Critical Mass

A recap of the debate and a defense of the Iraq War 

By Dan Gelernter

On Wendesday night, defeated ex-candidate for the US Senate in Connecticut Ned Lamont came to the Yale Political Union to give an opening speech in favor of the resolution that “Congress should force the President to withdraw from Iraq.”

The remarkable thing about the debate was that Lamont lost: after his speech and the five student speeches that followed, the YPU voted 26 to 44 with nine abstentions against the resolution: a defeat so resounding that even I was surprised.

Mr. Lamont opened with a few rather bitter jokes about the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, and then advanced ten points in favor of withdrawal, which he gave in Dave Letterman style to be clever.

They were, to the best of my recollection: first, that the money would be better spent elsewhere; second, that “our military is already stretched thin;” third, that all of the generals are against a surge, and, that when they told Bush this, “instead of redeploying the troops, he redeployed his generals;” fourth, that the National Intelligence Estimate says that we are making the world unsafe by our being in Iraq; fifth, that the Iraqi government doesn’t want the surge; sixth, that our attempt to separate Sunnis and Shiites is doomed (but that they can work that out by themselves); seventh, that Americans are against the war and (eighth) the surge; ninth, that Bush’s new strategy isn’t new and that everyone from the generals to the Iraqis is against it; and finally, that Bush asked us to “give it a chance to work,” but we already have.

Lamont also said in answering questions that he supports non-binding congressional resolutions because they will build bi-partisan support, that he is not in favor of cutting and running (!) and that it is “time for a new resolution to go to war,” meaning that, now that there is a Democratic majority in congress, we should give the war an up or down vote that will either re-declare or end it.

He claimed that our presence is making civil war in Iraq more likely and (when pressed to explain what he’d meant by favoring a diplomatic solution) said that it was possible we could work out a deal with Syria and Iran whereby we could “get them to reconsider” fomenting civil war and developing nuclear weapons. He didn’t explain just how such a deal could be effected.

The last questioner asked Mr. Lamont what sort of message we would send the world by leaving. Lamont said that leaving would indicate that “we’re a stronger country” and “our allies would salute that.”

With such a performance as this, a performance that couldn’t even convince one of the most liberal universities in the country, we are left to wonder how this man could possibly have convinced the Democrats that he was worthy of the Senate. Beyond the plain and obvious wrongness in many of his statements, he made obnoxiously clear his disrespect of our president. The left applauds that, but even moderates cannot help but feel a tinge or anger when they hear our chief representative and highest officer slurred.

I could end my piece right here, but I am unsatisfied in that no speech on either side of the debate captured the central issue, which was to explain why we are in Iraq, and what victory is worth. I shall attempt to give the explanation here -- this is what a speech on Iraq should say:

“I have noticed that even among those who accept the need to win in Iraq, there are many who also accept the premise that we were wrong to invade in the first place. I do not.

“Opponents of the war have lambasted the United States for destroying the “stable” former Iraq -- a country in which not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of citizens were murdered by the government: by bombs, by gas, by having their heads lopped off in front of their families. Iraq was being killed off by inches, and it was such a stable country that nobody cared.

“We invaded Iraq because we had good reason to believe that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, and because we knew that Saddam was supporting Al Qaeda. We did find weapons, albeit not as many as we expected to find, and certainly not enough to satisfy Dan Rather. The link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden is proven, but few Americans seem occupied with that fact.

“Truth be told, we are fighting in Iraq now for a different reason that has nothing to do with WMD or Al Qaeda. We have elevated our mission to a higher level, because it is America’s tradition to enter wars on practical grounds and win them for the noblest cause available. So we are fighting in Iraq now to give 25 million men the greatest gift of liberty.

“When Mr. Lamont said that the 35,000 Iraqi dead would be the equivalent of 350,000 American dead, he made the wrong comparison. He should have stood fledgling Iraq next to fledgling and not modern America: the proportional number of American dead in 1776 would have been 3,500. But our Revolutionary War cost us a thousand lives more than that.

“The American mind examining the current war in Iraq is understandably more concerned with American casualties. This leads us to a vital question that our elected leaders have failed to answer, resulting in a great erosion in our willingness to fight: Americans don’t know what the price of victory is. If Iraq could have been secured “for free,” costing us no lives, who could doubt that we were right to depose a murderous regime and replace it with a democracy? If the war only cost a hundred lives, most would still agree that the resulting advance of freedom in a part of the world where freedom is rare was worth it.

“But when we loose a thousand, or two thousand men, many here at home are plunged into sudden uncertainty. They wonder if we had the “right” to loose so many lives. And those politicians who originally supported the war, and now favor withdrawal, have set the price of victory with surprising exactness: somewhere between a hundred and a thousand lives.

“But deciding that victory is only worthwhile if it costs less than so many lives or takes fewer than so many years is a guarantee of defeat: acknowledge the possibility of failure and you will fail. Victory is priceless.

“We win wars by fighting until they are won. Because the cause of advancing liberty is sacred to America, and because we are the only nation in the world with the strength to wield the sword of justice, we have a duty to fight for liberty in the world forever. Not until four years and a thousand lives are expended, but until the whole word is free, even if it takes a thousand years and every life.

“We cannot advance liberty everywhere at once, and so we will tackle one tyrant at a time. We cannot guarantee victory at any set price -- but we can guarantee victory. We are fighting because the strong have a duty to help the weak, and because free men must make men free. Take pride in America’s greatness, so that we are forever preserved in the memories of men as the Champion of Justice, and as the nation that has done its duty.”