Bipartisanship in these contentious primary days has come to mean only that Republicans can indeed cut each other up as expertly as Democrats. It's a fascinating spectacle of political sociology: the once-orderly party of heirs apparent devolving -- or evolving, depending on one's view -- into a kind of bloody, Klingon-style right of ascension.
The intraparty knifings took on a special appeal late last week as John McCain, self-admitted economus ignoramus, realized that the perfectly grisly domestic situation is now grossly overshadowing his pet project of Iraq, and therefore harming his future prospects as commander in chief. John simply had to find a way to redirect the spotlight on all things martial, so he plucked a dated, obscure Mitt Romney quote from the archives and reentered the primary jungle with "gotcha"-machete firmly in hand.
It was nearly a year ago when Mitt muttered something about the possible advisability of devising a "private" -- meaning secret -- timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Pretty much everyone wanted out then, hence so did Mitt. That much was a given. When things in Iraq seemed to improve, many who had wanted out then wanted to stay, hence so did Mitt. His only consistency is extreme flexibility. But damn, he's good at it.
Anyway, John's crack oppo-research team finally discovered that little gem of militaristic apostasy, and John unleashed his consequent horror as a stunning flanking maneuver. "If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do," charged John, "then there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher."
Mitt was incensed, or at least he dutifully played the role of a politician incensed: "That's dishonest, to say that I have a specific date. That's simply wrong.... I know he's trying desperately to change the topic from the economy and trying to get back to Iraq, but to say something that's not accurate is simply wrong, and he knows better."
Then the gauntlets of demanded apologies started flying. Mitt was the first to go, saying John's allegation was "simply wrong and ... dishonest, and he should apologize."
In response John was cool, serene and loaded for bear with manly fortitude, as of course a manly commander in chief should be. But in slapping back at Mitt he added something that raised my ire as much as it surely did Mitt's, only for far different reasons.
What John said was this: "[Romney's] apology is owed to the young men and women serving this nation in uniform, that we will not let them down in hard times or good. That is who the apology is owed to."
It so happened that when I read that I had just put down a marvelous new work on military history: Mark Perry's Partners in Command, an investigation into the working relationship between Generals George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower. And the meticulously driven subtext of Perry's work is that both of these incisive military minds and, later, shapers of America's foreign policy, would have been appalled -- absolutely aghast -- at the United States' entry into Iraq.
Both would have left aside the question of apologies, because both, quite simply, would have found the intervention utterly inexcusable -- a betrayal of America's political culture, societal way of thinking, and even common sense.
Marshall and Eisenhower thought alike because in the 1920s they had both studied at the feet of a certain General Fox Conner, a military genius of unusual sociopolitical insight as well. And what Conner taught them -- what he hammered away at with singular emphasis -- was that, as Perry succinctly worded it, we were "Never [to] fight unless you have to, never fight alone, and never fight for long." (It was these lessons that Eisenhower had in mind, as president, when he pulled our sorry butts out of Korea's human meat-grinder.)
And Perry himself hammered the point, clearly with a certain contemporaneity in mind: "Conner's simple axioms were based on what he knew about the American people and what he believed about democracies. He knew that Americans didn't like war and that, in truth, they weren't very good at it. The solution for this was for America never to agree to fight unless there was no other choice ... and then to do so quickly, before people got tired of spilling their children's blood."
John McCain -- as that rare political creature, a Republican pol who actually served -- now presents himself as a thoughtful student of military history as well, and therefore as exceptionally qualified to be commander in chief. But Mr. McCain, in rooting for this idiotic war at the start and now advocating an interminable presence, understands nothing of what the true giants of yesteryear understood.
It is John McCain who owes an apology to "the young men and women serving this nation in uniform," for having helped, that is, to spearhead their voiceless entanglement in a lonely and endless war of choice -- one that would have appalled those far deeper thinkers of how and when military means should be used, and how they should not.
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