Senate sets deadline for withdrawal of troops from Iraq
The hardest thing for any person to ever admit is that they were wrong.
I think it is for this reason that supporters of the war continue to see victory as always just over the next horizon. They have maintained this optimism, in the face of vast tracts of totally contradictory evidence, for literally years now.
As the Senate yesterday set a deadline of March 31 2008 for American troop withdrawal from Iraq, a deadline that Bush has already promised to ignore through the power of veto, the war supporters rushed to condemn this rash act. Despite the fact that, were the troops to leave Iraq on the day that the Senate has named, American troops would have been in Iraq for five years and eleven days, that's even longer than they participated in the Second World war.
What we are witnessing here is the same mindset displayed by some of the more extreme wings of the Republican party concerning Vietnam, where there are still some who argue that America could have won that conflict had they simply had the resolve to stick the course.
Even after ten years and the loss of 58,000 men, they still saw victory as attainable just over the next hill.
I honestly believe that there is nothing honourable in this stance, it is simply an inability to admit that you were wrong. And an inability to accept reality as it is experienced by the rest of the world.
I actually understand this mindset when it comes to President Bush. He knows his legacy is tied to this war which makes him psychologically unable to accept defeat, for to do so renders his Presidency a failure. That's why I thought at the time that the Baker Report offered him his best way out. It didn't mention victory, but neither did it mention defeat. It was for that reason that he found it unacceptable. For he knew what implication was buried under it's polite phrases and wasn't willing to accept that he had got it wrong.
But if it's understandable why Bush can't accept the enormity of his failure in Iraq, what excuse is there for the other war supporters?
They came out in force yesterday to berate the Senate for it's decision, and mostly did so in language with which we have all become drearily accustomed to. With one notable exception.The Republican presidential candidate senator John McCain said the vote came just when "we are starting to turn things around" in Iraq, while former Democrat senator Joe Lieberman, elected last year as an independent Democrat, suggested that to vote for a timetable for withdrawal would be akin to snatching "defeat from the jaws of progress in Iraq".
For McCain I notice that victory is still over that next hill, but I was struck by the phraseology employed by Liebermann. "Snatching defeat from the jaws of progress" is a very odd construct.
The more common phrase is "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory", however it appears that Libermann can't even bring himself to use this phrase as it's most often used. Now I don't want to play armchair psychologist, but I do find it fascinating that Liebermann can't utter the word "Victory".
He may be unwilling to ever admit that he was wrong, but in some remote part of psyche -whether he acknowledges it or not - part of him has, at least, accepted that victory is highly unlikely. Why else would he paraphrase in the way that he does?
Senator Reid expressed his hope that the White House might accept it's defeat and be more conciliatory:"He doesn't get everything he wants now, so I think it's time that he started working with us. I would hope that he would be willing to work with us in coming up with some language that both [houses of Congress] could accept. At this stage, he has been very non-negotiable. So we'll see what happens."
Hope springs eternal, Senator. This White House will never accept your proposal because that would entail admitting that they were wrong. And that is something that they simply cannot bring themselves to do.
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