Warner Todd Huston
December 6, 2005
Dean spills anti-war beans ... again
By Warner Todd Huston

I hate to say it but I love Howard Dean. Oops, I mean DOCTOR Howard Dean. We must give him his due, of course. He is exactly what everyone imagined he would be as the DNC chairman; a lose cannon, an out of control demagogue, and slightly loopy to boot.

In an interview on WOAI Radio, San Antonio, Dean has said it is impossible for the US to win in Iraq. No, I am not misinterpreting his words to suit my "right wing, neo-con" ends, he really said we cannot win.

"(The) idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," the good Doctor opined. Yes, he said it just that way. He thinks that we cannot win no matter what we do. Amazing, no?

Dean went on to say, "I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

So, he wants to compare a conflict where we lost 57,000 or so soldiers over an eleven-year span to one where we have lost around 2,000 over a three-year span. Vietnam losses averaged a dismal 5,000 a year but in Iraq we have lost around 2,000 over a three year span, an average loss of under 700 a year. As military losses go, there just is no comparison between them.

Yes it is horrible to lose a single soldier but here is a little bit of perspective:

Between the years 1980 and 2004 we lost nearly an average of 1,000 soldiers each year killed in accidents, from illness, and from other causes. By comparison, in Iraq, an actual war, we have lost less than half of the average past loss from accidents. Amazingly — and sadly — In 1980 alone 1,556 soldiers died in accidents.
(View these stats in a Dept. of Defense PDF file at http://www.dior.whs.mil/mmid/casualty/Death_Rates.pdf)

In military terms, when someone says that we cannot win a war the first thing one imagines is that the cost to our troops is too high. But in military terms, it just isn't the case that we have lost too many soldiers in our involvement in Iraq to date. A military defeat indicates that the loss of men, material, and political advantage is not conducive to victory. In such a case, a new strategy is called for.

This is not a description of Iraq today, or any day since we went in there. Sure, there is room for alteration of policy, but it just cannot be said we are losing this war in military terms. We are, however, beginning to see the Democrats' selfish desire for political advantage making a dent in political advantage for our involvement. Unfortunately for all of us, it is based on outright lies.

As usual, Dean is so far off in his analysis that one wonders if he is even commenting on the same situation. But, he isn't alone. He is not too far off from the ill-conceived notions of most Democrats, Joe Lieberman aside. He even admitted that they are searching in the dark for a viable plan (to steal a John Kerryism) for policy in Iraq. He said that the democrats are finally getting close to "coalescing" on a position.

Translation: they are still throwing things against the wall to see what will stick. This means that they have no real grasp of what to do in Iraq and are just trying to find something, anything to base a response to Bush upon. This also means that they aren't thinking about what is good for the country, the military, or for Iraq but only what is good for the Democratic Party.

Any way you wrap a "strategic withdrawal," as the democrats are calling their current policy trial balloons, you cannot disguise the fact that it will be perceived the world over as the US cutting and running without finishing the job or even securing our long term strategic interests. And with the fact that we have lost fewer soldiers in Iraq than just about any three-year or longer military conflict in recent memory, we will reveal a weakness that will speak far louder to our enemies than our lightening quick removal of Saddam. We will be returning to Clintonesque displays of US "paper tiger" policies.

Unsurprisingly, in his interview, Dean also pulled out of his tattered playbook, a reference to the left's favorite era; Watergate. "What we see today is very much like what was going in Watergate. It turns out there is a lot of good evidence that President Bush did not tell the truth when he was asking Congress for the power to go to war. The President said last week that Congress saw the same intelligence that he did in making the decision to go to war, and that is flat out wrong. The President withheld some intelligence from the Senate Intelligence Committee. He withheld the report from the CIA that in fact there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq), that they did not have a nuclear program. They (the White House) selectively gave intelligence to the United States Senate and the United States Congress and got them to give the go ahead to attack these people."

Yeah, ya gotta hand it to the good "Doctor." When you have no policy, when your Party is going in more directions than the cartoon character "Tasmanian devil" whirling about like a tornado, when you have so little knowledge of matters military, it's always good to fall back on the tried and true...

Just lie.

© Warner Todd Huston

 

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Warner Todd Huston

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