If/when the U.S. fails in Iraq, will the Right propagate a new Dolchstosslegende?

[BrainGlutton]

N.B.: This is a thread in which Godwinization is for obvious reasons essential and inevitable at the outset. That should be taken into account before anyone invokes Godwin’s Law WRT another’s posts.

In this recent column in The Nation, media critic Eric Alterman warns of “The Coming ‘Stab in the Back’ Campaign.”

Having exposed their country to the ignominy of certain defeat in Iraq, the Bush Administration and its neoconservative allies are seeking to salvage their crumbling reputations by blaming their critics for the catastrophe their policies have wrought. We are witnessing the foundation for a post-Iraq “stab in the back” campaign.

<snip>

The coming campaign’s foundations are already in place. They rest on three building blocks: an attack on the loyalty of those willing to recognize reality; the construction of an alternative reality in which victory is deemed to be imminent; and, finally, a shifting of blame for a supposedly premature withdrawal to those who refuse to play along.

Matthew Yglesias, in the Center for American Progress’s “Think Again” column, noticed preparations for such a campaign as early as May 2004. Roll Call’s Morton Kondracke pretended that “the media and politicians” were “in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq,” while Tony Blankley of the Washington Times added, “the president’s political and media opposition want the president’s defeat more than America’s victory.” Two years later, when most Americans had turned against the war, Spencer Ackerman, writing in The New Republic, noticed that not a single contributor to a National Review symposium advocated withdrawal. Typical were comments like those of former Bush Pentagon analyst Michael Rubin, who announced, “The US is losing in Iraq because American politicians and the general public have not decided they want or need to win.”

George W. Bush has both feet firmly planted in the “stab” camp, and offered it aid and comfort when he tried to link the “unmistakable legacy of Vietnam”–“boat people,” “re-education camps” and “killing fields”–to calls for withdrawal from Iraq. Podhoretz’s recent entry into the sweepstakes is, appropriately, a retread of his 1982 attack on his ex-friends and former self. In his clinically delusional book World War IV, Podhoretz paints Bush as a “great president” and professes to see in Iraq “enormous strides that had been made in democratizing and unifying the country under a workable federal system.” No less implausibly, he compares war opponents, like former National Security Advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, to a “domestic insurgency” with a “life-and-death stake” in America’s defeat. Podhoretz flatters himself and his fellow armchair generals with his claim that his screeds in Commentary and the Wall Street Journal editorial pages represent a “war of ideas…no less bloody than the one being fought by our troops in the Middle East.”

Podhoretz’s paranoid ravings notwithstanding, it is likely that he has been less effective in laying the groundwork for the post-Iraq stab campaign than second-generation neocon generalissimo William Kristol, who despite mountains of contrary evidence professes to detect an “astoundingly” successful surge and a military situation that is “better than anyone expected.” Kristol’s Weekly Standard recently ran a cover drawing of an American soldier viewed from behind within the sights of an unseen weapon, beneath the headline Does Washington Have His Back? Another Standard headline reads: They Don’t Really Support the Troops.

See also this article by retired USAF Lt. Col. William Astore.

Are Alterman and Astore themselves being paranoid about the prospect of a new American Dolchstosslegende? I hope so. But, with the war not even entirely lost yet, I’ve already encountered hints of it on this Board, on occasion. And, based on some posts in this ongoing thread, the preposterous meme that America could have won the Vietnam War but for domestic opposition still seems to survive in some quarters despite all historical evidence to the contrary.

If a new stab-in-the-back legend – neocons and right-wingers and Republicans in general dishonestly blaming America’s entirely predictable failure in Iraq on domestic opposition and liberals and Democrats in general – really does emerge, what can be done to counter it?

[Captain_Amazing]

Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know I intend to.

If we withdraw in Iraq, it’ll be because we’ve chosen to withdraw from Iraq, and we’ll have made that choice because public opinion will have supported it. What’s wrong with recognizing that fact?

[BrainGlutton]

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know I intend to.

If we withdraw in Iraq, it’ll be because we’ve chosen to withdraw from Iraq, and we’ll have made that choice because public opinion will have supported it. What’s wrong with recognizing that fact?
[/QUOTE]

What’s wrong with it (WRT Iraq or to Vietnam) is the false assumption that we could have won if we had stayed the course; plus imputation of disloyalty to anyone who had the sense to recognize the contrary.

[Captain_Amazing]

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
What’s wrong with it (WRT Iraq or to Vietnam) is the false assumption that we could have won if we had stayed the course; plus imputation of disloyalty to anyone who had the sense to recognize the contrary.
[/QUOTE]

But we could have won Vietnam, and we probably could have won Iraq. It was a combination of poor leadership and a turning of public sentiment against the war that made us lose.

[Algher]

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
What’s wrong with it (WRT Iraq or to Vietnam) is the false assumption that we could have won if we had stayed the course; plus imputation of disloyalty to anyone who had the sense to recognize the contrary.
[/QUOTE]

You are mixing up two issues WRT to Vietnam, however.

The collapse did NOT occur as US troops left. We left a functioning government, and a military capable of defending itself.

It was when the US government chose to cease all support of the South Vietnamese government that it fell to the North, triggering the atrocities that followed (re-education camps, murder of the remaining intellegentsia, the boat people).

I personally do NOT consider this to be an analogous situation to Iraq. By the time of the US withdrawel, the South was no longer fighting the Viet Cong (most of them having been wiped out during the Tet offensive). Instead, they were fighting the North. In Iraq, it is not an active outside enemy trying to push the borders, it is an internal enemy that fights the duly elected (unlike Vietnam) government.

That all said, if we simply loaded-up every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine and brought them home today - we would be morally responsible for both breaking the country and then leaving without fixing it. If we also cut all support (in terms of money and arms) to the Iraqi government and it subsequently fell due to fiscal starvation, we would be even more responsible for the mess that arose in our absense.

THAT is the issue that must be considered regarding Iraq when we look to Vietnam for answers. IMHO, of course.

[Kimstu]

A couple of quotes from Col. Astore’s article linked in the OP:

McCain’s comments did echo a Clausewitzian truth. In warfare, the people’s will is an indispensable component of a nation’s warfighting “trinity” (that also includes the government and the military). It’s exceedingly difficult to prevail in a major war, if a leg of this triad is hobbled. By choosing not to mobilize the people’s will, by telling us to go about our normal lives as others were fighting and dying in our name, the Bush administration actually hobbled its own long-term efforts. Now, they are getting ready to claim that it was all our fault. We were the ones who lost our patience and will to victory. […]

So let me be clear: If we lose in Iraq, the American people will not be to blame. We cannot be accused of lacking a will that was never wanted or called upon to begin with. Yet the stab-in-the-back myth gains credibility precisely because so few high-level people either in government or the military are being held accountable for failures in Iraq. […]

If no one is held accountable for failed policies, if, in fact, those closest to the failures are showered with honors – as was, for instance, L. Paul Bremer III, who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad for the President from May 2003 to June 2004 – it becomes easier to shift blame to anyone (or everyone). […]

Given the right post-war conditions, the myth of the stab-in-the-back can facilitate the rise of reactionary regimes and score-settling via long knives – just ask Germans under Hitler in 1934. It also serves to exonerate a military of its blunders and blind spots, empowering it and its commanders to launch redemptive, expansionist adventures that turn disastrous precisely because previous lessons of defeat were never faced, let alone absorbed or embraced.

Kind of a slick PR strategy, though: if you don’t assign blame for specific failures to the leaders who were actually responsible for them, that not only leaves the leaders’ reputations unsmirched, but prepares a way for displacing blame onto the vaguely identified “defeatists” or even more vaguely identified “failure of popular will”. It’s win-win for the leaders of reckless military adventures: no accountability for your mistakes, and anything that goes wrong is the fault of the people who are paying for it.

[chappachula]

Why do you think that a Dolchstosslegende* can only be propagated by the Right?
The Left has been doing it, too, (but on a different issue: the 9/11 attacks)

I’m talking about the apologists who say “We deserved to be attacked because of our colonial history, our insensitivity to Arab feelings, our imperialist attitudes, our humiliation of non-western cultures, etc,etc. True patriotism is not waving the flag or serving in the army – true Patriotism is Michael Moore filming Fahrenheit 911”.

Isn’t this the same as the dolchstosslegende described in the OP–demeaning the other side’s patriotism?

Another aspect of dolchstosslegene the OP describes is re-writing history:

the preposterous meme that America could have won the Vietnam War but for domestic opposition still seems to survive in some quarters despite all historical evidence to the contrary[

Again, I say–is this only restricted to the Right?
I would say that another “preposterous meme that survives despite all evidence
to the contrary” is the leftist meme— that we should never fight Islamic jihadists, because they are only spouting rhetoric and have no real intentions to act against the West.

I think the OP may be correct-- that the Right will try dolchstossegende tactics over the failure in Iraq. But the Left has also used the same tactics.

So dolchstosslegende can work both ways: it’s human nature to blame the other guy for causing problems; if he had only listened to you and acted “patriotically”, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.

*(thanks for teaching me a new word!)

[Kimstu]

@chappachula

Why do you think that a Dolchstosslegende* can only be propagated by the Right?
The Left has been doing it, too, (but on a different issue: the 9/11 attacks)

I’m talking about the apologists who say “We deserved to be attacked because of our colonial history, our insensitivity to Arab feelings, our imperialist attitudes, our humiliation of non-western cultures, etc,etc. True patriotism is not waving the flag or serving in the army – true Patriotism is Michael Moore filming Fahrenheit 911”.

Isn’t this the same as the dolchstosslegende described in the OP–demeaning the other side’s patriotism?

AFAICT, no. Saying “We deserved to be hit by a terrorist attack” (and BTW, what members of “the Left” are actually saying that?) may be ethically and factually wrong, but it does not really fall into the category of Dolchstosslegende, ISTM.

A Dolchstosslegende is a specific sort of public-relations myth that involves blaming a military defeat on lack of civilian support from the public and/or politicians. A general claim that “we deserved to have bad stuff happen to us because we did stuff that was bad”, or “flag-waving isn’t patriotic”, is not the same as an accusation of Dolchstoss.

I think the standard term for the sort of claims you’re talking about is “Blame America First”.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Are Alterman and Astore themselves being paranoid about the prospect of a new American Dolchstosslegende?
[/quote]
I doubt it; that sort of accusation is standard Republican tactics. They don’t admit to the existance of a loyal opposition; you are either on their side, or you are working for the enemy. Criticize their actions/rhetoric, and you are a Communist/atheist/pro-crime/terrorist.

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
If a new stab-in-the-back legend – neocons and right-wingers and Republicans in general dishonestly blaming America’s entirely predictable failure in Iraq on domestic opposition and liberals and Democrats in general – really does emerge, what can be done to counter it?
[/QUOTE]
Grow a spine. Don’t back down; every time they try to pin the blame on the Left, point out that Iraq was THEIR idea, and it was done the way THEY wanted it. And that they were warned beforehand that it would be a disaster.

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
But we could have won Vietnam, and we probably could have won Iraq. It was a combination of poor leadership and a turning of public sentiment against the war that made us lose.
[/QUOTE]
No, it’s the fact that winning was impossible, not to mention poorly if at all defined from the beginning. As pointed out in this thread, you don’t “liberate” people by shooting them.

[QUOTE=Algher]
In Iraq, it is not an active outside enemy trying to push the borders, it is an internal enemy that fights the duly elected (unlike Vietnam) government.
[/quote]
There is no “duly elected” government in Iraq. No government formed under American guns qualifies.

[QUOTE=Algher]
That all said, if we simply loaded-up every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine and brought them home today - we would be morally responsible for both breaking the country and then leaving without fixing it. If we also cut all support (in terms of money and arms) to the Iraqi government and it subsequently fell due to fiscal starvation, we would be even more responsible for the mess that arose in our absense.
[/quote]
And only when we leave can Iraq begin to repair itself, just as we had to leave before Vietnam could recover. We are incapable of “fixing” Iraq; we can only break it further.

[QUOTE=chappachula]
Why do you think that a Dolchstosslegende* can only be propagated by the Right?
The Left has been doing it, too, (but on a different issue: the 9/11 attacks)

I’m talking about the apologists who say “We deserved to be attacked because of our colonial history, our insensitivity to Arab feelings, our imperialist attitudes, our humiliation of non-western cultures, etc,etc. True patriotism is not waving the flag or serving in the army – true Patriotism is Michael Moore filming Fahrenheit 911”.

Isn’t this the same as the dolchstosslegende described in the OP–demeaning the other side’s patriotism?
[/quote]
No. First, because there very few on the Left saying that we “deserved” 9-11; some who said that it was a predictable result of our behavior, but very few who said anything about “deserved”. In fact, claims like yours are PART of the Right’s dolchstosslegende.

And second, the Right, unlike the Left, is willing to stab the country in the back. “Party/corporations above country” has been a major theme of the Bush Administration, and the Republicans in general.

[QUOTE=chappachula]
I would say that another “preposterous meme that survives despite all evidence
to the contrary” is the leftist meme— that we should never fight Islamic jihadists, because they are only spouting rhetoric and have no real intentions to act against the West.
[/quote]
More Rightist dolchstosslegende. You’ll have to look long and hard to find someone on the left who says that; how many on the left opposed the attack on Afghanistan ? I didn’t, and I’m as left as you are likely to find here.

[QUOTE=chappachula]
So dolchstosslegende can work both ways: it’s human nature to blame the other guy for causing problems; if he had only listened to you and acted “patriotically”, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.
[/quote]
It’s not “dolchstosslegende” if it’s true. We ARE in our present mess because of the Right.

[Captain_Amazing]

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]

No, it’s the fact that winning was impossible, not to mention poorly if at all defined from the beginning. As pointed out in this thread, you don’t “liberate” people by shooting them.
[/QUOTE]

We did in Korea, we could have in Vietnam too. And if the Bush administration and the Provisional Authority didn’t screw up in the month or two after Sadaam’s govenment was overthrown, we probably could have in Iraq too.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
We did in Korea, we could have in Vietnam too. And if the Bush administration and the Provisional Authority didn’t screw up in the month or two after Sadaam’s govenment was overthrown, we probably could have in Iraq too.
[/QUOTE]
No. In both Vietnam and in Iraq, we are the foreign invaders and occupiers. The people who laid waste to their country, the killers of their friends, family and countrymen, the supporters of corrupt dictators. Imperialists, not liberators. They’ll never stop fighting us. Not if we stay there for ten years, or a hundred.

The Iraqis and the Vietnamese were never stupid enough to believe our self-congratulatory rheotric about how we are the heroic liberators, come to save them; we aren’t, and they know it. Very, very few besides us are that stupid; we wouldn’t be, if some other country was in our position.

[Lemur866]

[QUOTE=Kimstu]
AFAICT, no. Saying “We deserved to be hit by a terrorist attack” (and BTW, what members of “the Left” are actually saying that?)
[/QUOTE]

Pat Robertson.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Pat Robertson.
[/QUOTE]
There’s no smiley, so I need to ask; are you serious, or joking ? And I’ve gotten into arguments with people who claim that Hitler was a left winger, or even a Communist, so yes I need to ask.

[Tenebras]

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Pat Robertson.
[/QUOTE]

I say any man who can leg press 2000 pounds gets to be both left and right. I was beginning to fear that I was alone in this opinion.

[Lemur866]

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
There’s no smiley, so I need to ask; are you serious, or joking ? And I’ve gotten into arguments with people who claim that Hitler was a left winger, or even a Communist, so yes I need to ask.
[/QUOTE]

There was no smiley because I was serious. I believe Pat Robertson is of the left. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify this matter.

[E-Sabbath]

After careful examination of available evidence, including Cobra II, I have come to the conclusion that

A: the Iraq war was flawed from the beginning, day zero, when Rumsfeld said, “Hm. Your plan calls for 400,000 troops? I say we can conquer that country with 100,000.” And nobody in the Joint Chiefs had the guts to disagree.

And B: That there was, in fact, no after-conquest plan, the Iraqis would come out and greet us with flowers and smiles.

On the other hand, Vietnam could have been won, if by won you mean defeating the Communists. Really, not that horribly difficult, if restrictions had been lifted, we’d managed to engage the enemy in one more set-piece battle, with Tet already having hurt them far more than they hurt us.

But it wouldn’t have given us anything more than a really nasty house of cards to prop up, which would have fallen as soon as we pulled out.

I think we should have been good friends with Ho Chi Min back when he asked, to begin with.

[NDP]

The “stab in the back” argument likely has been an arrow in the Right’s quiver even before the war began in March 2003. If the U.S.'s initial goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein had not been achieved as easily as it was, I can guarantee the rightwing would’ve pointed an accusatory finger at the Democrats, the media, and all the other “usual liberal suspects” and denounced them for undermining America by insisting we dicker around with the U.N. and try diplomacy first instead of just going in with guns blazing during the fall of 2002.

[Little_Nemo]

I’m talking about the apologists who say “We deserved to be attacked because of our colonial history, our insensitivity to Arab feelings, our imperialist attitudes, our humiliation of non-western cultures, etc,etc. True patriotism is not waving the flag or serving in the army – true Patriotism is Michael Moore filming Fahrenheit 911”.

Who are these people? I haven’t heard of any of them. As somebody already pointed out, the only Americans who have claimed that the United States deserved to be attacked are religious conservatives.

[Little_Nemo]

The insurmountable problem we had in Vietnam is that we were trying to found a democratic government that was non-communist in a country where the majority of people were communists.

[Captain_Amazing]

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
The insurmountable problem we had in Vietnam is that we were trying to found a democratic government that was non-communist in a country where the majority of people were communists.
[/QUOTE]

What percentage of the South Vietnamese were communist?