Tomorrow's Revisionist History Today

All but the most hardcore reality-deniers readily concede at this point that Iraq is a mess. And that presents a real problem for the Republican Party because there are only two plausible explanations for how things came to be this way: either our mission never had any chance of succeeding, or success was made impossible (or at least unlikely) by virtue of bad decisions on the part of the Bush administration post-invasion. In other words, our current predicament is either the result of an epic strategic blunder on the part of the Bush administration or colossal incompetence on the part of the Bush administration. Either way, the blame falls squarely, and unavoidably, on the Bush administration.

That said, I promise you that future generations of Republicans will subscribe to some alternative narrative which absolves the Republican party of responsibility for this mess and shifts the blame somewhere else. Just look at how most conservatives explain the outcome of the Vietnam War. We didn't lose in Vietnam because we were fighting an unwinnable war against a determined and popular local insurgency. No, we lost in Vietnam because liberals back home undermined the war effort and caused the nation to lose its will to fight. We were "stabbed in the back," so to speak.

This same charge is being repeated by neoconservatives today who accuse the "liberal media" of undermining the war effort and assert that all we need to achieve victory is the will to persevere. This argument is incredibly stale at this point, though, and has lost much of its resonance. What conservatives desperately need is some other revisionist narrative, some other bogeyman on which to pin their failures.

This is where Iran comes into the equation. I'll make you a prediction right now: whether or not we end up going to war with Iran, the standard right-wing talking point about Iraq ten years from now will be that our invasion of Iraq would have been a glorious success had it not been for the sinister meddling of Iran, the Supreme Enemy of all that is Good and Right in the world. Sure, they'll probably tack on some gratuitous swipe at Democrats and the liberal media for good measure, but you get the gist: IRAN + Democrats = failure in Iraq.

Over the last few months, the Bush administration and its surrogates have repeatedly alleged--with little evidence or logic to back it up--that Iran is responsible for the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq and is intentionally fomenting chaos there in order to undermine U.S. objectives. Many bloggers and journalists (including myself) have speculated that this is an effort by the Bush administration to establish a casus belli for attacking Iran. That may well be true (which is terrifying).

But regardless of whether these allegations lead to actual conflict with Iran, they clearly serve a political purpose for the Bush administration. By giving Iran a more prominent role in the Story of Iraq, conservatives hope to dilute the blame for their own failures. Suddenly there's a new bogeyman, a new Supreme Enemy on which to heap blame. Indeed, conservatives can point to Democratic opposition to military action against Iran as evidence that the Bush administration was hamstrung in its efforts to deal with the "real culprit" behind our failures in Iraq.

I don't know how successful Republicans will be in painting this revisionist narrative of the Iraq War, but I guarantee you they'll try. The Republican party's chief political asset over the years has been its perceived strength on issues of national security. Republicans cannot afford to lose that advantage. With the blame for the Iraq debacle now resting squarely on their shoulders, Republicans are desperate to plant the seeds of tomorrow's revisionist history. And Iran offers the most fertile ground.