The growing consensus on Iraq

Despite some evidence to the contrary, the Republican Party never truly sought to antagonize our allies, undermine our war on Islamic terrorism and cause the death of thousands of America's best citizens. Most conservatives supported the Iraqi invasion and occupation due to a sincere belief that a war would ultimately be in America's best interests. But after ignoring three years of mounting American casualties and sectarian strife, some on the right have finally began to own up to reality. Conservative pundits and politicians find themselves advocating courses of action that they had previously labeled "treasonous" while siding with liberals in calling for immediate force reductions in Iraq.

The first serious call for an Iraqi redeployment came from former marine Rep. John Murtha (D.–Pa.), who said in a speech last November that "the U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring [our troops] home."

For advocating a safe and timely withdrawal of American forces, Murtha was called a "coward" on the floor of the House, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld '54 suggested that Murtha was undermining troop morale and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich declared that Murtha was advocating "surrendering to the terrorists."

But this week it's Gingrich who wants to give in to the terrorists. In a speech at the University of South Dakota, Gingrich said, "It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003 ... We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it."

This is the same Newt Gingrich who stated earlier this year, "I think it's quite clear ... that bin Laden and his lieutenants are monitoring the American news media ... and I suspect they take a great deal of comfort when they see people attacking United States policies." Al Qaeda must be overjoyed. With an elder Republican statesman like Gingrich criticizing American policies and thus comforting the terrorists, who can we count on to defend America's interests?

FOX News has always been in America's corner, right? After all, Bill O'Reilly also attacked Murtha's proposal, saying, "These pinheads running around going, 'Get out of Iraq now' don't know what they're talking about. These are the same people before Hitler invaded in World War II that were saying, 'Ah, he's not such a bad guy.' "

Yet only three months later, O'Reilly spoke of the administration's "big mistake" in Iraq and stated "the only solution to this is to hand over everything to the Iraqis as fast as humanly possible."

The intellectual end of the Republican party is also in the process of abandoning the administration's Iraqi endeavor. William F. Buckley, founder of National Review, called the Iraq war a "failure" and acknowledged that "if I knew then what I know now ... I would have opposed the war." Conservative columnist George Will wrote that President George W. Bush's democratic initiative has become "a casualty of the war," and while hesitating to call Iraq a failure, insisted that we need to greatly lower our standards in defining "success." Most damningly, Francis Fukuyama, one of the architects of the neoconservative political philosophy that has motivated this administration's foreign policy, has completely renounced his old views. Arguing that history will judge the Iraqi intervention as a failure, he has stated that it is time to "demilitarize" the global war on terror.

With all of these defections, who does President Bush still have in his corner? Not the American people. According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted last week, 62 percent of Americans disapprove of the way the White House is handling the situation in Iraq. Not the military. A recent Zogby poll showed that 72 percent of troops currently serving in Iraq want to see a complete American withdraw within the next year while a growing chorus of former generals have called for Rumsfeld's resignation. There are still a number of Republican Congressmen who refuse to seriously discuss an Iraqi pullout, but hopefully most of them will be looking for new employment after November.

Democrats and Republicans, Bill O'Reilly and John Murtha, Newt Gingrich and Bill Buckley all agree — the time to end the war is now. Jason Sheltzer is a sophomore from St. Davids, Pa. He can be reached at sheltzer@princeton.edu.