Ender’s Iraq
If you’ve read Enders Game you know that Orson Scott Card has a thoughtful, balanced, and human approach to the horrors of war. In his column today, Card turns his gaze on our foreign policy challenges in Iraq. The result is educational and compelling. If you read only one thing today, skip the polls and the horse-race journalism and read this:
[I]f the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.
But at least there will be a chance.
I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America’s role as a light among nations.
But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it — and in the most damaging possible way — I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.
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There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world. Free trade has depended for decades on American might. If we withdraw now, we announce to the world that if you just kill enough Americans, the big boys will go home and let you do whatever you want.
Every American in the world then becomes a target.
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Critics of Bush love to cite the many “mistakes” his administration has made. Most of these “mistakes” are arguable — are they mistakes at all? — and when you sum up the others, with any kind of rational understanding of military history, the only possible conclusion is that this is the best-run war in history, with the fewest mistakes. And most of the mistakes we’ve made are the kind that become clear to morning-after quarterbacks but were difficult to avoid in the fog of war.
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Tyrannies only continue in power when they can give the order to kill their own people and be obeyed.
In Iran, there have been several incidents in the past months and years where troops refused to fire on demonstrators. This is huge news (virtually unreported in the West, of course), because of what it means: The ayatollahs’ days are numbered.
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What really scares me is the 2008 election. The Democratic Party is hopeless — only clowns seem to be able to rise to prominence there these days, while they boot out the only Democrats serious about keeping America’s future safe. But the Republicans are almost equally foolish, trying to find somebody who is farther right than Bush — somebody who will follow the conservative line far better than the moderate Bush has ever attempted — and somebody who will “kick butt” in foreign policy.
So if we get one of the leading Democrats as our new President in 2009, we’ll be on the road to pusillanimous withdrawal and the resulting chaos in the world.
While if we elect any of the Republicans who are extremist enough to please the Hannity wing of the party, our resulting belligerence will likely provoke Islam into unifying behind one of the tyrants, which is every bit as terrifying an outcome.
I hope somebody emerges in one of the parties, at least, who commits himself or herself to continuing Bush’s careful, wise, moderate, and so-far-successful policies in the War on Terror.
Meanwhile, we have this election. You have your vote. For the sake of our children’s future — and for the sake of all good people in the world who don’t get to vote in the only election that matters to their future, too — vote for no Congressional candidate who even hints at withdrawing from Iraq or opposing Bush’s leadership in the war. And vote for no candidate who will hand control of the House of Representatives to those who are sworn to undo Bush’s restrained but steadfast foreign policy in this time of war.
This is only a fraction of Card’s analysis. Go read the whole thing: The Only issue This Election Day.
