It’s All a PR Problem
By Or so say the wingnuts.
Isn’t the administration overdue for some fight-back against the growing unpopularity of the Iraq War? Even if the polls overstate this unpopularity, even if they are driven by an overpessimistic media, the legend could easily become fact. …
In particular of the Bush Administration for not making its case strongly or clearly enough.
But our weakness is back home, on the couch, in front of the tv, on the cable squawk shows, on the editorial page of the New York Times, in the political gotcha games of Washington, DC. It seems America wants to get on with its wonderful Electra-Glide life, that September 10 sense of freedom and security, without finishing the job. The military is fighting, the Iraqi people are fighting, but where is the US political class?
It is anti-military to hand huge propaganda wins to our enemies, isn’t it?
If these people really thought that military action in Iraq was a good idea, and that the war would go well, why did they spend so much time preparing the “stab in the back” narrative? Evidence that the war is going poorly cannot reflect badly on either the military or political personnel associated with its launching. At worst, the glorious leaders have failed to make the public case (which clear headed thinkers like Kaus and Reynolds never needed anyway), but even that failure is mitigated by the apparent hostility of the national media, even if any vaguely objective observer could note that the media has been more subservient to the administration in this conflict that in just about any military conflict in recent history. LBJ and Dick Nixon didn’t have Fox News in their corner, either.
The problem with lying to the public in order to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq is that the public has only a minimal taste for bloody, long-term engagements that don’t really go anywhere. Americans were willing to stand for stationing 300000 troops in Germany for fifty years because nobody was killing our soldiers there on a daily basis. They seem to be less willing to see 135000 slowly ground down in a counter-insurgency conflict that has no apparent end point. There’s nothing particular unusual about this among democracies, as the French had the same problem in Algeria and Vietnam, the Russians have had the same problem in Chechnya, and the British had the same problem in Northern Ireland.
Indeed, as Matt points out, the situation that we have created in Iraq runs directly counter to the aims that neocons have had in this war. Eventually, domestic political considerations will force the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. At that point, whoever is left in Iraq will claim victory. The idea that Americans are casualty averse and cannot tough-out long occupations will be reinforced, and the next military intervention will be that much harder to sell to both domestic and international audiences. Americans are not particularly casualty averse, and I’m inclined to think that they can handle long term occupations as long as the goal seems compelling and progress is clear, but neither of these things will matter. Instead, the reputation for weakness, which is precisely what the neocons wanted to dispel, will be confirmed.
And no stab-in-the-back narrative will change that.