Letter to the editor: There’s disagreement, and then there’s treason

OPINION:

Lately, some Democrats seem to be watching the conflict with Iran the way fans watch a rival team in the playoffs: quietly rooting for a collapse, provided it improves their chances in November.

At this point, opposition to President Trump isn’t just political; it’s also atmospheric. It colors everything. If the sun rises during his administration, someone is bound to question its motives.

To be clear, I wasn’t thrilled about heading back into a Middle East conflict either. If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that these ventures tend to age about as well as unrefrigerated milk.

Still, there’s a difference between skepticism and what increasingly feels like a kind of performative pessimism, where the worse things get, the more satisfying the analysis becomes.

My father fought in World War II. During the Battle of the Bulge, he assumed, with some justification, that each day might be his last. What he did not assume was that folks back home were hoping his unit would falter to make a political point.

Imagine writing that letter: “Dear Son, we wish you well, of course, but not too well. There’s an election coming up.”

Now, we’re treated to a steady stream of predictions that this conflict will unravel into chaos. Maybe it will. Wars have a way of doing that.

Yet the enthusiasm with which some commentators describe that possibility is hard to miss. It’s less “I fear this may go badly” and more “This had better go badly, or someone will owe me an apology.”

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Then, naturally, there are the protests, timed with all the subtlety of a drum solo and meant to signal that America’s greatest threat remains itself. Nothing reassures adversaries quite like a well-publicized display of internal contempt. If unity is strength, then we seem determined to explore the opposite theory in real time.

Of course, everyone insists they are acting out of principle. They always are. It just so happens that principle now aligns perfectly with political convenience, which is one of those remarkable coincidences that keep happening in Washington.

I suspect my father would find all this bewildering — not because he thought Americans always agreed but because he believed, at a minimum, they agreed about which side they were on.

SCOTT THOMPSON

Bloomington, Indiana

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