This seems self evident as I wrote some time ago:
My hope is that the higher price isn't so great that we fail to win in Iraq. I still think we can and will win, but dissent has clearly increased the cost of victory.
I'm not arguing that we should have banned dissent in order to fight more effectively. This would also stifle criticisms of failures, and correcting errors is necessary to win. Freedom of speech may certainly be bent but should not be broken in wartime.
But I do hope that most dissenters--who simply criticize what they know nothing about without offering alternatives--don't confuse their dissent with constructive criticism. Bitching isn't strategery. The American people certainly know that the opposition has no actual plan despite more than three years of criticizing the conduct of the war.
Nobody should fool themselves into thinking that the exercise of their right to dissent over the war has no cost. We see the price every day on our television stations that broadcast from Baghdad.
The study shows upticks in violence in Iraq after anti-war surges here. As the study shows, our enemies may be evil humans, but they are humans who are subject to gaining hope and losing hope. Seeing Americans promising to help them get rid of American troops is encouraging to our enemies. This should hardly be controversial.
But their are caveats to the study and limitations. These also seem self evident.
One, the effect might just be on the timing of the attacks and just represent an acceleration of attacks for the short run without increasing attacks overall.
Nor was Baghdad studied so that could really throw the numbers off one way or the other given the intensity of the fight there.
And even if true without any caveats, this doesn't mean we can or should enforce an end to even harmful debate here, as the study also notes. And I agree with this. The solution of stifling dissent is worse than the problem of dissent encouraging our enemies.
I've given up on the idea that our anti-war side might exercise their right to dissent a little more reasonably so as not to encourage our enemies. But it would be nice to level the playing field by making the enemy's debates as open as ours so they get discouraged by their own side's defeatists and critics.
But at least let's admit the bleeding obvious reality of the situation.
