Real Regime Crisis Coming In Washington—Not Baghdad

Both
houses of Congress have now gone on record opposing
Bush`s dispatch of 21,500 more troops to Iraq. Yet
neither house is willing to end U.S. involvement by
cutting off funding for the war.

Transparently, this is not a strategy for victory. It is
a hold-the-line, stay-the-course strategy until America
concludes that the price in blood and treasure of
averting defeat is too high, and demands that U.S.
troops be brought home, no matter the consequences.

Absent
a deus ex machina, we are on the road to defeat.
The timing alone remains in doubt.

Colin
Powell says we are losing the war. President Bush says
we are not winning. If more troops are ruled out,
stalemate seems the best outcome. Or do we think that
when we depart, Nouri al-Maliki will succeed where
Vietnam`s President Thieu failed?

Bush is
determined no defeat will happen on his watch. And he
has the power to prevent Congress from forcing a
withdrawal. He can ignore non-binding resolutions. He
can veto laws that restrict or cut off funds for the war
or the troops. A third of one house will surely sustain
a Bush veto, until 2009.

Democrats, realizing what happened to their party when

they tied Nixon`s hands and cut off Saigon, and

South Vietnam was overrun and Cambodia fell to the
genocidal rule of Pol Pot, want to end U.S. involvement
but not be held responsible for what follows. For what
will surely follow is a crushing defeat for U.S. policy
in the Middle East, a humanitarian disaster, and a
wider, bloodier war.

Anyone
believe Baghdad will be a happier and safer place when
we are gone?

Paradoxically, while the U.S. invasion and smashing of
the Iraqi regime, army, state and ruling party caused
the war of succession, a U.S. withdrawal will be the
starter pistol shot for the war to begin in earnest with
all the contending parties in the region plunging in.

By
dynamiting the

Golden Temple at Samarra, the terrorist Abu Musab al
Zarqawi ignited the Sunni-Shia war. But it was we
well-intentioned Americans who ignited the Hobbesian war
of all against all, by destroying all the old power
centers in Iraq, without knowing how to build enduring
and democratic new ones.

Yet if
Bush-Cheney are unwilling to withdraw, and Democrats and
a growing number of Republicans are unwilling to invest
any more blood and treasure to achieve victory, what is
the likely future—for us at home?

As war
deaths rise over the next 23 months, opposition to the
war will grow, acrimony will grow, bitterness will grow,
and recriminations will escalate.

Republicans have already split over the surge, with the
opponents being called cowards by their colleagues.
Democrats will soon divide over whether to cut off
funds. For Harry Reid cannot long hide the division in
the Democratic caucus, and Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha
are prepared to fight it out with fellow Democrats in
the House.

A sure
sign this war is unlikely to end well is the scavenger
hunt in the War Party to fix responsibility for failure
on anyone but themselves. In Vanity Fair, the

"cakewalk" crowd renounces Rumsfeld and Bush.
[Neo
Culpa, November 3, 2006]
The war was an integral part of our brilliant strategy,
they say. But we cannot be held responsible for the
incompetence of those charged with carrying it out.

The
John Edwards Democrats say: If only we had known then
what we know now, we would never have voted for war. And
they apologize. But questions remain unanswered. Why did
you get it wrong and vote for Bush`s war, when Russ
Feingold, Ted Kennedy and half the Democratic Party got
it right and voted no?

And if
Edwards & Co. were fatally wrong on the critical vote of
their careers, approving the greatest blunder in U.S.
history, without doing due diligence, how are they
qualified, and why should they be rewarded with the
White House?

The
McCain Republicans blame the failures on Rumsfeld for
not stopping the looting in Baghdad, or on Paul Bremer
for disbanding the Iraqi Army and purging the Baathists,
or on the generals for fighting the war the wrong way,
or on the Pentagon for not demanding the troops needed
to win.

The
White House is preparing a case that the war has gone
badly because Syria and Iran have provided terrorists
free passage into Iraq and the most lethal of the
weapons killing Americans. And not only the U.S. naval
and air buildup in the Gulf, but reports of attacks on
the Republican Guard in the non-Persian, non-Shia
regions of Iran suggest someone has decided that Tehran
will pay a price in blood for meddling in Iraq.

The

Iraq Study Group blames no one for the disaster, but
urges that we turn around and get out, the idea being
that if we cannot save Iraq, as least we can save the
American Establishment from a political civil war
breaking out here in the USA.

The
real regime crisis that is coming may be right here in
River City.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs


no introduction to VDARE.COM
readers; his book

State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America,

can be ordered from
Amazon.com.