Daily Archives: 08/December/2005

Dr. Dean to the rescue

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More words of wisdom from the good doctor:

Dean says the Democrat position on the war is ‘coalescing,’ and is likely to include several proposals.
“I think we need a strategic redeployment over a period of two years,” Dean said. “Bring the 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops home immediately. They don’t belong in a conflict like this anyway.

As Dorkafork at INDC notes:

Dean apparently doesn’t know that the Guard and Reserves contain many of the specialties needed in Iraq:

Civil Affairs soldiers are the field commander’s link to the civil authorities in his area of operation. With specialists in every area of the government, they can assist a host government meet its people’s needs and maintain a stable and viable civil administration.

Civil Affairs soldiers possess unique training, skills and experience. Since the majority of the Civil Affairs forces are in the Reserve component, these soldiers bring to the Army finely honed skills practiced daily in the civilian sector such as judges, physicians, bankers, health inspectors and fire chiefs.

The Democratic National Committee Chairman believes these forces “don’t belong” in this sort of conflict.

My daughter is a Civil Affairs Specialist in the Reserves and has done two deployments to Afghanistan in the past 3 years. These unsung heros are playing a key role in rebuilding infrastructure and establishing civil government in these countries. It sickens me that the leader of the opposition party is so clueless and for purely political purposes advocates a course of action that would almost surely result in unravelling so much of what we have achieved.

I guess I have a low tolerance for ignorance generally. But willful ingnorance to this degree is simply inexcusable. I take solace in the fact that most Americans recognize a fool when they see one. Still, Dr. Dean makes me want to scream “Yeaharrrrrrrrrrrrgh”.

Defining victory

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In a comment to my earlier post equating Korea with Iraq, Carol noted that an OpEd by Anne Applebaum in today’s Washington Post made a similar point, although she reached a more ambiguous conclusion. Thought provoking and worth the read.

For me, if 50 years from now Iraq looks anything like the Republic of Korea I’ll call it a win. No, it is not a perfect situation here, but when one considers the alternative of a unified Korean peninsula under the boot of Kim, Jung Il it is hard to dispute that our sacrafice in blood and treasure for the freedom of our Korean brothers and sisters* was worth it.

*I actually mean that literally. I see so many similarities between the physical features of the Korean people and Native Americans that I am convinced it was ancient Koreans who migrated across the land bridge during the ice age to populate North America.

The new Copperheads

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Ed Morrissey at Captain’s Quarters posts today on the subject of the Democrats call for retreat in Iraq. He recalls that the Democrats took a similar position in 1864 when the party platform called for a negotiated peace with the Confederate States of America and a withdrawal of U.S. troops from the South. It’s standard bearer was General George McClellan, who used his military credibility to make the case that the war could not be won.

Not even during the Vietnam War did a major American party position itself to support abject retreat as a wartime political platform. For that, one has to go back to the Civil War, when the Democrats demanded a negotiated peace with the Confederate States of America and a withdrawal from the South. Celebrating the popularity of former General George McClellan, who had come from the battlefield to represent a party whose platform demanded a negotiated settlement (which McClellan later disavowed), the Confederates assumed that the war could be over within days of McClellan’s presumed victory over the controversial and hated Abraham Lincoln. Even some Republicans began to question whether Lincoln should stand for reelection–until Sherman took Atlanta and exposed McClellan as a defeatist and an incompetent of the first order.

Murtha’s demand for a pullout gave the party’s leadership a chance to openly embrace defeatism, much as McClellan did for Northern Democrats in 1864, using McClellan’s field experience for the credibility to argue that the American Army could not hope to defeat the enemy it faced.

History is a funny thing, isn’t it?

Howard Dean is the standard bearer for the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, that standard is now a white flag.