The New York Times ran an article over the weekend about the progress of the Iraq war and how it's affecting the presidential campaign. According to the article, things are improving in Iraq, which means that the Democrats running for president cannot run a strict anti-war campaign, which might offend the militarists among us who frown upon this negativity. The article reads:

As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy.

Advisers to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama say that the candidates have watched security conditions improve after the troop escalation in Iraq and concluded that it would be folly not to acknowledge those gains. At the same time, they are arguing that American casualties are still too high, that a quick withdrawal is the only way to end the war and that the so-called surge in additional troops has not paid off in political progress in Iraq.

But the changing situation suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue. While the Democratic candidates are continuing to assail the war — a popular position with many of the party’s primary voters — they run the risk that Republicans will use those critiques to attack the party’s nominee in the election as defeatist and lacking faith in the American military.

This is what American politics has descended to these days. But, actually, it's always this way. Americans love war. If there is one untouchable factor in American politics, it's the soldiers and the need to "support the troops." Has it occurred to anyone that the American public soured on the war, not because it never should have happened, but because we are not winning, and because American casualties are too high? If the Iraq war was short and sweet, ending after only a few months, where would the public stand on the war these days?

I suspect that if the war ended in 2003, a few months after it started, it would already be forgotten by now. There is precedent for this belief. In 1991, the first President Bush went to war against Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. There was strong but minority opposition to that war premised on a true understanding of Iraq's relationship with Kuwait and our own government's complicity in Saddam's crimes. That opposition was swept under the carpet as the public cheered on its first real war since Vietnam, which had ended in the mid-1970's. The soldiers got a parade and everyone was happy. Then the war was forgotten about by the end of the year and poor George H.W. Bush couldn't even rely on the glory in his campaign for re-election. Bill Clinton won the 1992 election on a campaign premised on "change."

Iraq went on the back-burner during the 1990's as the American public moved on to other things, like the Internet boom, sex scandals and other crapola. But for Iraqis, the horrors continued. American sanctions against Iraq starved hundreds of thousands of people. The U.S. bombing campaign in the 1991 Iraq war brought that country back to the stone-age, according to a United Nations report. The human suffering in that country as a result of American foreign policy was noted among leftist intellectuals, but the general public had no idea any of this was going on.

The reason for that blissful ignorance is rooted in American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism is the notion that Americans are special and mean well around the world, even when things go bad. American exceptionalism means that our government helps poor countries and only goes to war for the right reasons, to promote democracy and peace. The evidence is usually to the contrary, as any honest history book will tell you. But American exceptionalism sweeps that critique under the carpet and celebrates war presidents and soldiers as heroes and guardians of our freedom and liberty.

So, if by chance the situation in Iraq improves during the presidential campaign, the Iraq war ceases to be a campaign issue. Book after book has been published decrying the lead-up to war in Iraq and how the Bush administration lied and stretched the truth to justify war. But war is not a video game. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Iraq as a result of this war, and thousands of American soldiers were killed and seriously wounded. Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent in prosecuting this war, and God knows how much of our military expertise has been expended in fighting a country that did not attack us on 9/11 and posed no threat to us. Run for president on these themes, and you are called a crackpot who hates America. Celebrate any ill-gotten gains from an unjust military intervention and you are a statesman.