This Week in Babylon

Note to strategists: wimps can win

In a front-page analysis yesterday, the Washington Post wrote that House and Senate Democrats planned to challenge President Bush's “surge” in Iraq. But, the Post warned, “the moves carry clear risks for a party that suffered politically for pushing to end an unpopular war in Vietnam three decades ago, and Democratic leaders hope to avoid a similar fate over the conflict in Iraq.”

I'm trying to figure out why any political party would suffer for opposing an unpopular war, and I'd like to know how the Democrats were punished by the voters for opposing the Vietnam War. In 1974, the year after the last American troops pulled out of Vietnam, Democrats won 291 seats in the House, increasing their ranks by 49 seats. The Watergate scandal was obviously a big factor, as was President Ford's pardon of Nixon, but the Democrats also were favored because their party was, on the whole, far more antiwar than the G.O.P. In the Senate, the Democrats picked up four seats. Two years later, when Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated Ford to win the presidency, the congressional elections were a wash—the Democrats won one House seat; the Republicans won one Senate seat.

Carter was crushed by Ronald Reagan in 1980—as were Democrats in the Senate, where Republicans took control—and some would argue that his party's supposed pacifism and Vietnam defeatism were the reason why. But Carter had jacked up military spending and aggressively responded to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. “Let our position be absolutely clear,” he said in his 1980 State of the Union address. “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” Stagflation—the inflation rate in November 1980 stood at an annual rate of 12.65 percent and unemployment was at 7.5 percent—and the hostage crisis in Iran were surely bigger factors in the defeat of 1980 than voter disgust with Democrat “doves.”

I'm wagering that there aren't a whole lot of members of Congress, Republican or Democrat, who believe that being pro-war is smart politics at the present moment. “I do not believe that sending more troops to Iraq is the answer,” Senator Sam Brownback, the right-wing Republican from Kansas who, not coincidentally, is running for his party's presidential nomination, said after Bush's State of the Union address. “Iraq requires a political rather than a military solution.”

By the way, the Democrats maintained control of the House—which was always more liberal than the Senate when it came to Vietnam policy—through 1994. Some punishment.

Bush channels LBJ

The best analysis of last night's speech on Iraq by President Bush came from Will Bunch (link via warandpiece.com). He compared it to LBJ's 1967 State of the Union speech exactly 40 years earlier, which focused on the situation in Vietnam. Here are a couple of excerpts:

LBJ, Jan. 10, 1967: Our South Vietnamese allies...must provide real security to the people living in the countryside...It means bringing to the villagers an effective civilian government that they can respect, and that they can rely upon and that they can participate in, and that they can have a personal stake in. We hope that government is now beginning to emerge.

GWB, Jan. 10, 2007: Only the Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people. And their government has put forward an aggressive plan to do it.

LBJ, Jan. 10, 1967 : We have chosen to fight a limited war in Vietnam in an attempt to prevent a larger war--a war almost certain to follow, I believe, if the Communists succeed in overrunning and taking over South Vietnam by aggression and by force. I believe, and I am supported by some authority, that if they are not checked now the world can expect to pay a greater price to check them later.

GWB, Jan. 10, 2007: The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time…In the long run, the most realistic way to protect the American people is to provide a hopeful alternative to the hateful ideology of the enemy – by advancing liberty across a troubled region.

“Only 7,917 American troops had died in Vietnam through the end of 1966, or ten days before Johnson's speech,” Bunch notes. “From the beginning of 1967 though the end of the war, an additional 50,285—more than six times as many—Americans would lose their lives.”

Obama turns coal into pork

In my story about Barack Obama in the November issue of the magazine, I noted that the senator was a huge supporter of ethanol, the notorious porkbarrel-spawned fuel produced by companies like Illinois-based ADM. Now, Obama is befriending the coal industry, a major producer of greenhouse gases. Tag-teaming with Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Obama is promoting the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007, which, the Washingon Post reports, “would provide incentives for research and plant construction.” As with ethanol, Obama explains his stance by invoking “energy independence.” Pork is the more likely explanation—Illinois is a major coal-producing state, and the senator would no doubt find it difficult to take on a powerful home state industry. Luckily for Obama, there are no huge oil reserves buried beneath the Mississippi River or Lake Michigan; that at least spares him the embarrassment of having to rally behind offshore drilling.

Mel Gibson Smells Bagels

This Saturday Night Live video clip is not from this week, and it's not from Babylon; instead, it's inspired by two other ancient civilizations. But I only caught it two days ago, and it's too good to miss.

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