Over at the American Conservative, Gil Barndollar, former Marine Corps officer and currently Military Fellow-in-Residence at the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship, has an excellent article on the modern American version of Dolchstosslegende (“dagger stab myth”)—the claim made by the German Right and immensely amplified by Adolf Hitler that Germany’s defeat in World War I was the result of a “stab in the back” administered by the hated liberals, socialists, and communists, all of them manipulated, of course, by those master manipulators, the Jews.
As Barndollar demonstrates, what I myself have repeatedly claimed, while the German Right had only one disastrous war to explain and explain away, the American Right has had many—Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria—every one of them, with the partial exception of Syria,1 utterly unnecessary and counterproductive—and, of course, they are anxious to add at least one more in Iran. They never learn because they do not wish to learn. “Progressive” Randolph Bourne, denouncing his fellow Progressives for their support of American involvement in World War I, famously declared “War is the health of the State.” Today, war is the health of the Republican Party, and the AIPAC nation.
The election of Donald Trump has put an enormous strain on the American Right, driving many “moderate” neocons, like Washington Post editorial page honcho Fred Hiatt to, well, “moderation”, a welcome change indeed. But old habits die hard, and the prospect of an American withdrawal from the longest war in our history—and one of the most ill-conceived—has driven the Post back to the dolchstosslegende bottle.
“Trump risks turning a chance for success in Afghanistan into a shameful failure”, bellows the Post in full dolchstosslegende mode:
Mr. Trump’s politically motivated zeal resembles that of Mr. Obama, who in 2011 insisted on a full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, ignoring warnings — later tragically proved correct — that it could lead to the resurgence of jihadist movements there.
No, Washington Post. It’s not nice to lie to your readers. It really isn’t. President George Bush signed an agreement with the Iraqi government—signed it because they demanded he sign it—requiring withdrawal of American combat forces by 2011. Obama simply executed the agreement that Bush made. The notion that things fell apart because we left is utterly false. Things fell apart because we arrived.
The American presence in Afghanistan is a continuing disaster, which should have ended long ago, and would have been ended by President Obama, had not the sudden appearance of ISIS on the scene made any lack of “aggressiveness” political poison. And so because ISIS horrified the world with a handful of atrocities, a useless and bloody war has rumbled on for another five years and more, with, clearly, no resolution in sight—none acceptable to the Washington Post, at least.
For the Post must have war—a little one, at least. Iraq taught the Right that big wars are dangerous. They cost too many lives and are far too expensive. But to have no wars at all might suggest that the whole massive Military Intellectual Complex, which surely creates almost half the jobs—half the good ones, anyway—inside the Beltway, might be deprived of its whole reason for existence, like a mighty arch spanning a great river that mysteriously dried up in the night, leaving not a trace behind.
The Post truly despises Trump and all his works and longs to make common cause with us old-fashioned Democrats. Lying about our record—calling us cowards, and weaklings, and traitors—is not the way to go about it.
Yet even the Post isn’t all bad
No indeedy. The Post really surprised me with another editorial, this one, “The hype over possible U.S.-Iran talks obscured something much more ominous”, which accuses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of needless, and dangerously provocative attacks on Iran.
Mr. Netanyahu faces a tough election next month, and he has been a staunch opponent of any U.S.-Iranian rapprochement. He might consider this a good moment to escalate with Iran; he may also believe that Mr. Trump will not object, even if the result is damage to U.S. interests in Iraq and a greater risk of a full-scale war. Unfortunately, on the latter point, he’s probably right.
So the Washington Post is in favor of U.S-Iranian rapprochement, a word I can’t even spell? You surprise me, Washington Post! I like that! Do it again!
1. The U.S. was successful in Syria, as Barndollar explains, but the Right refuses to end a war just because it’s over.
