It wasn’t really until the 1980’s that the history began to be re-invented, so if only we’d let Sylvester Stallone flex his muscles, we could have gone back and won the war. The idea of Democrats as “weak” on national security really got invented then — and you know there were a couple of events that played into that, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, which I really don’t think had much to do with Reagan, but helped make the storyline. So when 911 came along, the realities of 911 were that the Clinton people had been working pretty hard to try to do something about Bin Laden, and the Bushies said as soon as they came in, “We’re not interested, we want to think about a war with China.” But the storyline that the media fell into was that “We’re the tough guys, the other guys neglected it.” And that gave them a good run—they won two elections, in ‘02 and ’04, which I think otherwise they would have lost — by playing on this notion of “We’re strong, and they’re weak.” I guess the sort of good news is that they have done such an incredibly terrible job at all of that that we may have at least a while before all that scare tactic stuff comes back.
ROC: Or we may hear in four years how the Democrats “lost Iraq.”
PK: I’m worried, obviously. Clearly, if it’s a Democrat who withdraws from Iraq, which it appears likely it will be, then it will be more of the “We were winning, we were on the edge of victory, then they stabbed us in the back…”
ROC: “They spit on our soldiers…”
PK: Yeah, that’s amazing, the ‘spitting on our soldiers’ thing — because it never happened, there are no documented cases — but it became part of the storyline. Will that happen again? Certainly they’ll do their damndest to make it happen….
I guess I’m more optimistic about the American public, that it will take a lot more than four years, for us to see that again, because it took more than four years after Vietnam, and right now the American public has a pretty good sense of just what a disaster that’s all been… I think people have made up their minds that this is a disaster. Maybe ten years from now, they’ll have forgotten and be willing to, you know, see movies in which some heroic guy goes back and wins the Iraq war but… not for a while anyway.
ROC: Well, I’m more of a Mencken disciple when it comes to the American public, but I hope you’re right.
PK: I hope I’m right too!
ROC: Or we may hear in four years how the Democrats “lost Iraq.”
PK: I’m worried, obviously. Clearly, if it’s a Democrat who withdraws from Iraq, which it appears likely it will be, then it will be more of the “We were winning, we were on the edge of victory, then they stabbed us in the back…”
ROC: “They spit on our soldiers…”
I guess I’m more optimistic about the American public, that it will take a lot more than four years, for us to see that again, because it took more than four years after Vietnam, and right now the American public has a pretty good sense of just what a disaster that’s all been… I think people have made up their minds that this is a disaster. Maybe ten years from now, they’ll have forgotten and be willing to, you know, see movies in which some heroic guy goes back and wins the Iraq war but… not for a while anyway.
ROC: Well, I’m more of a Mencken disciple when it comes to the American public, but I hope you’re right.
PK: I hope I’m right too!
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