Wednesday, June 19, 2013

They Keep Using That Word

Ah, Syria could be a "quagmire" for us.

What the Left knows about military history could fit on a bumper sticker. Which is convenient for them.

Here we go:

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called the administration’s decision to provide arms to the Syrian rebels “a measured step” that he supports. But he made it clear his “enthusiasm isn’t bubbling over.”

“I worry about creeping escalation,” Grijalva said, “to the point that we’re in so deep that we’re in the same quagmire that we’ve been in in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

One, I find it funny that if Bush had done this (remember the cries that after April 2003 we were going to hang a left at Baghdad and march on Damascus?), the Congressional "Progressive" Caucus would have had staff drawing up articles of impeachment as their rage boiled over.

But no worries, they'll be anti-war before long.

First, they wouldn't know a quagmire from a quadrilateral triangle. Inconveniently, we won on the battlefield in Iraq (and in Vietnam, too, for that matter) and problems we have are from prematurely exiting the country. And Afghanistan is in decent shape if we can hand off primary responsibility to Afghans and don't prematurely exit that theater of war.

And funny enough, Afghanistan--now a joint poster boy for "quagmire" alongside Iraq--was once the "good war." Remember? But I knew that Afghanistan would never last as the left's "good war."

Unless you start seeing people scraping those "Already Against the Next War" stickers off their Prius bumpers, President Obama is in for a rough Syrian Incursion. Even the Great Society didn't protect President Johnson from anti-Vietnam War protests for long. It isn't likely that the president's base will be able to distill their views on a Syrian intervention to distill all the nuanced feelings they express now. Start pondering what rhymes with "BHO." Funny enough, he'll have more support on these pages if he pursues victory than from his natural allies in the CPC.

Maybe whoever was reading this blog from the Executive Office of the President during 2009 and 2010 will return here for some much-needed comfort! No worries, I just had the meta-data.