William F. Buckley: The Waning of the GOP

April 28, 2007, 0:45 a.m.

The Waning of the GOP

By William F. Buckley Jr.

The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly
beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on
the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended -
wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal. What is going on in
Congress is in the nature of accompaniment. The vote in Congress is
simply another salient in the war against war in Iraq. Republican
forces, with a couple of exceptions, held fast against the Democrats'
attempt to force Bush out of Iraq even if it required fiddling with
the Constitution. President Bush will of course veto the bill, but its
impact is critically important in the consolidation of public opinion.
It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the
people's laws, opposes the war.

Meanwhile, George Tenet, former head of the CIA, has just published a
book which seems to demonstrate that there was one part ignorance, one
part bullheadedness, in the high-level discussions before war became
policy. Mr. Tenet at least appears to demonstrate that there was
nothing in the nature of a genuine debate on the question. What he
succeeded in doing was aborting a speech by Vice President Cheney
which alleged a Saddam/al Qaeda relationship which had not in fact
been established.

It isn't that Tenet now doubts the lethality of the terrorists. What
he disputed was an organizational connection which argued for war
against Iraq as if Iraq were a vassal state of al Qaeda. A measure of
George Tenet's respect for the reach and malevolence of the enemy is
his statement that he is puzzled that Al Qaeda has not, since 2001,
sent out "suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half dozen American
shopping malls on any given day." By way of prophecy, he writes that
there is one thing he feels in his gut, which is that "Al Qaeda is
here and waiting."

But beyond affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is
George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making
decisive progress in Iraq. The indicators rise and fall from day to
day, week to week, month to month. In South Vietnam there was an
organized enemy. There is clearly organization in the strikes by the
terrorists against our forces and against the civil government in
Iraq, but whereas in Vietnam we had Hanoi as the operative
headquarters of the enemy, we have no equivalent of that in Iraq, and
that is a matter of paralyzing importance. All those bombings,
explosions, assassinations: we are driven to believe that they are, so
to speak, spontaneous.

When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The
generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the
regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that Mr.
Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen
terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can
a "surge," of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with
endemic disease? The parallel even comes to mind of the eventual
collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn't any way the government
could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of
the freeman in acquiring it.

General Petraeus is a wonderfully commanding figure. But if the enemy
is in the nature of a disease, he cannot win against it. Students of
politics ask then the derivative question: How can the Republican
party, headed by a president determined on a war he can't see an end
to, attract the support of a majority of the voters? General Petraeus,
in his Pentagon briefing on April 26, reported persuasively that there
has been progress, but cautioned, "I want to be very clear that there
is vastly more work to be done across the board and in many areas, and
again I note that we are really just getting started with the new
effort."

The general makes it a point to steer away from the political
implications of the struggle, but this cannot be done in the wider
arena. There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party
will survive this dilemma.


© 2007 Universal Press Syndicate
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWZjMDBlZDg2MDlmMDM4MmE1MGFmNjlkOTE5OWVkOTc=

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