In America, the Democrats have turned national security into a shell game: whichever war you’re fighting is never the right one. Whenever they’re mocked as soft on jihad, they say, oh no, that’s not true, we think Iraq is a distraction from Afghanistan. They demand 200,000 troops in the Hindu Kush to go cave-to-cave to find Osama’s remains. So they’re not soft on the war. It’s just that the pea isn’t under the Iraq cup, it’s under the Afghanistan cup. You get the distinct feeling, though, that if you took them at their word and said okay, 200,000 troops go in next Thursday, you’d suddenly discover that the pea was no longer under the Afghanistan cup but under the Sudanese one… No matter how frantically the left scramble the thimbles, whether you look under the Iraqi or Afghan or Sudanese one, you somehow never find the shriveled pea of The Military Intervention We’re Willing To Support.
I've ranted about this Goldilocks tendency when it comes to wars waged under a Republican president many times. It is so common that I have to assume there was a conference call or memo at some point in Fall 2001 warning those on the opposition party to avoid doing anything that reminds voters of the 1970s and 1980s when that party earned the reputation of being soft on defense.
Steyn only really ignores the ability of the anti-war side to go back in time to say they supported a past successful war as a defense against opposing the current or next war. Recall the sudden and recent passion for the Persian Gulf War of 1991 and then recall the close vote to authorize it despite UN blessings.
So you can support a past war successfully concluded or a future war that we should fight instead of the current war in Iraq. Or support an escalation of the Afghanistan campaign. Since this is where bin Laden plotted his 9/11 strike, this is the only war currently under way that the opposition can support. And I bet that if we weren't fighting in Iraq, the opposition would be against the only war in town. Recall how so many warned against over-reacting just after the 9/11 attacks or wanted Ramadan ceasefires (back when some foolishly thought Moslems didn't fight during Ramadan!) or coalition governments with the Taliban and some UN tribunal or something. Canadian views of the "good war" should be instructive on this point,
This really is typical of the thinking of many on the anti-war side. Except of course for the nuanced thinker I saw tooling around my city with the bumper sticker "Already Against the Next War." I guess he didn't get the memo.
