Party of Defeat
By David Horowitz and Ben Johnson,
224 pages, Spence Publishing
David
Horowitz has written many books and articles that deal with the topic
of American political warfare. Horowitz has often argued that the left
is much more resolute, serious, and focused in its efforts, which has
enabled it to win political victories over an often dispirited, and
less focused conservative opposition. Horowitz's new book Party of Defeat, co-written with Front Page Magazine
managing editor Ben Johnson, offers chapter and verse in how this fight
between an aggressive anti-war left, and the Bush administration and
its allies, played out over the Iraq war.
The book has, of course, not been reviewed by the New York Times nor the Washington Post, but surprisingly, has also been ignored by the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal
as well. This is unfortunate, since the message this book delivers is
an important one in the current run-up to the Presidential election in
November. In essence, the Democratic Party, and its allies on the left
have chosen to win a political war at home, at the expense of winning
wars in which the country was engaged overseas.
In
fact, the political success of the effort by the "Party of Defeat" was
tied to creating a story, repeated constantly by members of Congress,
former political figures (e.g Al Gore) and cooperative journalists,
that the Iraq war was a mistake, that it was sold" to the country with
hyped ("bogus") intelligence, and that the war proved a diversion from
the "real war on terror" in Afghanistan). As the initial success in
removing Saddam turned into tough fighting with a well-armed Sunni
insurgency, and Shiite militias armed and funded by Iran, the left and
the Democratic Party called for an admission of defeat and a
withdrawal. To add to the negativism of the message about the
Administration, major news organizations, especially CBS, the New York Times and the Washington Post,
revealed various secret programs implemented by the Bush
administration, including tracking the conversations and funding of
suspected terrorists overseas, and presented the boorish behavior of a
few soldiers at Abu Ghraib as representative of the behavior of our
soldiers overseas ( "a pattern of abuse", also seen supposedly at
Guantanamo).
As
recently as this past Sunday, Frank Rich, author of one of the many
remainder shelf screeds on the horrors of the Bush administration (very
favorably reviewed in the New York Times of course), wrote a particularly hysterical column
even for him, predicting that there would be war crimes trials
(justified of course) for the President, and others in his
administration for acts of torture and murder.
One
of the fascinating aspects of the Horowitz and Johnson book is the way
the authors document the various charges leveled at the Bush
Administration by the Democrats and the media and demonstrate how in
each case they were either false or greatly exaggerated, often using as
evidence the reports of various independent or Congressional committees
appointed to examine the charges. Each time one slander was knocked
down, the left was back with more. But the news stories that got the
attention were the charges, not the acquittals.
In
large part, the media and political war was so one sided because the
Bush Administration was so weak in its response to the assault on its
policies, and the leaks coming from the State Department and the
intelligence agencies. A war against the war was being fought within
the Administration, and the Bush team ignored the misconduct and crimes
committed by those on the inside. The real huckster of the last few
years was Joseph Wilson, who on the recommendation of his wife, Valerie
Plame, was sent to Africa to determine whether the Iraqi government had
been shopping for yellowcake and aluminum tubes in Niger. Wilson's oral
report to the government upon his return did nothing to quell any
suspicions, and if anything, confirmed them. But once the war began, he
became a key player in feeding false stories to the New York Times, especially to the ever gullible Bush hater Nicholas Kristof,
that Wilson had conclusively determined that the Iraq shopping in
Africa story (that the British intelligence services are still
defending today) was mythology. Wilson, an obscure retired State
Department official, was suddenly the glamour boy, and part of the new
glamour couple on the left. When his wife's non-covert job was
revealed by Robert Novak, an anti-war critic from the right, it created
a several year firestorm. Novak allowed Scooter Libby and Karl Rove to
be accused and attacked for a leak of Plame's identity, which Novak
knew came from Richard Armitage. Novak is not called the prince of
darkness for nothing. One gets the sense reading this book that the
administration expected the other side to play fair, or that all good
Americans would support the war once we were engaged, and given the
high stakes involved.
As
Victor Davis Hanson has often written, war is ugly and uneven, in the
best of circumstances. There is certainly room for debating the wisdom
of the war in Iraq, and there have certainly been missteps in the
conduct of the war. The authors readily admit this, though they believe
the war was justified, and that Saddam's failure to abide by 17 UN
resolutions after the Gulf War, his history of development of WMD
programs and use of such weapons on his own people and Iran, and his
links to and support for terror groups made removing Saddam the
risk-averse strategy. The invasion came but 18 months after 9/11 and
continued the effort by the Administration to take the offensive
overseas, rather than allow terror groups and terror supporting nations
(all part of the same global jihad) to take the battle to us, as Al
Qaeda had repeatedly done during the Clinton years, with virtually no
response by that Administration..
In
any case, despite many early missteps, the surge strategy, initiated by
the Bush administration, and backed by Senator John McCain, and opposed
by virtually all Democrats including Barack Obama, has been skillfully
carried forward under the leadership of General David Petraeus, and has
substantially changed the course of the war in our favor. Horowitz and
Johnson lay out the reluctance of the Democrats and their media allies
to admit they were wrong, and that the war is now being won. That of
course, is because the left and the Democrats have too much invested in
our failure in Iraq, since that failure is directly related to their
perception of their own party's recipe for electoral success. The
Democrats never accepted the Bush Presidency as legitimate after the
virtual tie in the 2000 President contest in Florida, and Gore's thin
popular vote plurality.
The
attacks of 9/11 created a rare bipartisan unity. Democrats really had
no choice since the country was so angered and unified behind the
President and his response in Afghanistan. But Iraq offered an opening
to undermine Bush. More than half of the Senate Democrats and 40% of
House Democrats supported the President's Congressional resolution on
Iraq in the fall of 2002 (the war had high support in America, when it
was launched in March 2003), and even more had backed the occasional
few days of bombing runs by President Clinton during his administration
(the fiery anti-Saddam rhetoric by Democrats in 1998 is of course all
on the record).
But
the anti-war left was fiercely opposed to the Iraq war (quieter on
Afghanistan), and many Democrats in Congress were now on their side and
became bitter opponents of the war. As the war dragged on, many more
Democrats in Congress came to regret their initial support, and bought
into the "I was duped by misleading intelligence" line. And soon it
became apparent that the war could be used as a cudgel to undermine the
Bush administration and weaken it politically on all fronts.
Hence we have the Party that bought into defeat in Iraq as a strategy for victory in the elections.
In
2006, unhappiness with the Bush Administration over the response to
Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, spending, and corruption, led to major defeats
for the GOP in the mid-term elections. This year, we are selecting a
commander in chief, not just 435 members of the House and 35 Senators.
It remains to be seen whether Americans will elect as their commander
in chief, a man who has been so heavily invested in his party's
strategy of defeat from the beginning of the Iraq war.