Paranoid politics at its worse

Gerard Baker:

Democracy, Winston Churchill famously observed, is the worst form of government ever devised – except for all the others. Well, he was right about the first part.

In America these days democracy is living down to its reputation, producing sticking-plaster solutions to epochal challenges, indulging the worst populist instincts of its voters, throwing up demagogic leaders unworthy of the job and rejecting those of true courage. The most depressing spectacle is unfolding over Iraq. Washington has reached the stage where vital national interests – and the security of much of the world – are being determined almost entirely by immediate, panicky political considerations. Americans want their troops home.

It’s a wholly understandable sentiment. But it is one that needs to be resisted, not massaged and nurtured, as members of Congress from both parties have been doing.

Despite the picture of unrelenting gloom that fills television screens, there is growing evidence of progress in Iraq. In Anbar province, once the seedbed of Sunni extremism, peace has descended, as local tribal leaders have allied themselves with the Americans to defeat the hated al-Qaeda. There are signs that something similar is happening in troubled Diyala. Baghdad remains volatile and violent. But the “surge” of US troops launched earlier this year has only in the past few weeks reached its peak.

Even if you are inclined to greet claims of progress with war-weary scepticism, it is hard to see how you can argue with the proposition that an early US withdrawal would pile carnage upon misery. In graphic terms this week, Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador to Baghdad – no shill for the Bush Administration – described Iraq as like a horror movie. In Washington, he said, people think we’re into the last reel of a three-reel film. We just have to sit through the final stages and then we can all go home. The reality, he said, is that an early US departure would put us about midway through the first of a five-reel Hammer Horror flick, with unimaginably gruesome scenes still to come.

If the 160,000 US troops now keeping fissiparous components of Iraqi society apart were to leave, imagine the consequences. The sectarian bloodletting would eclipse even the tragedy we have witnessed so far. Islamist extremists would seize on their victory to push their creed with ever more gusto. Iran, Syria and Turkey and perhaps Saudi Arabia would pick eagerly over the rotting carcass of a nation.

Some halfway house measure, currently the popular – and therefore the favoured – approach in the US, whereby American forces would be reduced and confined to a more limited role would actually be even worse. It would lead directly to the spectacle of US troops standing by while the killing intensifies around them.

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Unfortunately, Democrats do not fear those pictures, but desire them and see political benefit in them because they will deny responsibility for the carnage they have produced. Today's Democrats are the most cynical politicians in the history of this country openly wishing for our defeat and gathering benefit from it for the short term. This is just another reason why they should never be trusted on matters of national security because national security will always be secondary to their political desires.