Hi, SS, welcome aboard! I doubt if much here will interest a Canadian, but hang around if you like. For the rest of us, here is Dick Morris's latest take.
Dick Morris
The Political Life
Dubya should copy Nixon’s war strategy, not LBJ’s
Increasingly, it looks as if the key factor in the 2004 presidential race is whether President Bush follows the example of Lyndon Johnson or that of Richard Nixon in his conduct of the war in Iraq. As the election approaches, he’s got to decide.
As public support for the war in Vietnam faded in late 1967 and early 1968, Johnson faced the choice of cutting and running or staying and fighting. He chose to remain in Vietnam, doubling his bet with more troops and further bombing. With no end in sight, voters turned on LBJ and backed peace candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy in larger and larger numbers.
Facing a deteriorating political situation, Johnson threw in the towel, opting to end his presidency rather than the war that had come to consume it.
Four years later, Richard Nixon proved a lot smarter. His escalation of the war in Vietnam in the first two years of his presidency had brought antiwar sentiment to a fevered level. Peace activist George McGovern surged in the polls, winning the Democratic nomination and threatening Nixon’s grasp on the presidency.
But Nixon, unlike Johnson, saw the danger ahead and began bringing troops home, ending years of annual escalation. He changed the draft to a lottery system that minimized selective-service exposure to only one year and assured more than half of those still vulnerable that their high lottery numbers protected them against the
draft — allowing young Bill Clinton, for one, to breathe easier.
The result? By 1972, the war had lost its political clout and McGovern was out of issues. When Henry Kissinger announced, on the eve of the 1972 election, that “peace is at hand,” Nixon surged to a huge win.
If George W. Bush wants to get reelected, he had better decide to emulate Nixon, not Johnson. He needs to “Iraqize” this war, just as Nixon Vietnamized his conflict.
To do so does not mean Bush must abandon his goals in Iraq. If he does a good job of training a new Iraqi army and local police forces, he can turn the task of controlling the country over to them, providing U.S. logistical support, money and equipment.
He should keep an American military presence in Iraq, presumably for decades, to ensure that Saddam and the Baath Party do not return to power and to project force into the region as necessary.
But he needs to get Americans out of the line of fire. If he goes into the fall elections having to explain away the continuing loss of American lives every day in pursuit of what he once dismissed contemptuously as “nation-building,” he will lose. It took 30,000 to 40,000 dead in Vietnam (of an eventual 58,000) for Americans to get
sick of the mess. Our threshold today is a lot lower.
Democrats are showing their fear that such an exit strategy is just what Bush has in mind. Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) accuses Bush of preparing to “cut and run,” hardly the traditional stance of a peace candidate.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), moving inexorably to the left to keep pace with the rank and file of her party, criticizes Bush for following a “political timetable” in Iraq.
The Democratic Party needs failure in Iraq to animate its chances of victory. If Bush denies it to them, it will be a dismal 2004 for their party. It will not be enough for Democrats to decry ongoing instability in Iraq or to wring their hands at continuing insurgent attacks. If Americans aren’t dying, it’s not an issue in the election.
Iraqization need not be the equivalent of surrender. In fact, there is every reason to believe that it will work, not only in foiling attacks by insurgents but in preventing them as well. With Iraqis firmly in control of their country, the nationalistic attraction of killing the colonial occupier will wane. And who is better at divining when and where Iraqi guerrillas will attack, Iraqis or Americans?
With the vast majority of Iraqis opposed to a Baathist comeback, Iraqization can and will work, both in Iraq and in the U.S. elections.
thehill.com |
