"The Cold War's over, it was all a mirage."

Jello Biafra spoke those words on his seminal "Die for oil, sucker" spoken word piece. Like many things he said back then, a response to the 1991 Gulf War, it is more poignant today then when he first said it. One of the many conventional wisdom sayings of the Cold War era was that "politics stops at the water's edge" or that foreign policy was nonpartisan, and Democrats and responsible Republicans agreed on the basic idea that communism was a threat that needed to be confronted. They may disagree over strategy and tactics, containment versus rollback and so on, but national security was an issue that needed to be taken seriously and not a partisan club to thump your opponents.
But like all sayings and slogans, bipartisan foreign policy was something that sounds good but is more of an aspiration than a rule. In relative terms though, especially compared to years before and after the Cold War, the saying did hold up fairly well. It was only during times of crisis, and usually by inexperienced, opportunistic, or generally psychopathic politicians that the long knives came out. JFK's "missile gap," and refusal to condemn Joe McCarthy was somewhat due to the first, mostly to the second, but certainly not the third. McCarthy's reign of terror leaned on the third heavily, but he was mostly a drunken bully who resembled the first two as well.
It is appropro that Matt Duss, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, dragged ole tailgunner joe in to introduce our latest "stab in the back" refutation of grown-up politics aspiring to live up to bipartisan foreign policy. "Who lost China?" is certainly a good comparison, but Duss neglects the more poigant comparison that still colors what passes for political debate in America, namely the aftermath of Vietnam.
Iraq's legacy is likely to have less real impact than China, but more than Vietnam. It may even show signs of undeniable reality that can pull goldfish bowl-dwelling teabags out from their world of make believe, or at least the more sober members of the republican establishment.We have heard an awful lot about this fabled establishment lately. It would be an incredible coup at this point to get some of the clowns in high places to realize the limits of American military power. At the very least, they would have to make a choice. The free ride is over. You can pursue the unadulterated tax cuts and hollowing out the economy course, or you can pursue the imperialist perogative, but not both. A decade of massive deficits has all but ensured this. Eventually you reach the limit of social program spending cuts that the public will stand, and raising taxes on the vestiges of middle-class America won't go over very well, nor would it raise enough revenue to expand the empire.
Excuse the digression. There are some superficial similarities between Iraq and Vietnam. I like to think I am a good enough historian to avoid bad generalizations though. After all, Iraq was engineered by very smart, if short-sighted and evil, draft-dodgers to avoid the pitfalls of Vietnam. That is another story however. Vietnam's legacy in public consciousness and political calculation is the relevant comparison here.
While in the 1970s there was a generalized warweariness that restrained politicians from more open-ended military adventures. Concurrently, there was an underground feeling among many that Vietnam could have been won and this manifested itself most openly in the slew of "revenge" films in the 1980s such as "uncommon valor," "missing in action," and "rambo: first blood part II." It was evidence of the enduring power of nationalism in certain parts of the populace. In Vietnam as in Iraq it was a minority that actively opposed war. Much ink has been spilled to this day for the self-interest involved in Vietnam protestors, which leads into accusations of cowardice and anti-Americanism in the "stab in the back crowd." Iraq was carefully engineered with that in mind, to keep as few people as possible from fearing the return of the draft and all it entails for loss of personal liberty. Actually, given population increases, the number of people directly affected by the war was not that much smaller than during Vietnam, but the perception that the evil king would yank you out of your personal life to fight for his oil was much lower. Accusations of cowardice and anti-Americanism were less relevant but they were joined by the lovely and classy accusation of sympathizing with terrorists.
The strength of this stab in the back faction was shown during the 2004 election where draft-dodging bush was shielded by tapping into the perception of betrayal by John Kerry. It was incredibly silly but is evidence of how complex the myth is and how much it endures. Duss points out that so far, the myth hasn't gained much traction in the larger electorate. That may change, however, as the propagandists continue to cement the idea that Iraq was won. It may take a generation, but if there is money in keeping the nationalist/imperialist myth alive you know it will continue until the worm turns again.
To close the circle, I did not mean to imply that the Cold War wasn't real, or that there wasn't a threat to freedom presented by Communism. Just that communism was a convenient excuse to justify an imperialist agenda that long predates the US. The war in Iraq is evidence that overseas interventionism and using foreign policy to bash liberals outlived the Cold War.