Last Refuge

Anyone who thinks that the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror should tell it to the Marines of the 1st Marine Division who comprised the eastern flank of the force that fought its way to Baghdad last April.

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America’s troops and our coalition partners are determined to win–and they will win, if we continue to give them the moral and material support they need to do the job. As the president said recently, our forces are on the offensive. And as Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane said in congressional testimony, “They bring the values of the American people to this conflict. They understand firmness, they understand determination. But they also understand compassion. Those values are on display every day as they switch from dealing with an enemy to taking care of a family.”

I saw the troops in Iraq, and Gen. Keane is absolutely right. I can tell you that they, above all, understand the war they are fighting. They understand the stakes involved. And they will not be deterred from their mission by desperate acts of a dying regime or ideology.

[…]

Young men and women from across America rushed to the trio, eager to touch them and talk to them. One soldier, a mother of two, told Christy she’d enlisted because of Sept. 11. Another soldier displayed the metal bracelet he wore, engraved with the name of a victim of 9/11. Others came forward with memorabilia from the World Trade Center they carried with them into Baghdad. And when it was Christy’s turn to present Gen. Tommy Franks with a piece of steel recovered from the Trade Towers, she saw this great soldier’s eyes well up with tears. Then, she watched as they streamed down his face on center stage before 4,000 troops.

To those who think the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the global war against terrorism . . . tell that to our troops.

Cue the plaintive wail of a lone trumpeter playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” as through my patriotic tears I grab blindly for a barf bag and my passport.

I’ve read enough gushy patriotic drivel in the last 2 years to tide me over until Armageddon and I thoroughly expect the Mighty Wurlitzer to play Sousa and Lee Greenwood on a loop during the presidential campaign. However, the above piece of manipulative treacle wasn’t written by a delusional codpiece worshiper like Peggy Noonan. It was written by one of the foremost intellectuals of the neocon movement and the premiere architect of the hallowed Bush Doctrine.

It’s none other than Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz himself, expelling a steaming pile of saccharine pap in order to avoid explaining how his every prediction about the postwar occupation was wrong. Read the whole thing. You’ll find not even one word of substance in the entire embarrassing sermon.

I’m sure the AEI Ladies Auxiliary and “Bush Is A Hottie” groupies get all teary eyed at the mere mention of 9/11 widows and brave fighting men on the “front,” but thinking people are supposed to demand a little bit more from the leading designers of our foreign policy. He’s writing in the Wall Street Journal, after all, not the Toby Keith fanzine.

And, please spare me any more adoring profiles of Wolfowitz, extolling his virtue and good intentions, much less his intellectual integrity. This pathetic appeal to emotion exposes him as either dangerously naïve and childlike in his thinking or so ideologically driven that he is willing to say and do anything in service of his goals.

Remember, these guys have always been wrong about everything. It is their special talent. They thought Kissinger was a dangerous appeaser with his weak kneed wussy détente. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall they were agitating for a stronger military presence in Europe to check an inevitable resurgence of communism. If they’d had their way we would have invaded Russia, for Gawd’s sake.

Typically, now that they have been proved to be both baldly dishonest and dramatically incompetent, they are falling back on their old favorite — rank sentimentality and gooey patriotic tributes to the troops.

The scoundrels are scurrying to their last refuge much sooner than I would have thought possible. Get out your trowels and shovels because we are about to be buried in patriotic clichés. It’s all they’ve got.