the masses, no matter how much their heart may be in the right place. But they should make a better effort to imagine.

Posted by Jalmari | December 11, 2007 7:32 PM

You don't get any more bread and butter than when your brother comes home with a prosthetic limb, or when the father of your child is too suicidal and depressed to function as a husband and daddy, or when your daughter comes home raped and humiliated by private contractors, or worse, when they don't come home at all.

This doesn't happen to elites, so I suppose it's only natural that they would misunderstand the concerns of the masses, no matter how much their heart may be in the right place. But they should make a better effort to imagine.

Posted by Jalmari | December 11, 2007 7:32 PM

I'm just guessing that, if you asked 100 random Americans what we are doing in Iraq, fewer than 10 of them--be they supporters or opponents of the war--could give you the "correct" answer (i.e., Bush's rationale, that we are trying to provide breathing room for the political process).

Posted by kth | December 11, 2007 7:53 PM

I have no comment on the underlying issue, but since Rambo came up, I'd like to take the opportunity to share the Rambo IV trailer. It's gonna be a badass movie. This country needs 80's style action (absurd plot; over the top violence; masculine men (to borrow from Luca); and of course gratuitous nudity). Enjoy!

http://www.firstshowing.net/2007/05/19/john-rambo-iv-feature-trailer/

Posted by laborlibert | December 11, 2007 7:56 PM

Anyone who thinks the war has no salience as a political issue needs to take note of the trends in the polls among Democrats as more and more of them find out that only one of the 3 major candidates opposed the war in Iraq.

I'd say killing the candidacy of the most-well funded, most establishment candidate in either party's race, as well as the candidacy of that same party's last vice-presidential nominee, is the sign of a pretty salient issue among voters.

Indeed, this is as it should be. Voters need to let the future John Edwardses and Hillary Clintons think twice the next time that the issue of voting to send 3,800 brave American servicemembers to their deaths arises in Congress.

Posted by Dilan Esper | December 11, 2007 8:07 PM

If you look at casualty rates, Vietnam was 3 wounded to 1 killed, and Iraq is more like 10 wounded to 1 killed. That's because we get them to a hospital faster. So the survivors are more wounded than before, most likely.

So, Iraq has 4000 killed and 40000 wounded. If it were vietnam, then with 44000 casualties, there would be 14000 KIA at this point.

The relevancy would be in regard to the intensity of the conflict.

Posted by Chuck | December 11, 2007 8:36 PM

I think CNN has a poll showing that the economy is a bigger issue than the war.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/11/economy.poll.schneider/index.html

I actually think this hurts Hillary. Her message of strength and experience just works better when the war is high in people's mind's. Nobody cares about the use of force resolution anymore we just want this mess cleaned up. With the war fading in people's minds Obama's change message works better because people are less fearful. I agree that this might not be fair, but I think that it is true.

Posted by Craig | December 11, 2007 8:40 PM

actually think this hurts Hillary. Her message of strength and experience just works better when the war is high in people's mind's. Nobody cares about the use of force resolution anymore we just want this mess cleaned up.

This is completely wrong. First, Hillary's message of "strength and experience" may have worked when the war was popular, but the last thing Democratic voters want right now is "strength" meaning hawkishness. They want a different kind of strength, the strength to stand up to hawks and keep us OUT of war.

Further, as long as Americans are getting killed in Iraq, the vote to kill them is going to be very relevant among Democrats who want us out of Iraq. And Clinton and Edwards voted to kill them. That's why they are losing.

Posted by Dilan Esper | December 11, 2007 9:31 PM

By the way, I should add that Hillary doesn't have a message of "experience" at all. Her only experience for the job is 7 ineffectual years as a Senator; the only thing she accomplished there is the vote to kill the 3,800 brave American servicemembers.

She is no more "experienced" than Obama.

Posted by Dilan Esper | December 11, 2007 9:32 PM

Your average Hillary Clinton partisan is quite frankly, an idiot.

Now is Hillary Clinton an idiot? That's a better question. Most of the people who voted for GWB in both elections believed he supported the Kyoto protocols, the international world court, and a bunch of other things that make your mind swim if you don't have basic political literacy. She picks her battles based on money, and is confident of the ignorance of the average american voter, and my cynical side says she wins. My cynical side is usually right.

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 11, 2007 11:15 PM

I would like it very much if Matthew will explain how there can be an "accountability moment" on the war when most of the power structure and many of the voters of the opposition party support someone who both voted for the war and even now says her vote was not a mistake.

Posted by Counterfactual | December 12, 2007 12:15 AM

Excellent post, reinforced by many excellent comments.

What this post describes is the current highly-honed state of propaganda purveyed by our daily national "news" when it comes to coverage of one of the most damaging and destructive assaults on our founding values as a nation, and on the future well-being of the American people.

I've long been sure that if the U.S. did depart Iraq, leaving it to the Iraqis (imagine the audacity), and then the possible, loudly-advertised, but I think very unlikely (see Basra, post-British), scenario of a mass slaughter worse than we have "overwatched" in fact ensued, we would never even hear about it here, except in a few remote corners of our media. Those who control our media don't give a damn about the struggles of the daily lives of many Americans (see health insurance, see Katrina's aftermath, etc.), and they sure won't be burning any electrons to bring us the plight of the average Iraqi, if and when we ever leave their land (and oil) behind in shambles.

The ongoing media black-out about our true "mission" (the "strategy" as Matthew rightly puts it) in Iraq - which, importantly, has succeeded according to its amoral metrics, thus far, simply by virtue of our continued presence and control there - is a disgrace and a travesty on a level with the media's complicity in the lead-up to the invasion itself. Of course, the Democratic Congress, because nominally "opposed" to the enterprise, bears a huge burden for not at least attempting to force the truth about Iraq into circulation, with the help of - think of it - Iraqis themselves. [Has the U.N. Security Council managed yet to ram through the renewal of its "mandate" resolution authorizing our unwelcome presence in Iraq, over the protests of the Iraqi parliament? Or will we be even more openly and flagrantly in violation of international law, and democratic Iraqi will, come January 1?]

We are backing the least democratic, most corrupt elements of the Iraqi "government" - those allied with Iran, those who have been living outside of Iraq for decades, those willing to be appointed and bribed in exchange for exercising only limited power and receiving personal protection from Americans, those prepared to see Iraq parceled out to local tribes and armed mobs who will partner with foreign corporations to plunder Iraq's national oil wealth. In other words, we support (with our actions if not our words) the minority of separatists in Iraq, while a majority of Iraqis and their elected parliament are nationalists. It's not about sects, per se - it's about oil and who gets to control it.

How hard is it for (any truly "opposed") Democrats to spell this out, in tandem with the ongoing humanitarian and fiscal disaster aspects of this campaign that our media ignore, in such a way that every Republican in Congress would be trying to find a rock to crawl under, and that would leave the president fuming and sputtering, and doubling his double-talk?? I guarantee that someone like Jim Hightower wouldn't have the slightest problem making just that case. But instead: silence, or else mindless, repetitive, meaningless parroting of the Pentagon propaganda line about a 'temporarily permanent' "surge for political reconciliation" - a line whose sole purpose is to help maintain a semi-permanent American presence in Iraq no matter the public cost.

I don't see Iraqis "reconciling" to the wholesale destruction and auctioning off of their nation to corrupt, arrogant foreigners, any time in the near or distant future. The fact that Carl Levin and his ilk still pretend some such miracle will happen, near term, while the American Armed Forces continue to 'run' Iraq, means Levin and Reid & Company are 'in on it' - because he and they are too smart not to know better. That's what the media ought to be reporting.

Posted by pow wow | December 12, 2007 1:10 AM

Dopey post, with the usual groupthink comments.

What "counterfactual" said. Nearly three out of four in Congress voted for the invasion, and similar numbers had been supporting war of one kind or another in Iraq since the first invasion in 1991. Virtually all of them have said they did so on the basis of their own reading of the intelligence and their experience, of decades in some cases, of dealing with Iraq.

The idea that we can "get(s) our troops' fatalities down to nothing" is the kind of thing people who know nothing about the military say. We had 7500 service personnel die on duty during the Clinton years, and the yearly figure was even higher during Carter's term. Soldiering is a dangerous business, but securing our national interests is what they do. Iraq has been and will continue to be an area of vital national interest for many years. Childish magical thinking to the effect that we can just click the heels of the ruby slippers, repeat "There's no place like home", and fly back to Kansas, is not helpful.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 12, 2007 2:13 AM

We had 7500 service personnel die on duty during the Clinton years, and the yearly figure was even higher during Carter's term.

Except for 59 combat deaths, all the deaths in 1993-2000 were from accident, illness or suicide. (This at a time when every deployment came with a chorus of Republicans screaming about the risk, the cost, the lack of an exit strategy, the danger of another Vietnam, etc, etc.)

These deaths have not stopped happening - they just aren't widely reported. They never are. "Soldier gets hit by truck in Fort Drum, dies" is a tragedy, but it's not news. The combat deaths in Iraq, on top of the continuing death toll from accident and illness, mean that the rate of death in the military has doubled since 2002.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200702230005 has the figures from the DOD.

You should also know that, in almost every war in history, deaths from disease outnumber deaths from combat.

Finally, I should imagine that the number was higher under Carter because the US military was almost twice as big. The Army and Marines are working so hard right now because of the massive troop and spending cuts imposed by - yes! - Dick Cheney and George Bush in 1990-1992. Clinton left the armed services bigger and better-funded than he found them.

Posted by ajay | December 12, 2007 6:09 AM

Childish magical thinking to the effect that we can just click the heels of our jackboots, repeat "We're in it to win it!", and fly off to Iraq, is not helpful.

This moron doesn't know the difference between combat fatalities and the usual deaths you see in any organization with nearly a million members in it.

And Iraq is a "vital national interest" - if you're an oil company or a war profiteer like Cheney. To everyone else, it's a gigantic fucking sinkhole for two trillion dollars of taxpayer money that could be better spent cleaning up this country.

Fucking moron.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 12, 2007 6:38 AM

Dance, dance, dance. That is, dance around the issue.

The Democrats don't bring up the war because it is going well. If they bring up the war, they remind the entire country that they wanted to cut and run six months ago (Harry Reid STILL wants to cut and run today! Is anyone going to bring this stuff up in a Democratic debate?).

The Republicans don't bring up the war because while it is going well, its not over. It could go poorly again, right after they talk positively about it. Besides, it went worse than we all hoped, regardless of how its going now.

Pundits don't bring up the war because they have been wrong every time they had the opportunity to say something (positive in the beginning, negative towards the Surge six months ago). Beside, most of them are democrats, and don't want to see their little darlings embarassed by the cut-and-run mentality of six months ago.

Americans don't like to lose wars. It now appears that we might not lose this one. Democrats are the usual lose-happy cowards, and Republicans aren't sure yet. Everything else is just dance, dance, dancin' around these basic facts.

Sk

Posted by Sk | December 12, 2007 8:01 AM

Looks like Robert Powell takes over for Al in the off hours. Wonder if they get paid the same per-post rate.

Robert may be more erudite than Al, but the implication that George can stop Death itself really blows Al's bait-and-switch shtick into second place. As ajay notes, people die regardless of occupation, and the size of the base population makes the overall numbers higher. Try to get your apples and oranges straight, Rob.

Posted by LittlePig | December 12, 2007 8:14 AM

Sk, Americans don't like to lose wars

Um, Sk, but Americans already won this war (criminal aggression that it was) back in 2003. What is it they are afraid of losing now?

Posted by abb1 | December 12, 2007 8:21 AM

I think pseudonymous in nc has it pretty much right. It's quite obvious that the Democrats in Congress were completely unwilling to do anything meaningful to force redeployment from Iraq. Forcing actual filibusters, much less refusing to bring funding bills to the floor was completely taken off of the table. After repeated capitulations by Congressional Dems, it becomes quite clear that both sides basically agree to keep the current policy - in which case, the power of the war as a political issue is completely neutralized. When Beinart and Brooks talk about the war being a non-issue, this is what they are talking about. The force of the anti-war sentiment among Democrats has been completely blunted by the fact that their leadership has pretty much given up. So to me, it's not that surprising that elite debate has wandered in other directions...

Posted by Seth | December 12, 2007 9:05 AM

Nikkos, you seem to have said that you think the Iraq war issue is of no salience because Hillary is ahead in the polls. I said that that's not true, because most people believe Hillary is as anti-war as the rest of the Democratic field.

Clarified?

Posted by Soullite | December 12, 2007 9:09 AM

Small mercy that troops are "living" despite traumatic brain injuries and shattered bodies? Small mercy indeed.

Posted by phil | December 12, 2007 9:15 AM

Soullite-

Thanks for the clarification. You misunderstood my comments. My comment about the state of the war as a political issue was not predicated on Hillary's poll numbers, but rather was based on my own experience and my own sense of what I am and, more importantly, what I am NOT hearing around the country in regards to the war.

My thesis was simply that the war is fading as an "issue" precisely because, I am sad to say, war opponents have failed to reach a critical mass. I mentioned Hillary because she seems to recognize this and has already begin to tack away from the anti-war wing of the party.

Thanks for your comments.

Posted by nikkos | December 12, 2007 9:45 AM

pow wo: "I've long been sure that if the U.S. did depart Iraq, leaving it to the Iraqis (imagine the audacity), and then the possible, loudly-advertised, but I think very unlikely (see Basra, post-British), scenario of a mass slaughter worse than we have "overwatched" in fact ensued, we would never even hear about it here, except in a few remote corners of our media. "

Not if it was useful to the military-industrial complex - remember Cambodia. It was carefully inserted into the US public's minds that this was due to withdrawal from Vietnam. The truth, of course, was that the US war helped the Khmer Rouge take power, and that the US supported the Khmer Rouge on occasion.

I have no problem believing that, twenty years from now, lots of nasty sh*t in Iraq will be blamed on the 'cut and run Dhimmiecrats'.

Posted by Barry | December 12, 2007 11:03 AM

Thanks to ajay for a factual and coherent response, something I've come to accept is a rarity here. Of course when you're fighting a war overall casualties are higher-the miraculous thing is that compared to any other war in our history how close they are to the peacetime numbers now.

But then, what I actually said was that Matt's idea of getting military fatalities "down to nothing" is a fantasy, and it seems like a diagnostic fantasy to me. It's not just apples and oranges, there's no sense of proportion at all in evidence when the "anti-war wing" discusses these matters.

As Seth and nikkos seem to recognize, "war opponents" have been a distinct minority for nearly all of the going on two decades we've been fighting in and around Iraq. Although the core of true believers has been augmented in polls by lots of people who are disgusted by the way the war's been conducted, it would be a mistake to believe that they're all now buying the Michael Moore/Daily Kos line. They're primarily opposed not so much to the war as to LOSING the war. See Sk above for a concise synopsis.

Iraq is the keystone state in a region officially designated as one of vital national interest by Jimmy Carter, and its importance has only grown since then. No one without a membership card for the lunatic fringe in his wallet disputes it. We are not likely under any likely administration to abandon our interests, allies and honor there because of the case made relentlessly, and unsuccessfully, for years by the peace-at-any-price faction.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 12, 2007 11:27 AM

Robert Powell-

Funny, you are misconstruing my comments as well- apparently to back up your belief that an antiwar position is an incorrect one. I don't appreciate you misrepresenting my point of view on this issue. So I'll say it again: the problem with the anti-war crowd- of which I count myself as a proud part- is not that they are anti-war; rather, it's that this message has not been taken up by the broader populace to the extent that it moves political actors.

In the future, please make your own arguments rather than appropriating and misrepresenting mine.

Posted by nikkos | December 12, 2007 12:07 PM

There may be a "small mercy" in that U.S. military lives lost have been historically low, but let us not forget that modern logistics and medicine are saving soldiers' lives in unprecedented numbers and, therefore, we have a ghastly number of maimed veterans and other 'walking woundeds.'

Also, the vast number (albeit basically uncounted)of Iraqi casualties should not be factored out of the dreadful costs of this unnecessary intervention.

Posted by Ed | December 12, 2007 1:00 PM

Thanks to ajay for a factual and coherent response, something I've come to accept is a rarity here.

Sorry about that. Maybe you should go comment on another forum where the people are more up to your exacting intellectual standards.

Posted by James Gary | December 12, 2007 3:37 PM

If I'd made a total ass of myself cheerleading on the war in its early stages like Beinart, I'd probably like to see people forget it too. Why does that schmuck have an ounce of credibility in anyone's eyes?

Posted by Gus | December 12, 2007 3:55 PM

nikkos--I can't frankly see any difference between my "war opponents have been a distinct minority", and your "war opponents have failed to reach a critical mass", or "this message has not been taken up by the larger populance...".

In any case, if there's a difference here I can't find, I apologize for any misrepresentation. That's definitely not my intent, nor to characterize your position as "incorrect". I disagree with it, and think most Americans have pretty clearly done so over the years, but that doesn't make it incorrect per se. Just a political liability.

Mr. Gary--thanks for the invitation, but I can manage. I don't think it's a particularly exacting intellectual standard to prefer factual counterarguments to boorish sloganeering and personal attacks. Even a partisan echo chamber like this one has a chance to improve. I'm guardedly optimistic.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 12, 2007 4:08 PM