Freedom & Progress

The Bullmoose gets it. As he often does, Marshall Whittmann writes eloquently today on the need for Democrats to get behind a strategy for victory in Iraq instead of advocating a policy of retreat and surrender to the enemy. Towit, Whittman notes that the strategy of Nancy Pelosi as articulated by Howard Dean would never be endorsed by Democratic heroes such as Scoop Jackson, John Kennedy, Harry Truman, or Franklin Roosevelt. Further, Whittmann ponders,

You would think that a minority party would want to expand its ranks rather than expel those who express heterodoxal thoughts. Perhaps it is true that conservatives seek converts and liberals excommunicate heretics. If Scoop Jackson types are unwelcome in the party, the donkey may spend many more years in the roaming in the wilderness.

F&P marks the Bull Moose a "must read" and urges all of its readers to today's entry. Incidentally, if any of F&P's readers feel inclined to inform the Moose about our humble blog, we have no objection.

F&P freely admits that in the 2004 Democratic Primary, we had high hopes for General Wesley Clark. However, inexperience in campaigning, John Kerry's fundraising, and a slew of terrible advice led to Clark's early demise. However, unlike most Democrats, Clark has extensive experience at war and with the military. Though he opposed the War in Iraq at its inception, Clark understands that should United States lose another war, particularly to this fascist terrorist enemy, it would devastate military moral, threaten the collective national security and debilitate our strategic position in the region.

In yesterday's piece in the New York Times, General Clark lays out a comprehensive strategy for victory (one that doesn't involve cluing in the enemy as to the timing of the War's end). F&P urges its Democratic readers to read it and take notice of the difference between this strategy and the one of retreat, surrender, and withdrawal articulated by the likes of Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi and the Moveon / Daily Kos crowd.

William J. Stuntz has published a brilliant and persuasive article in the latest New Republic. Stuntz compares our present War in Iraq to our own American Civil War. Like the War in Iraq, the American Civil War began with a "purpose" that evolved throughout the years of struggle to a newer (as well as better and nobler) "purpose". From a war to prevent Southern secession, the American Civil War became a war to end the institution of slavery and allow a free democratic nation elevate to an even higher moral existence. Stuntz surmises that the North may not have gone into a war to free black slaves. But the idea that the loss of hundreds of thousands of American boys and men was suffered to protect geographic boundaries would be unacceptable to the next generation looking back. Only the noble cause of freedom would be worth such loss.

In Iraq, many critics complain how the War's original "purpose" (to prevent Iraq from acquiring weapons of mass destruction) has been abandoned for the freedom and democratization of the Iraqi nation. Indeed, Americans may not have been as willing to send their sons and daughters and husbands and wives and risk their sacrifice for the freedom of others (particularly Arab ones). However, future generations looking back will judge whether the loss sustained by the United States would have been worth the War's original purpose (removing weapons that may not have existed) or the purpose it has evolved into: bringing forth freedom and democracy to a land that has never known such concepts.

Should the United States persevere and (together with a new and free Iraqi force) reach victory against the enemy, and achieve this evolved "purpose", the entire community of nations will enjoy a "new birth of freedom". And our nation will have gained an improved measure of freedom and progress.