Daniel Henninger: On Iraq, Echoes of Vietnam from the Democrats

Daniel Henninger, in the WSJ Opinion Journal (6-24-05):

[Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.]

Democratic Senator Richard Durbin's now-historic comment likening U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo to the Nazis, Soviet gulags, Pol Pot--"or others"--was not the worst thing said in recent days about the administration's Iraq policies. All this proved was that Sen. Durbin was looking out the window in the fifth grade when the nuns taught analogies. A similarly tossed-off comment by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, generally regarded as a serious person, was more troubling.

After saying "there is rising concern that everything [my emphasis] seems to be going the wrong way" on Iraq, Sen. Feinstein demanded "regular progress reports" from the President and explained why: "It's his war."

His war? I thought it was our war. Welcome to the Vietnamization of the Iraq war. A Vietnamized Iraq war means that whatever may be going on in the infant political life of Iraq, the place has become fair grist for the grinding stones of America's domestic politics.

In fairness, Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy was the first to say more than a year ago that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam." Seven months back, some 121 million votes were cast in a national election fought on those terms between George Bush and John Kerry. But now U.S. opinion-poll sentiment, the product of 1,200 phone calls, has finally broken beneath the front-page weight of al-Zarqawi's daily murders of 0.0001% of Iraq's population. Zarqawi has calculated, perhaps correctly, that a hundred tiny Tet offensives can equal one. The effect is the same: The opposition finds a political voice inside the U.S. and begins the process of offloading an "unpopular" war onto the President. Thus, "It's his war."...

...In the crucial area of security, Sen. Biden exhorted the administration to pursue "legitimate foreign offers to train Iraqi forces outside of Iraq" so that "Iraqi forces could focus on actually learning something." He cited two examples: "The French have offered . . . to train 1,500 gendarmes, 1,500 real live paramilitary police, train them in France to send them back to Iraq." I'll second this if Sen. Biden promises not to complain when the Iraqi cops start using French detention and deportation practices that make Guantanamo look like the Garden of Eden....

...Later in the question period, Mr. Biden said, "Look, it's amazing what--I'm not being a wise guy here when I say this--it's amazing when reality sinks in. What John Kerry talked about is turning out to be true." Sen. Biden then said that three conservative House Republicans agreed with him: "I came out, did one of the major talk shows that Sunday from wherever I was, Chad or someplace, and the press went to these Republicans and said do you disagree? They said, no we don't disagree."...

...I'm not trying to be a wise 'guy, but does anyone remember seeing Jon Lovitz in the classic "Saturday Night Live" routine, "Dukakis After Dark"? For amid all these deep thoughts and despite Sen. Biden's assurance that he only wants "success" in Iraq, this was a petulant, carping speech, with no substantial ideas equal to the task of rebuilding a society that spent 35 years under a regime similar to, if I may quote Sen. Durbin, Stalin's Soviet Union.

Mr. Biden and other of his Senate colleagues now want the administration to provide specific "benchmarks" and goals and come before Congress to issue monthly reports on their progress. He calls this "a new compact between the president and Congress." Setting aside the state of the current compact on judicial nominations, Social Security and the budget, one question:

If under those terms Don Rumsfeld or any other administration official ever came before the Senate and acknowledged a miscalculation of any sort in this large enterprise, would Mr. Biden or the others accept the admission in good faith and build from it, or would they flog it as an admission of failure and proof of a Vietnam-like credibility gap?

I think the Bush administration does need help in Iraq. But the notion at this point in time that Mr. Biden or the Senate Democrats wish to make a good-faith effort to provide it strains, in a word, credibility.