The Iraq war 'tipping point'?
Are comments by Sen. Hagel, protests by Sheehan, shifting US attitudes towards continued involvement?
Malcolm Gladwell's 2002 best-selling book, 'The Tipping Point,' argued that under a combination of certain factors (outlined
in blog form here), "radical change is more than a possibility." Some
columnists and politicians from both parties are now wondering if the comments of leading Republican lawmakers like Sen. Chuck Hagel from Nebraska and others, and the actions of protester Cindy Sheehan, signal that
the attitudes toward the war in Iraq are slowly, but surely, moving against the Bush administration.
Speaking Sunday on
ABC-TV's 'This Week,' Sen. Hagel, who won two purple hearts in Vietnam and is also considered by some as a contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, restated his position that the US
needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq.
"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Hagel said on "This Week" on ABC. "But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur."
Hagel said "stay the course" is not a policy. "By any standard, when you analyze 2 1/2 years in Iraq ... we're not winning," he said.
Hagel also "scoffed" at the idea, first put forward last week by top Army general Peter Schoomaker that in a "
worst-case scenario," the US might have to maintain US troops levels of about 100,000 for at least the next four years.
Reuters reported last week that Hagel told reporters who had accompanied him on a tour of his home state, that he could see longtime supporters of the war beginning
to have serious doubts.
"The feeling that I get back here, looking in the eyes of real people, where I knew where they were two years ago or a year ago – they've changed," he said. "These aren't people who ebb and flow on issues. These are rock solid, conservative Republicans who love their country, support the troops and support the president."
Hagel said Bush faced a growing credibility gap. "The expectations that the president and his administration presented to the American people 2 1/2 years ago is not what the reality is today. That's presented the biggest credibility gap problem he's got," he said.
MSNBC reported that other GOP senators appearing on Sunday TV talk shows disagreed with Hagel's assessment that the US is losing the war in Iraq, but "also noted that the public is becoming
more and more concerned and needs to be reassured."
Meanwhile, despite
unrelenting criticism by supporters of the Bush administration, antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan (who was until recently was camped out near President Bush's summer home in Crawford, Texas), continues to "transfix the nation," writes Peter Beinart, editor of the
New Republic and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Beinart, who supported the war when it started, writes that the reason Ms. Sheehan is so successful is that she is
the perfect symbol for the kind of war that is happening in Iraq.
In this era of the professional military, the war has affected many fewer people. And it is exposing cultural fissures not because Americans were asked to serve and refused, but because this time few Americans were even asked.s
So a surrogate war has produced a surrogate antiwar movement. This time, mass protests would only cloud the issue. As the parent of a dead soldier, Sheehan has moral authority precisely because so few Americans (including so few of us who supported the war) risk sharing her plight.
New York Times columnist Frank Rich also writes that attempts by Bush supporters to draw attention to inconsistencies in Mrs. Sheehan's background, but adds that none of them have worked because
the real story is in fact not about Cindy Sheehan, but her dead son, Casey.
Cindy Sheehan's bashers, you'll notice, almost never tell her son's story. They are afraid to go there because this young man's life and death encapsulate not just the noble intentions of those who went to fight this war but also the hubris, incompetence and recklessness of those who gave the marching orders.
The Washington Post reports on the split between the Democratic leadership in Congress and the grassroots of the Democratic Party about
how to deal with the war in Iraq.
The internal schism has become all the more evident in recent weeks even as Americans have soured on Bush and the war in poll after poll. Senate Democrats, according to aides, convened a private meeting in late June to develop a cohesive stance on the war and debated every option – only to break up with no consensus. The rejuvenation of the antiwar movement in recent days after the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq set up camp near Bush's Texas ranch has exposed the rift even further. An editorial from the
Sunday Times of London, which dismisses the Sheehan protest, nevertheless argues that the actions of a group of "adult" Republicans and "grown up" Democrats are becoming the "
real opposition" to the White House's "emotional blackmail, the extreme rhetoric, the lack of any practical alternative to the course in Iraq."
They [the group of GOP and Democratic senators] know mindless protest will not save Iraq or win the broader war. They want to help: putting more troops if necessary into Iraq, monitoring more closely the training of Iraqi security forces, correcting some of the more glaring errors of judgment in Bush's inner circle. Bush supporters have rallied to defend the president. The
Guardian reports on a group of "Bush loyalists" who have set up
a similar camp to Sheehan in Crawford, Texas, but with the idea of supporting the president. And
CNN reports that President Bush's advisors announced Sunday that the President will " will launch
a new round of speeches to rally support for the war in Iraq."
Senior aides say Bush will attempt to portray the Iraq conflict in the context of long wars like World War II, which US forces fought from 1941 to 1945.
They said the president also will invoke the September 11, 2001, attacks, arguing once again that the insurgents battling American troops in Iraq share the same ideology as the Al Qaeda operatives who crashed hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
The Buffalo News reports on the growing divide in America about the war, which many more are speaking out against, but few seem to know how to end. "It's like
holding a wolf by the ears," [Iraq veteran Jeremy] Lewis said. "You don't want to hold it, but you don't want to let it go."
Also...
•
Iraq exit (
American Conservative Union)
•
At Pentagon, less ideology, more balance (
The Washington Post)
•
Experts warn Army may face decline in quality (
usatoday.com
•
Insurgents bombs cause US death toll to rise (
Financial Times
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Tom Regan
.
|
RSS feed
