The Discerning Texan

There are some lessons about our Neo-Copperheads to be learned by examining these wars and their domestic opponents:

1) Both wars produced opportunists who are willing to sacrifice long-term American interests for short-term political gain. Thus, our Neo-Copperheads leak important classified information about US intelligence-gathering techniques to the press, who are in turn, only too happy to use its publication to score political points against the president whom they loathe. They propose non-binding resolutions to stop the war in order to give themselves political cover for any disaster that they themselves help bring about. That this opportunism aids and emboldens our enemies is of no interest to them.

2) There always seems to be people who want peace at any price, even if it is the peace of a slave-owning society, the peace of the Gulag, or the peace of the graveyard. Our Neo-Copperheads argue, at least implicitly, that if only the US would not engage in military action, there would be peace. There is the unspoken assumption here that the US is the cause of all conflict, and that if only the US would beat its swords into ploughshares, the world would live happily ever after. So, the mantra of "peace" performs a double duty here. It generates enormous self-satisfaction among its advocates while it provides the stick with which to beat American policy.

3) Like deviancy, patriotism and its opposite have been defined down. Thanks to our Neo-Copperheads, short of joining the Taliban or actually setting off bombs, it is difficult to imagine any action today, no matter the benefits for our enemies, which cannot in some manner be rationalized as "patriotic." The converse is also true. As John Walker Lindh has proven, there seems to be no action undertaken against American interests, policies, and soldiers that can actually result in a treason charge. Thus, the corruption of language and meaning are not just academic exercises. It has very real consequences to the detriment of American interests.

4) These notions of peace as advocated by our Neo-Copperheads are symptoms of a problem much deeper than mere naivete or opportunism. At the risk of being labeled "judgmental," allow me to suggest that the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians is evil. Our Neo-Copperheads have no capacity for processing in any meaningful way evil such as this. They deny its existence (killing the innocent is for a good cause). They rationalize it (terror is the only tactic of the oppressed in a nuclear age). They appease it (if Israel makes more concessions, we will have peace). They mis-attribute it. (It is the free and democratic America that is evil). Recognize evil and make sacrifices to fight it---Never!

As the military tide turned for the Union in late 1864, the Copperheads were routed. With no such victories in Iraq in sight, the Neo-Copperheads are flourishing, and this does not bode well for either the Iraqi or American people. Many of our American contemporaries are on the same moral plane as those Copperheads content to live with a fractured regime and slavery, and this fact itself is one of those evils that our Neo-Copperheads can never really acknowledge.

Labels: Democrat Sabotage, Iraq, US Politics, War strategy