Buchanan: Bush better win this Republican war.

I fear we have not had the will to wage war since 1945. That's political and moral will, kiddies. There's nothing wrong with our troops except the women and sodomites in combat, but hey, that's the price we pay for democracy, right?
If Pat and I both turn out to be right, we're in for some serious trouble.

We may not be losing the war, but U.S. policy is failing either to end the insurgency or to eradicate the insurgents. Yet, Bush appears unable or unwilling to escalate to win it, if that means adding troops to the 140,000 already there. But if escalation is not an option, and the present policy is not working, and U.S. support is weakening, we are in a hellish situation.

For whether one opposed or supported the war, the president took us in. And, by now, the U.S. investment in blood, treasure, credibility and prestige is immense. As of today, there exists the possibility that that huge investment could be wiped out and America could suffer a reversal as grave as the loss of China to Stalin and Mao in 1949, or of Southeast Asia to communism in 1975.

Is the president, is the country aware of the stakes involved and of the consequences of a failure in Iraq?

If, following a U.S. withdrawal, the Baghdad government collapsed in the face of the insurgency, Iraq could split apart into a Kurdish north, a Shiite south and a radicalized Sunni center. Civil war could follow, with 2 million barrels a day of oil production taken off the world market in a matter of weeks.

A U.S. strategic defeat in Iraq would have a traumatic effect on every ally in the Islamic world and would energize and embolden radicals and terrorists from Morocco to Mindanao to attack the remaining friends of this country and American interests across the Third World.

At home, loss of Iraq would make Bush a failed president and ignite a quarrel as contentious and ugly as the "Who-Lost-China?" argument of the Truman-McCarthy era and the Vietnam debates of the Johnson and Nixon years, both of which poisoned our national politics for decades.

Because he knows a failure in Iraq would be a disaster for U.S. Middle East policy and a fatal blow to his place in history, Bush is not going to lose this war. Which means that, even in the absence of visible progress in eradicating the insurgency, he will not withdraw U.S. troops, even should his party suffer serious reversals in 2006, with the war's unpopularity the central issue.

Back in 1976, vice presidential nominee Bob Dole referred to World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam as "Democrat wars." Well, Iraq is "The Republicans' War." And as Democrats hold neither Congress nor the White House, they can support the war and the troops, while questioning the policy and the leadership. It is the Nixon option of 1968.
(Thanks to World Net Daily.)