Aaron Keith Harris
2007-05-07 07:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Harry Reid and the rest of the Democrats never thought their war funding bill could overcome President Bush’s promised veto. After all, they dosed it with not one but two poison pills: Domestic pork and an Iraq withdrawal timeline.

Bush rarely changes his mind about big issues and obviously cares little about his approval rating. It seems clear then that he will stick with Gen. David Petraeus and the new strategy for the foreseeable future, probably for the rest of his term.

Congressional Democrats could at any time cowboy up and withhold further funding for Iraq. But they won’t. They have a much more important goal than affecting events in Iraq between now and next November: keeping things exactly as they are.

By maintaining the status quo in Iraq for as long as possible, Democrats can count on bad news from Iraq, along with endless congressional investigations of the administration, to carry them back to the White House.

It’s a different matter entirely what a Democratic president will do about Iraq if elected. It’s dubious that any of the Democrats currently in the race, save the hapless Rep. Dennis Kucinich, would be so foolish as follow through on a promised troop pullout that would surely plunge Iraq, and possibly the wider region, into unfathomable violence.

But having done their best to break the nation’s will to win in Iraq, it’s doubtful Democrats will be able to do much more with the war than to limp along like Bush.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also wobbles and could tumble because of war policy. By publishing time, Olmert may have been ousted because of a government commission’s report that he and senior military leadership botched last summer’s Second Lebanon War by rushing to war without the means to achieve a too-ambitious goal and without an exit strategy.

Sound familiar?

The United States and Israel share more than just a common list of enemies in the war on terrorrism. Both countries are constrained by the same set of values that fuels Islamist rage. The regard for the dignity and freedom of each individual and for democratic government — both inspired by Jewish and Christian morality — often prevents both countries from achieving peace through strength and victory.

Both the anti-war left in the West and militant Islamists appeal to that Judeo-Christian ethic in the court of world opinion to try to shame the United States and Israel into inaction and half-measures.

Machiavelli described this dilemma 500 years ago in “The Prince,” but we still haven’t learned his lesson for confronting it. “In an imperfect world, good men bent on doing good must know how to be bad,” is how Robert Kaplan summarizes Machiavelli in the brilliant book “Warrior Politics.”

That is most emphatically not a case for an amoral, cruel lack of restraint in war. It is a case for being just as brutal as it takes to win decisively. And no more.

Much worse than resorting to war is going to war with any intention other than decisive victory. Doing so dishonors those who fight and die. And it invites further crises without resolving the one at hand.

It would be interesting — and heartening — to see a presidential candidate from either party with the courage and sense to campaign on a foreign-policy platform founded on such Machiavellian virtue.

Aaron Keith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at aaronkeithharris@gmail.com.