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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 11-Dec-06
Political pundits are all over the map in Iraq predictions

Web Log - December, 2006

Political pundits are all over the map in Iraq predictions

Everyone starts from the same place: "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating," which is the first sentence of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) report, issued this past week by a committee headed by Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton.

However, from that point on, all the pundits go off in wildly different directions in terms of predictions and recommendations for the future of Iraq.

Andrew Sullivan is a liberal pundit who first aggressively supported the war in Iraq, but has taken the mainstream liberal position that Bush mishandled the war.

His article is titled "The Gathering Storm," [] using the phrase that Winston Churchill used to characterize the late 1930s.

He makes a novel comparison between the situation in the Mideast and the so-called European religious wars of the 1500-1600s:

"My own darkest fear is that the Middle East is at the beginning of its own period that Europe experienced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: a massive, sectarian, regional bloodbath. I hope this won't happen. I hope to be proven wrong again. But I fear the process is already underway. ...

The major powers in the Middle East, in other words, are on the verge of behaving like the major powers in Europe centuries ago: they will act as expressions of national interest but also of sectarian theology. And they will fight a terrible war before they agree on a chastened peace.

The difference between now and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe is that this regional war within a divided monotheism will take place in a time of vastly greater technological capacity for destruction. So the consequences of such a war may be far more ominous than the massacres, burnings and civil wars that beset Europe in the past."

Sullivan misses the point that there have been lots of major wars since the 1600s -- the Crimean War, World War I, World War II, for example -- which were also fought at least partially along religious and sectarian lines, with the warring religions including Western Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, Islam and Judaism, as well as sects thereof.

In fact, the 1990s Bosnian war was a "massive, sectarian, regional bloodbath," and that was only a few years ago, with the Orthodox Serbs butchering the Catholic Croatians and the Muslim Bosnians.

But when a pundit is making an ideological point, historical facts don't matter much.

Anyway, what's Sullivan's cure? Here's what he says:

"The best hope for Iraq is perhaps a temporary surge in U.S. troops to make one last effort at some effort at a relatively peaceful de facto partition, before the near-inevitable U.S. withdrawal and subsequent involvement of Saudis and Egyptians in support of the Sunnis and the Iranians on the side of the Shia. (At this point, I'd be relieved if we can save the Kurds.)"

Now, this is really all messed up. The Iraqis won't agree to this partition, for one thing. But the main problem is that "the gathering storm" is not taking place in Iraq; it's taking place in Lebanon and Gaza, as the young militants in the "Young Guard" gear up for total war against Israel, with the help of Iran and Syria.

Well, so much for that. Now let's turn to conservative columnist Pat Buchanan. Like every other pundit, Buchanan believes that we're reliving the Vietnam War, and this has caused him to make one error after another in his punditry in the last few years. He worked for President Nixon as a speechwriter, and he suffered through the time when widespread anti-war riots and demonstrations forced America to withdraw its forces from Vietnam, leading to America's defeat.

Buchanan has repeatedly predicted that soon college students would begin rioting and protesting against the Iraq war, and that we would be forced to withdraw from Iraq in the same way, leading to America's defeat. (Like other journalists and pundits, Buchanan has no idea why college students haven't protested against the Iraq war, and why there's been no effective antiwar movement.)

But even though Buchanan has been repeatedly wrong, he keeps going down the same path.

His article, entitled "Withdraw to victory?" [], says that the ISG report does exactly what he's been predicting -- it forces a withdrawal from Iraq and a defeat for America:

"Yet the brutal honesty of the Baker-Hamilton commission about the situation in Iraq is accompanied by recommendations that are almost utopian in their unreality. ...

What is its principal recommendation? That the United States begin to pull all its forces out of combat and out of Iraq by early 2008, and turn the war over to the Iraqi army and police.

But if 150,000 U.S. Marines and Army troops have failed in four years to defeat al-Qaida, the Sunni insurgency, the Mahdi Army, the sectarian militias and the criminal elements of Iraq, how is the Iraqi army going to succeed?

Are we to believe that rag-tag army is going to win a war the finest army on earth has all but lost?"

He ends with a very downbeat prediction:

"When U.S. combat forces leave, Iraq is going to be lost to those who ran us out. Our friends there are going to endure what our abandoned friends in Vietnam and Cambodia endured. The forces of Islamic radicalism will be emboldened to take down our remaining allies in the Middle East. Our days as a superpower will be over."

To me, this comes across as being close to an obsession with his Vietnam experience. What Buchanan and a lot of other people don't understand is that America today bears no resemblance to the 1970s Vietnam days -- except to aging Boomers who lived through that time.

Although the kind of withdrawal that Buchanan talks about is a remote possibility, I see little chance that it will be called for, despite the hysteria we've been seeing in Washington the last week. We've now had two major generational changes since the 1970s, and today's young people will not tolerate a defeat in Iraq like the ones that their Boomer parents lived through in the 1970s.

To see this further, let's take a look at a third column, this one by liberal Susan Estrich. The title tells it all: "President Bush: State of Denial About Iraq." It's a fairly standard Democratic party criticism by typical people in Washington who know nothing of what's going on in the world:

"Denial is the first stage in dealing with death. The president still has to get through anger, bargaining, and depression before he reaches acceptance.

And there is no sign that he is listening to anyone.

He didn’t listen to the voters, who gave him a thumping because of Iraq. So much for democracy.

He isn’t listening to his own new defense secretary, who has testified that his Iraq policy isn’t working and won’t work. So much for his own advisers.

And he certainly isn’t listening to the Iraq Study Group, which most people have characterized as the last, best hope, or at least the best cover, for a change of policy. So much for blue ribbon bipartisanship.

What will it take to get through to this president? ...

And as long as he is in a state of denial, the country is bound to be in a state of war that we cannot win. It will be a long two years until the next election, and George W. Bush’s attitude all but ensures that we will spend it debating the war in Iraq. Exactly."

Estrich criticizes the President, but doesn't offer any proposals to withdraw the troops. The other liberal, Andrew Sullivan, proposes a short-term increase in troops.

If there are any proposals to do a "Vietnam-style" withdrawal, I haven't seen them.

Perhaps the statement that best captures the mood of Washington is Trent Lott's statement on Sunday's Meet the Press: "I agree a little bit with everybody. I agree with some of what the commission has said. I agree with Senator McCain that we should have some surge capability, which Jim Baker just referred to to get Baghdad a little bit better under control, I do think diplomacy is a good idea ... [As for more troops,] it would depend on the cirumstances - is it surge capability to try to deal with an immediate potential problem but just recognizing that more troops in the long term is probably not the answer we're looking for."

So there you have it. Nobody has any idea what to do.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is the kind of generational paralysis that we're seeing around the world in countries that fought in World War II and are now entering a generational crisis period.

George Bush said he was "the decider," and he's going to make some specific proposals soon, but he isn't the decider. The real deciders are the new generation of young voters.

As I described when discussing the young militants in Gaza, the "old men" in Hamas and the government are irrelevant to the real decision-makers.

The same is true in America. The young generation of voters already sent one message in the recent midterm elections, but we're still waiting to see what the next message will be.

It's impossible to predict what that message will be, except in one regard: It will not be an anti-war message like the one sent by the young generation of the 1960s (the Boomers). Instead, it will be a message to take whatever steps are necessary, even war, to solve the problem.

What's the problem? That will depend on breaking events. A new terrorist act will trigger one message, or a new war in Lebanon or Gaza will trigger a different message.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the Boomer generation is becoming more and more irrelevant every day. The Generation-Xers don't know what to do either, but they're angry at the Boomers for getting nothing done.

It's the young generation, the Millennial generation or Generation Y, that will decide what we do next, through their voice and their votes. Until we know what that message is, the nation will continue in a state of confusion and paralysis. (11-Dec-06) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 11-Dec-06 Political pundits are all over the map in Iraq predictions

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 11-Dec-06
Political pundits are all over the map in Iraq predictions