Explaining The War
Daniel Henninger has a column up in the Opinion Journal that is well worth taking the time to read. It makes the case for Bush to not repeat the mistakes Truman made in 1950. (H/T Blackhawk in the comments section).
Some of us have worried for years that the Bush administration wasn't making a steady public case for the war in Iraq. And that at the least, the troops fighting the war deserved it. Now in the past week alone have come major speeches on Iraq and the war on terror by Secretaries Rice, Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and yesterday the president himself, telling the American Legion's convention that we are engaged in the "decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century."
….
Truman's failures and losses are largely lost to popular historical memory. Mr. Bush himself rifled the Truman library of its foreign-policy successes this past May at the West Point commencement. He described a world beset by the new communist threat–Greece, Turkey, Czechoslovakia and China for starters–then noted that Truman "recognized the threat and took bold action to confront it." Citing a lengthy list of Truman's foreign-policy achievements in those unsettled years (the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949) he said, "President Truman made clear that the Cold War was an ideological struggle between tyranny and freedom."
This Bushian turn on the parallel bars struck me as legitimate, but after he gave that speech, some liberal pundits themselves went nuclear, accusing the president of misappropriating a Democratic party saint. But the similarities are intriguing.
The Korean War sat inside the broader context of the cold war, which Truman presaged in a stirring speech to Congress in 1947. Mr. Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq followed on his strong post-September 11 speech to Congress, announcing a new global war on terror. Each president in turn promised that the Cold War and the war on terror would be long, hard slogs.
As Henninger says, I have long felt Bush was not doing enough to keep explaining the war in Iraq. The troops deserve not to be abandoned to the negativity of the left. The Truman comparisons are quite apt in this context. Truman did not stump in 1950 and it cost his party – and him personally – an awful lot. Many people forget that or never knew that in the first place. History tends to forget things like that when recalling presidencies. We should try to remember. Bush needs to keep explaining the reasons for war in the face of the continued onslaught of negativity. The troops deserve no less.
By Roland Hesz, September 4, 2006 @ 2:58 am
“Bush needs to keep explaining the reasons for war in the face of the continued onslaught of negativity.”
Yep. But please, the true ones.
Not ones he will deny one-two-three or more years later.
At least one, standing reason.
Like: Hey, I did not like the guy’s face.
Not the best reason, but at least honest.
(NOTE: I don’t say that was the reason. But I am yet to hear a valid and lasting reason. Because the reason of “war on terror” was denied by Bush himself “Noone has ever said that”. And the mysterious WMD thing is still not too clear.)