It Takes One

It's painful for me to read hand-wringing like this article about how military action is problematic for the image people have of President Obama and his poor, wittle wegacy. Excerpt:

But make no mistake: Obama’s escalation of airstrikes and the use of U.S. personnel to help “degrade and destroy” the extremist Sunni group represents a major setback for a commander in chief whose early international appeal was built on a pledge to remove the United States from “permanent war footing.”

“How did this group that came in determined to remedy the Bush administration’s overreach . . . end up embroiled in a far more open-ended conflict that has just as far-reaching consequences?” said Rosa Brooks, a former Obama administration official who served at the Pentagon from 2009 to 2011. “This is a legacy issue for him.”

Trying to be "not like Bush"—or not like anybody else for that matter—is not a successful strategy for leadership. Unfortunately that was a successful campaign strategy for getting Obama elected, and it's hard for Democrats to see the difference.

There is actually a great deal more hubris in thinking you can quit fighting a war somewhere and that will suddenly bring peace, love and a big legacy prize as an added bonus than in thinking that you better start fighting when your enemies attack you like President Bush did. That's how all this started, lest we forget. We had war declared on us.

An illustration comes to mind. I took my four oldest kids to see Indians when we got stomped by Detroit 12-1 on Labor Day. I was explaining to my 10-year-old son that the pitcher, Corey Kluber, would get credit for the loss. He responded, "I think it's the Detroit Tigers' fault that the Indians lost." He had a point. Osama Bin Laden declared war when he attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, not George W. Bush. This is not a "tango"; it only takes one to instigate a war.

Instead of responding to polls showing "war weariness" on the part of the public, I would like to see our leaders confronting the real issue. That issue is that the war against Islamic Jihad is going to require that the populace increase their fortitude and their resilience to defeat these enemies however long it takes. Wars are won or lost. If you leave, if you take your ball and go home, well, that's a loss.