ALTERNET HAS A PIECE ENTITLED “THE IMPORTANCE OF LOSING THE WAR,” which says about all you need to know regarding the state of the “peace” movement. But then, that was visible before the war, with those who cheered Chrissie Hynde for hoping for defeat then: “she hopes the United States loses if it goes to war with Iraq (‘Bring it on! Give us what we deserve!’).”
Resurrection song is unimpressed. So am I. What kind of American regards an American victory as the worst of outcomes? Jonathan Schell, who told us that the Cold War was unwinnable. And who, one suspects, regrets that it was won.
UPDATE: Reader Scott Helgeson notes that this piece on Alternet faulted the Bush Administration for not doing enough in Afghanistan, just as the one above faults it for doing too much in Iraq. There’s no pleasing some people. Helgeson writes: “One thing I’ve noticed about this ‘pull out of Iraq, quick’ talk is that it is the exact opposite of what they were saying re:Afghanistan. Doesn’t ‘poverty cause terrorism’? Patty Murray is supporting W.’s road-building efforts in Iraq, right?”
And don’t forget the day-care centers!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Chris Stacy emails:
I almost threw this away as simply another example of leftist self-loathing, until I caught this whopper.
“But the United States, precisely because it is a single foreign state, which like all states has a highly self-interested agenda of its own, is incapable of providing Iraq with a government that serves its own people. The United States therefore must, to begin with, surrender control of the operation to an international force. ”
These two sentences, buried 2/3 of the way into the piece, form the entirety of Schell’s actual argument… And yet it is absolutely, completely and 100% conclusory. No evidence, not even any internal logic supports why this is so.
No surprise there.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Ralph Peters writes:
DESPAIR is the preferred narcotic of the intellectual classes. The rest of us must stand up for what we know in our hearts and souls to be right and true. Our cause is just. Our efforts in this great, global war have been admirably successful. Our soldiers have kept us safe and made us proud. We owe them unity, not divisiveness.
No power on this earth can defeat us, unless we defeat ourselves.
Schell’s doing his best. . . . And proving that Andrew Sullivan was entirely right when he wrote that a “fifth column” would emerge from within the ranks of the (self-labeled) intelligentsia.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Some readers think that I’m being too hard on Schell, and that his piece is mere defeatism, rather than actual rooting for an American defeat. I suppose that, title aside, that’s a conceivable reading of the piece, but it’s not how I read it.