In last Monday’s Washington Post, Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung wrote, “The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.”
One of the funnier little episodes of the past week has been watching the right decide whether or not they should take this advice; decide whether or not they should declare victory over al Qaeda.
That the US cannot declare victory over al Qaeda is generally agreed. The reasons vary; Democrats, journalists, and even, tangetially, al Qaeda itself are cited. Out of this confusion, it takes Dick Cheney to provide the right a real lesson in rhetorical consistency.
Some in the right blogosphere blame our inability to declare victory on journalists.
From Wake Up America:
First lets deal with the Wapo article, then I am going to give you my personal analysis of why it is too soon to claim that al-Qaeda is crippled and how our unethical journalists of today, to which I will name and show examples of two such journalists with no ethics, (one is a Wapo writer to boot) are part of the reason that it is too soon.
All al Qaeda has to do to rebut it is set off one car bomb. The media would be all over it, and the shallow talking-head pundits would latch on with “How can you declare victory in Iraq when a car bomb just went off in Baghdad today!” etc, etc.
Which is sort of the problem with declaring any sort of victory in Iraq. The left and their mouthpieces in the media just aren’t going to let it stand.
Some on the right boobtubeosphere say, only slightly less entertainingly, that if we declare victory over al Qaeda, al Qaeda might blow stuff up.
MORT KONDRACKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ROLL CALL: General Petraeus is not declaring victory over Al Qaeda and, I think, the CENTCOM commander is not either, and there are two good reasons why. First, Al Qaeda might stage some sort of catastrophic spectacular and discredit any claims of victory.
Also on Fox News, we can’t declare victory because, well, we lie about declaring victory:
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: The idea of declaring victory is, I think, really a very bad one given our history with declarations of victory.
And anyway if we say we won the war on terror, Dems might say we won the war on terror:
[KONDRACKE]: And the second thing is that Congress might say OK, if we have defeated Al Qaeda, let’s pull out. And we do not want to do that because there is still work to be done there, not least of which is the fact that the Iranians are still aiding Shiite militias that we still have to suppress.
More intelligently, Dan McLaughlin at Redstate latches on to the idea that if al Qaeda is down in Iraq, it must be because they aren’t in Iraq, but elsewhere. (The WaPo article says officials are “unsure” but “concerned” that new al Qaeda recruits are going to Afghanistan.) Less intelligently, he mentions New Jersey.
You see, regardless of the precise nature of the organizational charts of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, the basic fact remains: we are facing an enemy that operates across national borders, mostly shares common goals and common religious and poilitical ideology, and draws from the same pools of resources. Al Qaeda and its fellow travelers operate in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, even in New Jersey and North Carolina.
All of which are interesting reasons why can’t declare victory over al Qaeda. Some of the reasons even at least notionally involve, ya know, al Qaeda — though it is interesting to see the right tie itself in rhetorical knots as the threat of some sort of end to their rationale for being in Iraq looms.
But the real lesson for how to do these things was provided by the Vice President today in Landsdowne, Virginia. Speaking to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Vice President Cheney said:
The terrorists want to end all American and Western influence in the Middle East. Their goal in that region is to seize control of a country so they have a base from which they can launch attacks and wage war against governments that do not meet their demands. Ultimately they seek to establish a totalitarian empire through the Middle East, and outward from there. They want to arm themselves with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons; they want to destroy Israel; they intimidate all Western countries; and to cause mass death here in the United States.
That’s how you do it, right-wingers! A studious commitment to terror, come what may, is how you win the war on terror.
Get it straight.
8 comments
Skip to comment form
With Darth Cheney’s one percent doctrine, victory can only mean defeat! A perfect formulation for the the new growth through global instability.
exactly what they are doing. It a simple strategy, easy to remember.
Oh the Humanity!
“[Their] OUR goal in that region is to seize control of a country so [they] WE have a base from which [they] WE can launch attacks and wage war against governments that do not meet [their] OUR demands. Ultimately [they] WE seek to establish a totalitarian empire through the Middle East, and outward from there.”
Dick would know, if anybody would know, right?
Right:
Except that Dick doesn’t have to say anything to create terror. He just has to be himself. It’s what he does.
And Dick is his own fan club. Outside of a few peasants, who supports Dick and George’s Iraq debacle?
And outside of a few peasants, Dick is probably one of the last men standing who still believes that anyone is stupid enough to believe that Dick makes any sense at all.