Ross, filling in for Sully:
Here’s my question: Is there any imaginable point in any imaginable conflict where Mark Levin would admit that the United States had lost a war? I don’t mean to be flip, and I say this as someone who generally thinks that the U.S. hasn’t necessarily lost in Iraq; we probably have, but the outcome is still sufficiently in doubt and the stakes sufficiently high that I want to give the “surge,” however ineffectual it may prove (or may already be proving), at least a Tom Friedmanesque six months to work. But even allowing that Reid shouldn’t have said what he said, it’s still the case that the United States can lose wars, like any world power; that we may well lose this one (in some sense, at least); and that at some point, in this struggle or another, some American politician will say “we’ve lost the war” and be entirely correct. Given this reality, I wish Levin (and many of his fellow “till the last dog dies” Iraq War backers) would clarify whether there’s any situation in which they would greet a U.S. defeat abroad with any response save a rote invocation of the stab-in-the-back narrative.
No, and there aren’t any scenarios.
RSA
There is a sidestep that neocons can take, though it’s hardly more palatable. They could ask, “How can the U.S. be said to lose someone else’s civil war?” Of course, that would entail admitting that the U.S. had started that civil war, but they could always just blame the intransigence of the Iraqis for not coming up to expectations. (Some Republicans have laid the groundwork for this move, even if Bush mocks the notion.)
Rome Again
No shit! Perhaps we should have thought of that before banging the war drums.
BlogReeder
I think in order for Mark Lavin to admit defeat the republicans would have to admit it first. Would he then go for it? Since this is hypothetical, there is no answer.
However is there any thing that has happened that the republicans have had to change their minds on? I think we can use the fact that no WMD were found in Iraq as a similar example. The administration used WMD as a pretext to the war but none were found. Bush admitted it here (a two-for, Cheney admitted too) So what does Mark say?:
This sounds like heās not buying in.
craigie
Nothing makes me happier than watching conservatives upbraid conservatives. Long may it continue.
badtux
Indeed. If we were at war with China and Chinese soldiers were marching down the streets of Washington D.C., Mark Levin would be frantically munching Cheetos in his mommy’s basement and shouting “Clap harder! Clap harder! We’re winning!” Reality and the Mark Levins of the world have only a thin and passing acquaintance. Very thin.
Vladi G
Yes. In fact, I would say there are cases in which Levin would be almost guaranteed to “admit” that the United States had lost a war. It basically requires nothing more than to have been started and ended under a Democratic administration.
He may well admit that we’ve lost this war, but only as a pretext to blame the Democrats.
badtux
Oh, here is Mark Levin’s response to Ross:
You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Ross, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Ross.
When did the Republican Party start using George Orwell’s 1984 as a manual for governance? Curious penguins want to know!
merlallen
Republican’ts should be used to losing wars. This plus Vietnam and maybe Afghanistan makes three. Reagan did kick the shit out of Panama though.
And poopy Bush along with 43 other countries did kick Rumsfailed’s buddy Saddam out of Kuwait.
And Lincoln with the Civil War.
It takes a Democrat to win a serious war.
Pb
Hmmm.
Is there any imaginable point in this conflict where Sully would admit that the United States had lost this war? What about this Ross guy?
Asked and answered; thanks, Ross!
That’s your answer? More than four years later, longer than the US was in WWII, with the Iraqi dead somewhere between six and seven figures, millions displaced, and the country in ruins, and you’re still saying to give it another Friedman? Screw you, dude. I’ll tell you what, I’ll help chip in for your all-expenses paid trip to Iraq–one way. Then just go check it out for us for–oh, say, another six months or more. Are we winning now?
tBone
We’ve always been at war with
Al-QuedaIraqIran, moonbat.maf54 and Ted Haggard are interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
PaulB
I don’t know that I’d go that far, but my goodness, it’s long past time for someone to restore some sanity to the Republican Party. Unfortunately, the lunatics are still quite firmly in control, even after having lost the last election so badly. I think it’s going to take a defeat of epic proportions in 2008 to finally discredit these idiots, once and for all.
Bruce Moomaw
Having observed Levin for several years, I can say with confidence that there are no scenarios that would make him even act non-psychotic — he really is one of the genuinely loony political extremists.
dslak
I say we give the Surge another Friedman before we try to determine whether it’s working or not.
jake
Shorter Mark Levin:
I just watched The Matrix for the 70,000th time and it is still the coolest movie EVA!! Plus, I feel strange tinglings when they stick that big thing in Reeves’ belly button.
Jesus Christ on the El. Is Levin always like that? Is he for real?
Wilfred
Pb has it right – it’s the Iraqi people who have paid the price, but for the right-wingers they’re just collateral damage.
People like Levin, all the right-wingers actually, have sacrificed reason for ideological purity, which in turn leads to the schizophrenic logic of supporting the ‘liberation’ of Iraq while routinely denigrating Islam and Arabs. The only way to maintain that kind of psycho-tension is to act as if nobody actually lives in Iraq – except, that is, for American soldiers and al-qaeda terrorists.
Now we’re reduced to building walls inside Baghdad, just like the one that surrounds Levin’s brain.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Panama was Bush I. Reagan kicked the shit out of Grenada.
Also, he won the Cold War. The Cold War against Grenada. Those fuckers weren’t letting our tourists use their beaches. Now, whenever I want to escape this Arctic fucking North American chill, I can mosey on down to a Caribbean paradise. Courtesy of the GOP.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
The only place in the Caribbean Clinton ever did anything about was Haiti. And that place is still a madhouse. You think I’m spending my tourism dollars on Haiti, when I could go to Grenada and Panama instead? Get real, moonbat.
Ted
It would also be interesting to get guys like this to define what “winning” would mean at this point.
demimondian
I think that I’d be content with a definition of “whining”
tBone
I wish the cut’n’run Defeatocrats would realize that Iraq is just a Grenada that hasn’t happened yet.
ThymeZone
I had a surge, and then I took some Pepto-Bismol and it went away.
Does George Bush know of the Pepto-Bismol Effect?
If his appearances in the last couple days are any indication, he has never heard of Pepto Bismol. Was that really him, or has some really really stupid imposter started doing his appearances for him?
Tsulagi
Yeah, it would. Unless the goalposts have been moved again, I believe the mission stated by the admin is for Iraq to become a shining beacon of democracy the region will crave being irresistibly drawn to emulate, and the country will become a major ally in the WOT. Known truth.
Letās see, weāre getting into the fifth year of this thing with no real end in sight. Yep, those living in neighboring countries are totally jealous. The pleasures of AK shopping during McCain-like strolls in the marketplace. Learning how to spot an IED before it spots you. Taking photos of surviving friends, relatives, and neighbors waving goodbye as they pack up and leave the country. And much, much more. Yes, theyāre already asking why are they missing out on years of democracy birth pangs everyday Iraqis enjoy.
Iraq becoming a major ally in the WOT? I got nuthin. Thatās too ludicrous to snark. Wouldnāt know where to begin.
Petraeus, like Abazaid and Casey starting in 04, recently said the military will not be able to win this thing alone. Like his predecessors, heās probably hoping for a comprehensive, intelligent strategy from the administration. Good luck getting that, Petraeus. As in Iraq, there are no ponies under the pile of shit in the WH.
John S.
The leftist run media has yet again succeeded in convincing the world of a lie:
And conservatives aren’t afraid to let you know how wrong you were. Filthy liberals.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
It’s like a hundred Grenadas happening over and over and over again, day in and day out. That’s the way I look at it. We’re not losing one war, we’re winning several hundred small wars on a constant basis. That keeps me Republican, anyway. And that’s the important thing.
Tulkinghorn
We can’t lose this war, because the policy makers who came up with it have so far failed to define what winning would look like. Besides, Bush likes this war as it has admirably served his domestic political goals.
The point is the struggle, and we can’t lose the struggle (like one might lose car keys) until one stops struggling. Then we will need some new pretext for expanding federal executive power.
George Bush found this war – he is not about to lose it. He won’t lose it until the Democrats take over and give it away.
grumpy realist
The only thing that will stop this war is if we start replacing those poor soldiers in Iraq with all the “rah-rah-fight-Iraqis” here in the US.
We seem to have a population that thinks the blood spilled in Iraq has no more consequences than Fake Blood Color II.
tBone
DeathVictory by a thousand cuts!Derek
Are you guys willing to take responsibility for the million or more who will die when we leave? If Iraq is all the republicans fault, then will the democrats get the credit for Sunni/Shiite blood bath that follows?
On a side note: If it takes democrats to really win a war, would you advocate fire bombing Iraq to break resistance? FDR did. Or just a little nuke in Sadamās home town just like Truman did? All these tactics are how the Democrats won WW2. Are you saying we should do the same?
Tulkinghorn
Um. No.
Democrats did not win because tactics, the won (when they won) because the solid majority of the country backed them.
Why should the Democrats get any blame here? If you accept the premise that whether we leave tomorrow, or next year, in ten years or in one hundred years there will be a bloodbath, then the only difference between the scenarios is the number of American troops killed, then the most patriotic thing is to hurry up and get out.
You might well disagree with that premise, although it has become the predominant one in the country as a whole. But if that premise is correct, then it is profoundly immoral and unpatriotic to draw this out further. It is especially immoral to draw it out so that the opposition, when it gets control, can be cynically blamed for the defeat.
BadTux
The fact of the matter is that, as real conservatives know, the purpose of the United States Government is to look after the best interests of the American people, not the best interests of the Iraqi people. Our goals in Iraq should be based upon what it does for America and Americans, not what it does for (or to) Iraqis. Iraqis killing Iraqis is of supreme disinterest to me. They’ll either figure things out and quit killing each other, or they won’t, either way it’s got nothing to do with America and Americans. Now, American troops being there in the middle of Iraqis killing each other and themselves getting killed while taking sides in a civil war, that *does* bother me.
If there’s something in this Iraq war for America and Americans, someone needs to fill me in. Because all I’m seeing is hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives being spent for something that has nothing to do with America and Americans… (and BTW I opposed Clinton’s interventions in the former Yugoslavia too).
Wilfred
This from a report made last year but only released now; it’s on the NYTimes website. Anybody who cares about the country should take a long look at that article; this one paragraph is a perfect expression of imperialism = capitalism. Killing is business, Iraqis are overhead.
Led by Bush et al., we have disgraced ourselves. As this one paragraph suggests, our work is killing. That’s what American has come to mean in the world; where it once had a certain mystique associated with success and material well-being it has now become metaphor for psycho-killer, whose job is…What?
We have killed enough people, including our own. Every day this occupation continues is another brick in the wall that is being erected around Americans.
Tulkinghorn
since no clear justification has been offered by the administration (and ‘fight them over there so as to not fight them over here’ does not make logical sense), people reasonably conclude there is not honest justification. So people resort to conspiracy theories, like this is all for the benefit of big oil.
Hey, did we ever get to see the minutes from Cheney’s secret consultations with his ‘Energy Task Force’?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
What’s good for Halliburton is good for America. If that’s not clear to you, it’s probably because you hate Halliburton and, by extension, America.
BadTux
Yeah, Tulk, Iraq’s mighty navy has never had the capability of invading America so the notion of Iraq sending tens of thousands of guerillas “over here” to stand out like sore thumbs and be rounded up by the FBI and sent to Gitmo never made any sense. That’s a long freakin’ swim.
I tried on the “war for oil” thingy, but I couldn’t make that fit either. If it was a war for oil, I could get behind it. I mean, c’mon, let’s be real here, the world is going to be hurting as the oil runs out, and I’m as self-interested as the next American down the line. But the problem is that the war just isn’t being run as if it were for oil. I mean, c’mon. Fallujah. There ain’t no g*dd*** oil in Fallujah! So why’d we go in there and level the place and kill thousands of people and lose hundreds of Marines? Hmm?
All the other reasons recently stated seem to have something to do with the welfare of the Iraqi people. Well, charity is fine and good and everything, but forced charity by the government taking my money at gunpoint and giving it to people who aren’t even Americans for reasons that have nothing to do with America and Americans isn’t charity, it’s theft. But I forget, I’m a “paleo-conservative” in today’s “neo-conservative” world. Bah.
Tulkinghorn
I come at the same conclusion from a different direction – as a new-deal style liberal I am all for social engineering. But you have to be realistic and honest about what sort of social engineering works, what does not work well enough to be worth the trouble, and what is so foolish and disastrous as to be crime against the taxpayers and the recipients. Iraq fits that third category pretty neatly.
So if it is a crime, who profits by it?
skip
“whether thereās any situation in which they would greet a U.S. defeat abroad with any response save a rote invocation of the stab-in-the-back narrative.”
The “Dolchstoss” theory has worked so well in the past, because no one wants to lose. Marion Barry was ahead of the game. The bitch set us up in Iraq.
searp
It isn’t clear to me what “losing” means for the US.
Al Qaeda will almost certainly not win, and I think it is a fair bet that the local power brokers take care of all those pesky foreign fighters eventually. Certainly the creed Al Qaeda espouses probably seems just as nutty to a Sunni tribal sheik as it does to us.
Nope, we lose only if we define losing to be chaos in Iraq followed by some sort of government that toes, with more or less enthusiasm an anti-American line. To me, this seems inevitable – we have destroyed the country, what hope is there that a future government will be thankful? If this outcome is a loss, then we will lose, like it or not, unless we are willing to stay for a very long time to make sure this doesn’t happen.
Personally, I think that losing has to be defined in terms of Al Qaeda/Kutbist/Takfiri power. Sure, if they gain in power then we lose. I don’t see that happening.
grumpy realist
Found a wonderful takedown of Mark Steyn’s recent outpourings:
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1082