The Anchoress

The next Iraqi or American official to be asked about “civil war” might want to reply by asking the journalist who, precisely, is fighting whom, and why Iraqi security officers of all backgrounds continue to risk their lives for the elected Baghdad government. The truth is that the enemies of Mr. Maliki’s government are terrorists and thugs. Mr. Bush could help give Mr. Maliki the confidence he needs for the tough fight ahead–first against the Sunni terrorists, then against the Shiite revenge killers–by assuring him that U.S. policy will be based on this fact. - Today’s WSJ Editorial

Whenever I see a reporter earnestly scrunch up his or her brow and preface a question with, “Mr. President (or whoever), people say…” I always find myself wishing that the one being questioned would stop the reporter and ask, “who? Who are the people saying that?”

Reporters have used “people say…” to get away with, “we in the press think…” or even, “I, Helen Moran Gregory, think…” for a very long time. No wonder they’ve decided that if they want to call a thing a Civil War they can just go ahead and do that. They want their Walter Cronkite moment wherein they “stop” a war, by “turning the nation against it.”

Because some think bugging out of Iraq, to leave the Iraqis to their fate and further embolden Iran, Al Qaeda and the rest would be a very good thing…because…because…lemmee think.

Oh, right! I remember now! “Because war is bad for children and other living things and although we spend more on education than we ever have, we long for the day when schools have all the money they’ll ever need and the military has to have a bake sale to afford a tank!”

Very forward thinking! Very responsive to the times…if the time is 1972. Bring those troops home! We care about the troops, we’re really compassionate about those troops! Put them in Okinawa until we need them for something real, not this fake war!

It must be a fake war! American soil and American interests have not been attacked in 5 years!

How can you have a war if you’re not being attacked! It’s not like back in the 1990’s when our embassies and naval vessels were being attacked an average of every 18 months or so and we were losing, typically, the usual average of about 500 military personnel a year from simple accidents and training mishaps. (Did you know that? The US military tragically loses about 500 men and women a year due to accidents. When you remember that, then this war’s sad toll of losses suddenly comes into perspective a little. We are, after all, at war. We are, after all, trying to destabilize and defang a monster called Islamofascist terrorism, whose adherents have been attacking us or holding us hostage since…why, since the 1970’s, that ever-present decade!)

But, oh, wait. That was was “peacetime.” I remember that. Except for Kosovo (not really a war, we just bombed the crap out of things from the sky, but that was all…and those troops were “out of there and home by Christmas,” right? Ummm…right? Oh, wait, that was what we heard when we sent troops to Bosnia, in 1995.

We’re still in Bosnia, btw, (and yes, the press was putting a “Vietnam,” spin on that too, but a much milder and meeker spin. Vietnam is all they know about war, and all they care to know.)

We’re still in Bosnia because when you commit troops to an area, you don’t bug out simply because the work is hard (war is supposed to be easy?) or because the know-it-alls in the press say you should. Back in 1945, after VE day, people understood that. President Clinton seemed to understand it in Bosnia.

Bush has done his job too well. It bears repeating: we have not been attacked since 9/11 - even though AlQaeda used to regularly bust on us. He took the war to the terrorist’s own nest and is trying hard to keep his promise to America - that he would protect her people from harm - and to Iraq, that he would help them to live in freedom, not under the jackboot of a tyrant, not prey to the opportunist’s who would bear down upon them to replace Saddam.

He’s done his job so well that after attack, hurricane, flood and more, unemployment is 4.4% (sorry if Clinton got praise for 5.6%, then Bush gets the credit for 4.4…) and against all the dire predictions the economy is growing and all the “terrible” doomsaying doesn’t seem to be emptying the stores or restaurants. He’s done his job so well that we feel safe enough to criticize, which is a good thing. But he’s also done his job so well that the idea of war is something obscure to us - we think we can sit around in comfy chairs and settle everything.

President Bush’s biggest mistake regarding our action in Iraq (and there have been plenty of them - wars are notorious for not going as planned, and no perfect one has yet been fought) was in not asking much of the American people. When we were in Vietnam, the military took all the risks while the citizenry indulged themselves in “flower power” and “love beads” and “consciousness raising.” Unlike their parents before them, they were not asked to gather scrap metal and rubber tires to outfit the military (the “military industrial complex” took care of that stuff). They were not asked to inconvenience themselves at all, and that seemed to result in a great deal of navel-gazing, lots of “noble-sounding” rhetoric, and an attitude that said, “bug out, maaaan, why do we have to watch this stuff every night at supper? Makes me feel bad. Stop it.”

We “stopped” Vietnam, and millions of people were slaughtered and a nation was lost to a communist ideology which suppresses human freedom, human creativity and human potential, an ideology that shrivels the spirit and succeeds only in spreading the misery. What did we care, it still didn’t touch us. All that stuff happened “over there, somewhere…”

If our sense of distance from Iraq leads us to “stop” this time, people will be slaughtered and nations may well be lost to a theo-fascist ideology which will suppress human freedom, human creativity and human potential. And this time…it’s gonna touch us. Because unlike the communists of Vietnam, who stayed where they were…these Islamofascists are already here. They’re in America. They’re in Canada. They’re in Europe. And they’re just waiting.

They’re waiting to see what America and her allies will do. If she continues to fight, America will continue to weaken AlQaeda. If that weakness can be sustained while Middle Eastern liberty is allowed to gain a foothold, it will eventually break AlQ and de-glamorize terrorism as a means of movement. If America folds, if she “stops” the war, because the NY Times and NBC don’t like it, what do you think will happen next?

Think hard. The answer is important.

Related: Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard points out (via Doug Ross) that the Department of Defense has had to design a website to counter the misinformation and distortions to which the military and the war are daily subjected. You’ll want to go visit it and see what they’re up against.

Gaius asks: What are the “defenders” of freedom of the press going to do when the war comes to them? And it will. If the people they have been promoting over their own country’s welfare ever win, the cheerleaders will be the first against the wall.

Speaking of which, Ed Morrissey points out that The Privacy and Civil Liberty Board has expressed some delight in how hard the American Government has worked to protect the privacy of American citizens. Writes Ed: Once again, the public’s support for a tough but necessary program has been reinforced by its careful execution by the NSA. This should not surprise anyone, as even the New York Times acknowledged that they had no information that the agency broke any laws or violated anyone’s civil rights when they broke the story. All they had were “concerns” about the program’s legality from their anonymous tipsters.

So, once again…sound and fury signifying nothing. And we’ll see the NY Times with a big headline on this assessment on page one, above the fold, right? Brian Williams will lead with this story, right? Maybe at least Jon Stewart will bring it up?