Unshakable resolve

Outspoken antiwar liberal Democrat from Illinois, Representative Jan Schakowsky, went to Iraq earlier this month, resolving to listen, to learn, and to keep her opinions to herself.  The important thing she learned was that Iraqi political reconciliation would not happen by this September.  That's all she needed to hear.

She lost track of all the PowerPoint presentations that she and her colleagues sat through -- it was either five or six. "You would get these organizational charts that were all acronyms -- I mean like, 30 of them," Schakowsky recalled with a laugh. "And the danger of asking a question about them is it would add another 10 minutes" to the presentation.

When discussion turned to the consequences of withdrawal, she had nothing to say. 

She looked again through her notebook for a Petraeus quote. "He said: 'If you don't like the humanitarian crisis, the refugees and the internally displaced people, you can't draw down. If you are concerned about these people, the humanitarian crisis, you should be for our staying here.' "

In the next room, her Iraqi Christian constituents were still waiting. Schakowsky said she didn't respond to Petraeus; she let the comment drift by. "I was not arguing," she said. "I wanted to see what his take was."

By saying nothing, she thinks she coyly kept her opinions to herself.  She "wanted to see," she said, as if she didn't know what the General's take was.  She was not arguing, she said, but what she doesn't say  -- what she doesn't have to say -- is that it's because her mind was made up long ago.  It doesn't matter if Iraq becomes even more of a humanitarian crisis than it already is.

The meetings "made me feel more determined that the policy is going to have to be set in Washington, that the Congress is going to have to exert its will here to end this war."

Schakowsky's intention to end this war gives her the morale high ground, she thinks.  But it requires that she studiously ignore just what it means to end the war.  Bill Kristol offers a history lesson on what it means.  In 1975 after congress had cut off assistance to Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge were on the attack.  John Gunther Dean the American ambassador offered to evacuate the Cambodian Prime Minister, Sirik Matak.  Mr. Kristo has the Prime Minister's reply.

Dear Excellency and Friend:

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it. You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we all are born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you [the Americans].

Please accept, Excellency and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.

S/Sirik Matak

The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh a few days later. Sirik Matak was executed: shot in the stomach, he was left without medical help and took three days to die. Between 1 and 2 million Cambodians were murdered by the Khmer Rouge in the next three years. Next door, tens of thousands of Vietnamese were killed, and many more imprisoned. Hundreds of thousands braved the South China Sea to reach freedom.

The Cambodian Prime Minister had committed the mistake of believing the Americans.  Yet today's antiwar purists say that abandoning allies and reneging on commitments will improve America's standing in the world.  Surrender to our enemies has become such a noble objective that if an Iraqi bloodbath is the price, so be it.  For Schakowsky it's all in the name of "ending the war."

But she misleads.  She doesn't really intend to end this war, she means only to prevent America from fighting it.  This war will go on.  Unlike the war in Vietnam where the objective of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong was South Vietnam, the objective of al Qaeda is America.  Al Qaeda is in Iraq to fight America.  The catalyst for this war on terror, which now has its major front in Iraq, was the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  That attack by al Qaeda took place in America, not some distant Asian country.

But that doesn't matter.  Nor does it matter if our Iraqi allies face slaughter should U.S. troops abruptly pull out.  It doesn't matter that al Qaeda will be empowered, and it doesn't matter if Iraq becomes a terrorist launching pad.  Representative Jan Schakowsky's resolve is unshakable.