Responsibility

Over at Daily Pundit, co-blogger Lastango writes a well thought out attack on the current administration's policies regarding winning the global war on terror. I'm not going to make much of an argument point by point here, but I do have some thoughts on a significant part that was left out--our responsibility.

When it comes to the GWOT, the left is hitting the administration from one side trying to "remove" them from power by a hoped-for embarrassment. Our forces in the field lose, Bush looks bad, the American people turn on him and no more Bush. This is their hope.

The right is hitting Bush on the other side in thinking that we haven't gone far enough yet. Iran is going nuclear, Assad continues to fuel the insurgency in Syria and the U.S. is planning to downscale their involvement in region within the next year (i.e. pulling out of Iraq). To some, Lastango included, this is unacceptable. We should, in their view, be operating and using Iraq as a forward "base" of operations against the other axis of evil. No one yet mentions exactly how we would do this against a more populous, better funded, and possibly nuclear Iran. It is just easier to point fingers.

My point in all this is that WE share responsibility for what is or isn't happening in this war. In the last election, we sent the administration some pretty mixed messages. While polling showed that American's overwhelmingly wanted to fight Islamic terror, many who supported this war went out and put their support behind a candidate that said Iraq was the biggest mistake since Vietnam. This wasn't a shot taken after the fact, our troops were still in the field and the Iraqi elections hadn't taken place yet. The support that Kerry had received in the election was not irrelevant. We told the world, and our own leaders, that we weren't exactly sure what we thought about the whole war thing.

During WWII, we mobilized our entire population to pursue victory. Our leadership does share some of the responsibility in this, but just as in WWII, the government didn't lead the charge on everything. People volunteered not just on the battlefield, but at home. Industry remained strong and the troops received support in material and in morale. Our entire population was willing to do whatever it took to make sure the United States defeated the Germa-Japanese-Italian axis.

So, I don't disagree with Lastango's post in it's detail, however I do believe that we will never follow through with this fight if a majority of our population remains content to ignore any responsibility in this fight at all.