F<\/span>rom the days of ancient Athens, the citizens of democracies have been querulous warriors. Key democratic institutions such as free speech and citizen control of the military ensure that ordinary people take an active interest in the progress of war, freely (and often loudly) offering criticism and demanding results. Such criticism typically expressed impatience with military and political leaders for not doing everything they could to win wars as quickly as possible. Yet as David Horowitz and Ben Johnson argue in their bracing analysis of American defeatism, the antiwar movements from Vietnam to the present conflict in Iraq represent something very different: criticism aimed at expediting not victory, but defeat.<\/p>\nOnce a leader of the New Left, Horowitz has become the\u00a0b\u00eate noir<\/i>\u00a0of the American Left through his books, speeches, and online magazine\u00a0Front Page<\/i>, where Johnson is managing editor. In\u00a0Party of Defeat<\/i>, the authors relentlessly expose the cant, hypocrisy, and suicidal self-loathing of what these days passes for progressive thought, which has corrupted the Democratic Party through its radical activist base and compromised America\u2019s security. The Democrats\u2019 attack on President Bush in the midst of a war, the authors conclude, is \u201cthe most disgraceful episode in America\u2019s political history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Party of Defeat<\/i>\u00a0opens with the Vietnam War-era hijacking of the Democratic Party by antiwar radicals, whose ultimate purpose wasn\u2019t so much to end the war, but to discredit and weaken the political, social, and economic foundations of America. For the radical Left, then and now, \u201cno longer regards itself as part of the nation,\u201d Horowitz and Johnson write. \u201cThis Left sees itself instead as part of an abstract \u2018humanity,\u2019 transcending national borders and patriotic allegiances, whose interests coincide with a worldwide radical cause.\u201d As such, it must work against America\u2019s interests and success, disguising its activity as \u201cdissent\u201d or a more general antiwar sentiment.<\/p>\n
George McGovern, who captured the Democratic Party\u2019s presidential nomination in 1972, embodied the leftist vision of capitalist America as a malignant aggressor responsible for global suffering and oppression. Though Richard Nixon\u2019s landslide victory over McGovern that year ratified most Americans\u2019 rejection of the radical worldview, the Watergate scandal empowered a Democrat-controlled Congress to cease support for South Vietnam and to eviscerate our intelligence agencies. Nixon\u2019s political disgrace also made possible the election of Jimmy Carter, who largely shared the left\u2019s view of a dysfunctional America. Carter, Horowitz and Johnson charge, \u201ccut back America\u2019s military defenses, hamstrung America\u2019s intelligence agencies, and weakened the nation\u2019s resolve.\u201d And Carter abandoned the Shah of Iran, whose overthrow by radical Islamists in 1979, followed by the kidnapping of American diplomatic personnel, marked the first jihadist challenge to America.<\/p>\n
Carter\u2019s ineffectual response to this attack invited more, particularly in the 1990s during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Clinton, a much shrewder politician than Carter, understood that appearing weak on national defense was political suicide after the success of Ronald Reagan, whose strengthening of America\u2019s military helped bring down the Soviet Union. Yet for all of his cruise-missile bluster, Clinton still endorsed the fundamental hostility to the military and indifference to national defense that now seem part of the Democrats\u2019 political DNA.<\/p>\n
During his tenure, \u201cthe analytical and operations branches of the CIA were cut by 30 percent,\u201d the authors point out. Under Clinton, further, \u201cthe agency drastically reduced its recruitment of new case officers . . . and closed bases, including the station in Hamburg, where Mohammed Atta\u2019s cell planned 9-11.\u201d The cuts also led to a decline of agents in key Muslim countries. And Clinton \u201craised the wall between the FBI and the CIA higher than before, which fatally obstructed the efforts to capture the 9-11 plotters,\u201d Horowitz and Johnson report. \u201cAs commander-in-chief [Clinton] was generally AWOL on the battlefront with the global Islamic jihad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Equally disastrous was Clinton\u2019s failure to understand the motives of the jihadists, treating their attacks as criminal offenses rather than as acts of war. The first World Trade Center bombing, the debacle in Mogadishu, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the bombings of the embassies in Africa \u2014 \u201cBill Clinton\u2019s response to the four terrorist bombings and the humiliating ambush in Somalia could be summarized as nothing, nothing, failure, nothing, and capitulation.\u201d Aversion to casualties and ingrained hostility to anything other than a symbolic use of military force kept Clinton from responding more forcefully. Nor, despite numerous opportunities, did he authorize the killing of Osama bin Laden, who had declared war on America, and who in numerous writings and interviews explicitly linked America\u2019s vulnerability to its failure to respond to these attacks.<\/p>\n
The Carter and Clinton presidencies show that even centrist Democrats must appease the vocal minority of the party\u2019s left wing, since it provides a large number of party activists and delegates, particularly during primaries. Hence just months after the start of the Iraq War \u2014 and from the outset of the 2004 presidential primary campaigns \u2014 national Democrats turned against a war that they had voted for, and that President Clinton had laid the foundation for in 1998 with the Iraq Liberation Act. Perhaps the most conspicuous example of this shift was the enthusiastic presence of Democratic leaders like Al Gore, Barbara Boxer, Tom Harkin, and Tom Daschle at the premier of Michael Moore\u2019s anti-American fantasy\u00a0Fahrenheit 9-11<\/i>\u00a0in 2004. Moore\u2019s film exemplified the phenomenon that came to be called \u201cBush derangement syndrome,\u201d but mainstream Democrats also played a role in distorting the historical record concerning the Iraq War.<\/p>\n
P<\/b><\/span>arty of Defeat<\/i>\u00a0includes a compelling reprise of the reasons why America went to war against Saddam Hussein. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, which declared Hussein in \u201cmaterial breach\u201d of 16 previous U.N. resolutions enforcing the truce that ended the Gulf War, effectively legitimized military action against Iraq once Hussein ignored the 30-day deadline for complying with the resolution. Moreover, President Bush\u2019s case for removing Hussein focused on WMD programs, not stockpiles. Though no WMD stockpiles turned up, the report of the Iraq Survey Group, made public in October 2003, indeed established the existence of WMD-related programs and equipment, laboratories and safe houses concealing equipment from U.N. monitoring, research on biological weapons, documents and equipment related to uranium enrichment, plans for long-range missiles, and evidence of attempts to acquire long-range missile technologies from North Korea. \u201cIt was Saddam\u2019s refusal to observe the arms-control agreements designed to allow U.N. inspections and prevent him from building weapons of mass destruction that made the war necessary,\u201d Horowitz and Johnson explain.<\/p>\nYet these facts have been obscured by partisan attacks on the president\u2019s decision to invade. Never mind that the invasion was ratified by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Iraq that Congress passed in October 2002, and which listed several\u00a0casus belli<\/i>\u00a0besides WMDs. Even before then, prominent Democrats like Al Gore and Jimmy Carter were attacking the Bush Doctrine mandating preemptive action against terrorist threats. The first critical distortion that gave traction to the war\u2019s opponents was the uproar over minor diplomat Joseph Wilson, who had been sent to Niger to investigate a British intelligence report finding that Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium. In the summer of 2003, Wilson alleged in theNew York Times<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0The New Republic<\/i>\u00a0that he had told the administration that there was no truth to the report before Bush repeated its findings in his 2003 State of the Union speech. As Horowitz and Johnson note, \u201cThe charge that Bush had lied about the Niger uranium deal provided a way for those who had previously supported the war to find common ground with the party\u2019s radicals who had opposed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
That Wilson was a Democratic political activist and foreign-affairs adviser to John Kerry\u2019s presidential campaign raised no red flags with a media that took his assertions on faith and relentlessly publicized them. By the time the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had investigated Wilson\u2019s claims and debunked them a year later \u2014 indeed, Wilson\u2019s actual report \u201clent more credibility,\u201d as the Senate committee put it, to the existence of an Iraqi uranium deal \u2014 it was too late. The \u201cBush lied\u201d mantra had won media validation and provided the antiwar activists with a potent weapon. Just how potent became clear with the meteoric rise of Vermont governor Howard Dean, whose early front-runner status in the 2004 presidential primaries forced Democratic contenders like Senators John Kerry and John Edwards \u2014 both of whom had voted in favor of removing Saddam \u2014 to tack left. Meanwhile, an increasingly overwrought Al Gore, while sitting out the presidential race, contradicted his long public record of advocating regime change in Iraq.<\/p>\n
The press played a significant role in facilitating the cycle of sensational charges based on distorted evidence. Later investigations repudiated many of these allegations, but could not undo the damage done to public perceptions. The Abu Ghraib prison scandal is a case in point. \u201cWhat would normally be counted as a minor incident in any war,\u201d Horowitz and Johnson maintain, \u201cwas elevated to a national and then a global scandal by editors determined to exploit it without regard for its potential impact on the national interest or the security of American troops in Iraq.\u201d\u00a0The New York Times<\/i>, which often sets the agenda for the rest of the mainstream media, ran 60 days of stories about Abu Ghraib, filled with ridiculous comparisons with the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war and with Saddam\u2019s horrific crimes: \u201cIt was exactly the kind of psychological-warfare campaign that would normally have been conducted by an enemy propaganda machine,\u201d Horowitz and Johnson observe. So, too, with the lurid charges of abuse of the prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, many of which were read on the Senate floor by Dick Durbin, who compared American officials there with Nazis and the genocidal Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. By the time 12 official investigations had debunked such claims, the media-stoked perception that Guantanamo was some sort of gulag of torture and abuse had achieved the status of fact, thus providing another propaganda weapon for our enemies.<\/p>\n
On issue after issue \u2014 the alleged number of Iraqi children killed by sanctions, the inflated number of civilian casualties in the war, the looted Iraqi artifacts, the celebrity of Cindy Sheehan, the media exposure of clandestine intelligence-gathering programs, the attacks on General David Petraeus \u2014 Horowitz and Johnson document how the truth, and America\u2019s security, were sacrificed to the ideology of radical activists, the partisan needs of the Democratic Party, and the liberal shibboleths of the mainstream media. Worse yet, America\u2019s enemies took up these charges and incorporated them into their own propaganda (a frequent al Qaeda tactic, as documented in Raymond Ibrahim\u2019s\u00a0The Al Qaeda Reader<\/i>). For example, Osama bin Laden in a\u00a0fatwa<\/i>\u00a0quoted epidemiologist and wannabe Democratic Congressman Les Roberts\u2019s ridiculous toll of 650,000 civilian dead in Iraq \u2014 a figure 12 times the actual total by 2005. And the Iranian ambassador to the United States answered charges that his country was aiding terrorists in Iraq by alleging that \u201cAmerica had invaded Iraq on false pretenses\u201d and was now making Iran the scapegoat.<\/p>\n
Horowitz and Johnson draw a sobering conclusion: \u201cThe decision to attack the morality of America\u2019s war effort has dealt a severe blow to the American cause. It has undermined American unity in the face of the enemy, profoundly damaged the clarity with which the war is understood, and diminished Americans\u2019 ability to defend themselves.\u201d In this important presidential election year,\u00a0Party of Defeat<\/i>\u00a0is essential reading.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u00a92008 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Democratic left wing has been determined to lose America’s wars. by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal Review of\u00a0Party of Defeat: How Democrats and Radicals Undermined America\u2019s War on Terror Before and After 9-11, by David Horowitz and Ben Johnson (Spence, 224 pp.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[87,22,739],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-R5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":868,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/appeasement-bode-war-not-peace\/","url_meta":{"origin":3291,"position":0},"title":"Appeasement Bode War Not Peace","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Scambray New Oxford Review A review of\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama's America\u00a0by Bruce S. Thornton. (Encounter Books, 2011 pp. 283) Winston Churchill famously said, \"An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.\" In\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2545,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-libya-venture-and-double-standards\/","url_meta":{"origin":3291,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Libya Venture and Double Standards","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The champion of shameless chutzpah has always been the guy who murders his parents then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he\u2019s an orphan. But White House spokesman Jay Carney might be the new champ, given his response to the House\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5461,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-passions-of-the-left\/","url_meta":{"origin":3291,"position":2},"title":"The Passions of the Left","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"CIA's new revelations fans the flames of \"progressive\" myths of our past by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The publication of the CIA\u2019s \u201cfamily jewels\u201d \u2014 the record of its domestic spying, hare-brained plots against Castro, and mind-control experiments, among other oddities \u2014 is sure to add fuel to that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5320,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/four-months-in-vietnam\/","url_meta":{"origin":3291,"position":3},"title":"Four Months in Vietnam","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Or how to misdirect public attention. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers Everyone knows magicians use misdirection to make their illusions work. While one hand distracts us the other is pulling the egg or coin from its hiding place. Politics is no different, as the Kerry campaign and its shills\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3823,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dumbing-democracy-down\/","url_meta":{"origin":3291,"position":4},"title":"Dumbing Democracy Down","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society Many in the west are interpreting the demonstrations in Egypt against Hosni Mubarak as populist expressions of \u201caspirations for a democratic future,\u201d as a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron put it. So too President Obama, who spoke of the \u201cuniversal\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5701,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-tin-drum-progressive-boomers\/","url_meta":{"origin":3291,"position":5},"title":"The Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Like the hero of Gunter Grass\u2019 novel\u00a0The Tin Drum, America\u2019s progressive Baby Boomers chose not to grow up. Why should they? They decided that their development was complete when they graduated from college. All they needed to do was affirm their magnificent, world-historical identity. No\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3292,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3291\/revisions\/3292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}