Congressional Careerism and War

Pete Domenici, Mitch McConnell, and Lamar Alexander, all of whom are Republican senators up for re-election next year, have decided to part ways with the president on Iraq. McConnell, in his home state of Kentucky recently said, "The majority of the public has decided the Iraq effort is not worth it. That puts a lot of pressure on Congress to act because public opinion in a democracy is not irrelevant."

The response to McConnell, the ranking Republican in the Senate, is that when it comes to conducting wars, public opinion is, in fact, largely irrelevant.
This isn’t to say that what “the public” thinks doesn’t have consequences. We can spook our representatives into de-funding the war if we want, as we did in Vietnam, just when things seemed to be looking promising. Back then, our information sources were essentially limited to Walter Cronkite, who declared the war lost. And so, by choice, it was. Today Cronkite couldn’t get away with summarily declaring an end to our military presence in Iraq. There are too many other sources of information to render one man’s opinion impenetrable.

The trouble is that more Americans believe that Iraq is unwinnable—not because of a monolithic press, but precisely because when it comes to war, there is too much transparency. War is ugly, and the more we see, the less palatable the idea of continuing to fight becomes.

Embedding members of the press seemed like a good idea at the time: the object, those unfamiliar with press tactics thought, was to show our soldiers’ hard work and compassion. And indeed, we have heard anecdotes from anti-war liberals on occasion about the soldier who saved an Iraqi child at the risk of his own life.

Pacifists, recalling the shame of their obloquy toward soldiers returning from Vietnam, have learned the lesson not to trash the troops. Their strategy is to minimize the necessity of the mission and of our progress. And so Nancy Pelosi’s crowd maintains, with a straight face, that we owe it to our troops to remove them from the irrelevant, unending chaos in Iraq.

The authoritative last word that they point to is the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by Republican James Baker who, as secretary of state, said that the first war against Saddam was simply about “jobs.” Baker, whose greatest accomplishment in the last decade was to defend President Bush against Al Gore, the opponent who wouldn’t go away, has never been a fan of pre-emption.

Whatever Baker’s mindset, though, the conclusions of the ISG deserve proper examination. “Iran should stem the flood of arms and training to Iraq,” the report concludes. “Syria should control its border with Iraq to stem the flood of funding, insurgents and terrorist in and out of Iraq.” And al Qaeda, to show its remorse, should hold a bake sale to aid families of fallen Iraqi innocents.

President Bush’s most maddening trait has been that he is too busy fighting the war to properly and regularly explain it. Propaganda plays a big part in any war, and the word from Bush’s opponents, which include anti-war Democrats and pro-re-election Republicans is that we are losing. Senators McConnell, Alexander and Domenici probably know this isn’t the case. But they see stagnantly low public approval numbers with regard to Iraq.

It’s anybody’s guess, of course, whether those numbers will stay low through next November; that, though, isn’t the point. How has it come to calculating our next move based on poling data?

The answer is that wearing out one’s welcome in Washington causes all sorts of trouble, mostly on the domestic front, in the form of pork barrel spending. But it shouldn’t be lost on us that congressional careerism can cloud one’s judgment about how to behave while we’re at war.

Will Anderson is a southerner through and through. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, he graduated from The University of the South in the early '90's with a degree in philosophy. After college, he made middle Tennessee his home because, as he once said, "Atlanta has just gotten too big. This part of the world reminds me of where I lived growing up."

Throughout the '90's, Will worked as a physician recruiter and as a voice-over artist for recruiting DVD's. He has taught Sunday school to 3rd graders, who he readily admits ask more thought-provoking questions than many adults.

Will's travels to Europe and to Central America have helped shape his view of the world, which, combined with a quick wit, an uncanny grasp of the issues, and an entertaining on-air presence, make him a solid addition to the WVNN team. You can hear Will on-line 5p-7p, Monday-Friday, on http://www.wvnn.com

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