Following the U.S. withdrawal form Iraq, the questions, “What was that all about?” or, “What went wrong in Iraq?” or even, “Did something go wrong in Iraq?” (never mind, “What is going wrong in Afghanistan?”) don’t rise even to the level of conversation-enders. They don’t rise, period, not even among GOP presidential candidates, beyond the odd sound bite.
Famously, of course, Ron Paul calls for withdrawal of U.S. troops everywhere, a rollback of the international security force the U.S. military became after winning World War II.
While Paul’s constitutional position is strong, for me, his misunderstanding of Islam undermines his rationale; indeed, it transforms his policy into submission. The aftermath of withdrawal under a Paul presidency could be as dangerous as it would be under four more years of Obama.
I support withdrawal from guaranteed-recidivist hellholes such as Iraq and Afghanistan as a means to shore up the wall against the spread of Shariah (Islamic law) in the West rather than, in effect, continuing to fight/accommodate Shariah culture in the Islamic world.
This is a no-win struggle only a see-no-Shariah utopian could still engage in. It is this Islam-blind engagement that is the simple but devastating flaw of the Bush-Obama counterinsurgencies (COIN). But it continues to get a national pass.
Indeed, most GOP candidates tend to promise more of the same Bush-Obama COIN. (Jon Huntsman is the other main GOP exception, voicing a come-home-America policy in Afghanistan based on non-feasibility, economics, war-weariness — all valid points — but without parsing COIN, which he sees as a success in Iraq.) They speak in generalities, when they speak at all.
I think that’s because if Republicans were to discuss the past decade’s wars — what worked, what didn’t, whether the United States should fight for constitutions that enshrine Shariah (Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s) — they would have to discuss the president whose tenure was dominated by these wars. And the last thing they want to discuss is George W. Bush.
This is a grave political mistake. The fact is, President Obama has continued much of the Bush war agenda in both Iraq and Afghanistan, an agenda polls indicate most Americans don’t support.
For much of Obama’s term, key war-making personnel were Bush holdovers, from Defense Secretary Bill Gates to Army Gen. David Petraeus. The war plan for “Obama’s war” in Afghanistan came off the Bush drawing board.
Even Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq was on Bush’s schedule. Opponents, including most GOP candidates, seem to forget that Obama agreed with them. After all, he pleaded with Iraq to allow some U.S. forces to remain.
How does this play out in election 2012? Without a GOP strategy to confront the essentially non-conservative mistakes of the Bush presidency, I predict GOP defeat.
Come November, having failed to repudiate George W. Bush’s bailouts and stimulus spending, Mr. GOP will be unable to make the clear case for free markets, let alone for repealing socialized medicine.
Reverting to Republican “good manners,” he won’t argue against leaving a redistributionist and collectivist in the Oval Office, either. He’ll probably think he’s got an ace in the hole — foreign policy, traditionally the Republican strong suit.
But no. Failing to have distanced himself from key Bush policies, he has failed to distance himself from Obama’s, too.
Then Obama shows his cards: The pieces de resistance, the hit on Osama bin Laden (operationally insignificant, but no matter); the killing of Moammar Gadhafi (never mind the United States supported al Qaeda allies to get it done); more drone-killed hilltop jihadis than Bush ever scored.
In the endgame, such strokes probably give Obama the winning boost. Silence is not golden.
Examiner Columnist Diana West is syndicated nationally by United Media and is the author of “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.”
