How People Make their Political Decisions
 
Victor Davis Hanson has a great article on how some people make their political decisions.  Wanted to appear to be on the winning side, they mouth the words that are supported by the news of the past 48 hours.  This is only possible with a lack of historical knowledge.  When you study the most successful campaigns, indeed the more campaigns of any kind that you study, you see that they all involve setbacks, intelligence failures, moments of brutality, and failure.  Victory does not involve perfection, certainly not of a mechanical sort whereby the campaign unfolds like a clock.  War involves two sides seeking victory, attempting to thwart the other, hide its secrets, and so forth.  If you fail to grasp this essential fact, you might be presuaded that the outcome of the campaign will most resemble the freshest news. 

On the other side from those who have no anchor and who drift about on the most recent news, there are the ideologically committed.  All across the political spectrum you will find them.  Paleocons who opposed the war, neocons who support it, 9/11 democrats, the hard left and so forth.  Some of these people may loose faith and join those whose support or objection follows the latest news, but many will hold fast to their long held convictions that the war is either good or bad.  Note that its very hard to hold fast to convictions to be indifferent, that tends to devolve into reflecting the lastest news, although possibly without much enthusiasm either way.  Hanson doesn't explore the neocons and 9/11 democrats who remain committed, he's looking at the left who is committed to our defeat.  Those who want to relive the Vietnam War, or who use that war as a template for all wars, or who otherwise are fighting the last war.  I say that because in miniltary history, fighting the last war is a common mode of analysis.  Why did France loose so badly in 1940?  They were fighting WWI.  Why did the Americans have such troubles in Vietnam?  They were fighting the war they prepared to fight, a war against the Soviets in Central Europe that they expected to look like WWII.  The Army was, anyway, one can look to the Marines and their seperate experience of small wars, but I digress.  In many ways, people have lined up on this war, not on the basis of the the merits, but on the basis of long held beliefs about the last war.  The neocons see the last war as the Gulf War, and they think about what happened after the withdrawl of the Soviets from Afghanistan, and they focus on the missed opportunities to advance democracy.  The left is still fighting Vietnam. 

Hanson observes three problems with our remarkable victories in Afghanistan and Iraq.  First, they were so swift that many enemies were not defeated, they were over-run.  Like the Japanese soldier on some Pacific Island, the war continues.  Second, the American observers who lack firm commitments based on historical knowledge, ideology, or the merits of the case, were flush after the victories and have since slinked over to the other side.  Bill O'Reilly is the exemplar of this case.  This creates a perception that everyone is turning against the war.  Be on the lookout for a Cronkite moment, or perhaps its more like a series of mini-Cronkite moments.  Third, the swift victories set the bar fantastically high for what American success looks like.  Instant success without any casualties became the standard, and that's impossibly high.  So our swift victory created the problems of undefeated Taliban and Baathists still resisting, and unsustainably high expectations from observers and standards, which make the reconstruction look like a failure by comparison, regardless of its actual status.

Hason figures that there is a committed 20% who oppose the war no matter what and a committed 30% who favor the war no matter what.  My own guess is that this 30% is a combination of those who favor the war for ideological reasons and those who are committed to the merits of the case.  This leaves a 50% block who lacks a basis for judging the merits, generally to be found in some kind of metaphysics, an understanding of how the world works.  Two key bodies of ideas that could form such an understanding are a knowledge of history and a well formed ideology.  So this 50% is ungrounded, responding to the lastest news, or the most clever observer. 

Hanson's conclusion?  "Brace yourself: In the next three months we are all in for the ride of our lives."