If Dems Talk About 'Winning' in Iraq, Everybody Loses

By Ira Chernus, AlterNet. Posted April 10, 2008.

It was supposed to be a "cakewalk." Gen. Petraeus would come to Congress, armed with his favorite charts showing that the "surge" had dramatically reduced violence in Iraq. He would earn universal acclaim for his plan to "pause" troop reductions from July until after the election -- the same plan that John McCain counts on to help him win the election.

When it comes to Iraq, though, the Bush administration's cakewalks never seem to turn out as planned. The renewed violence of these last weeks, and the prospect of more to come, gave war critics ample ammunition for a powerful counterattack. Congressional Democrats did a fine job of pinning the general under their verbal fire, trapping him in his own rosy but increasingly unbelievable promises of "progress."

Yet who was the trapper, and who really got trapped? The political fallout from events like this week's Petraus-Crocker hearings can be a long time coming. It's far too soon to draw any conclusion.

Though Petraeus appeared to be trapped, the debate about military success or failure in Iraq, which the Dems engaged in with such relish, also caught them in a trap, with the general's testimony as the bait. Because the debate is not literally about the level of violence in Iraq. "Has the 'surge' worked?" is really a symbolic way of asking: "Would you rather believe that America is a winner or a loser?" And in any battle over patriotic symbolism, the Republicans always seem to have the bigger guns.

So the Democrats would have been smarter to refuse the bait, to insist that this is not an old-fashioned World War II-style conflict, where force can produce a clear-cut winner. There's still time to make that strategic switch. Then they could refocus the debate on the crucial truths: We have no right to be in Iraq. The sooner we get out, the sooner we can begin to heal the terrible damage the war has done to us here at home.

It should have been obvious all along that the Republicans do not mean it literally when they say reducing violence in Iraq is their highest priority. It's not likely that too many of them care a whole lot about the killing and maiming of Iraqis. So when they speak so urgently about lower levels of violence, it's a coded way of saying something else; in fact, a lot of things.

For starters, "reduced violence" is a way to conjure up an image of American "success" in a war in which no real success (forget about "victory") is possible. The level of violence is the only concrete yardstick the administration has to gauge the success of the "surge"-- no small matter when a successful "surge" has become the prime symbol of achievement for U.S. troops and thus for the president's (and McCain's) war policies. The Bush administration, of course, still hopes to sell its failing war to the public by turning it into a gripping story of winners and losers. "Violence" has been its currency, the coin of the realm.

Since that story took hold, supporters of the Bush policy have insisted that violence in Iraq really has been subsiding, thus the president's "surge" strategy has worked. When Democrats and other war critics rejected that claim (no matter how convincing their arguments), they sparked a battle over who has the right, and the proper criteria, to evaluate the "surge." So violence-lowering success in Iraq also became a symbolic measure of Bush's political success here at home.

In fact the home front is the key, as it has been for years. Bush came into office as the hero of the right, not because he had sworn to defeat terrorism (that didn't start until 9/11), but because he had sworn to defeat 1960s-style liberalism and "secular humanism." For conservatives the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism and the political wars at home have all been symbols of the same struggle against trends they see undermining the fabric of American society.

By choosing John McCain to lead their troops in presidential battle, Republicans have voted with their feet. In effect, they have decided to make all their cherished battles hinge on the battle over Iraq policy and the "surge."

When McCain talks about Iraq, his words always point up the symbolic nature of the battle there. He offers no reasonable idea of who we are fighting or why. In fact, on the occasions when he brings the matter up, he seems remarkably confused on the cast of characters. As a result, he can offer no sensible outline of what "victory" in Iraq might mean.

Since McCain's talk about the war is really a code, it makes perfect sense to feature that Bush-era bogeyman, al-Qaeda, as our main enemy in Iraq. Al-Qaeda, after all, is "the terrorists," and we are always fighting "the terrorists." It makes no less sense in his symbolic universe to insist that al-Qaeda terrorists are being trained in Iran, a country whose leadership is deeply hostile to the organization. All enemies are interchangeable because all are merely symbols of a vaguely defined sense of uncontrolled evil, which is said to threaten America's moral virtue at home and abroad. George W. Bush was supposed to defeat that evil. He has obviously failed. Now, conservatives pin their hopes on a new champion whose mantra is "No Surrender."

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Ira Chernus is professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin.