Is the Iraq War "Over"?

A gentle reader has registered polite objections to my brief remarks on the Iraq War. I will respond on two counts, briefly on the military question, less briefly on the political.

Militarily the Iraq War is over in the sense that, as the president declared, major military operations are concluded. Allied forces control the country, a new government is in place, a new constitution is moving forward. That's the normal sense in which a war is "over." It's not in common usage right now, but I'd say that historically, it's the way the term is used.

Of course, the war is not over in the sense that limited hostilities continue. Terrorists are very active in Iraq right now. American soldiers and others are dying violent deaths. But that's a far different situation than two armies meeting in battle. A stable nation has not yet been created, but a state of war between two nations no longer exists. This isn't even a civil war.

Now, the political question. Here I simply insist that there's little chance of the Republican party being punished by the electorate in 2006 or 2008 for the war.

Even if the outcome of the Iraq war were as negative as the Vietnam war, it’s worth remembering that the only national candidate punished for his conduct of that war was Lyndon Johnson, and that happened within his own party. Nixon rolled to victory in 1972 after a controversial bombing campaign in Vietnam. Ford, a miserable campaigner who supported the war but under whose watch (thanks to the Senate’s violation of prior agreements by refusing to fund the South Vietnamese army) Saigon fell, barely lost in 1976 to a candidate who ran on honesty, not the conduct of the war.

Carter, on the other hand, lost mightily in 1980, largely because his only tangible effort to address the Iranian invasion of American sovereign territory and enslavement of American citizens (i.e. the Tehran embassy) was to invade with eight helicopters. Otherwise, all he did was vow not to leave the White House until the hostage crisis was resolved, a promise Reagan nearly managed to allow him to keep by getting the hostages freed in the first hours of his presidency, literally.

In other words, the American electorate shows a propensity for favoring leaders who will take decisive action, even if the outcome isn’t perfect, over those who dither or criticize the action once taken. Expect that to play out in coming Novembers.