Iraq, the war that won't go away

Over the past few weeks, Republican presidential candidates have been scrambling to explain what their position is on the war that was launched under President George W. Bush.

While liberals within the party believed that the war had been a poor decision and was evidence that military force was often the wrong solution, right-wing conservatives offered a different interpretation. Republicans claimed that Democrats had failed to unleash the nation's full bombing arsenal and had "cut and run" in 1973, allowing South Vietnam to fall to communism.

Republicans used Vietnam as a talking point to build support for a huge military buildup in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan spoke about Vietnam as a "noble cause." He charged that Jimmy Carter had learned the wrong lesson from the war. It was not the case that the United States should avoid using military power but, rather, the nation needed not to be "afraid" to "win." Democratic presidential candidates always struggled to respond to these charges.

Republicans had some controversial military legacies of their own to reckon with before 9/11. Richard Nixon's brutal and secretive bombing campaign against communist forces in South Asia raised ongoing questions when Republicans were in power about their willingness to circumvent Congress and the public in conducting their policies.

Reagan's war in Central America exploded in controversy when the Iran-Contra investigation revealed that National Security Council officials had violated legislative prohibitions against assisting the Nicaraguan Contras and that the president, despite his rhetoric, had sold arms to Iran. When President George H.W. Bush decided he would not send in U.S. forces to take out Saddam Hussein in Operation Desert Storm and when he refused to send U.S. troops to intervene in a number of major humanitarian crises, Democrats such as Bill Clinton accused the GOP of being too timid in using military force.

Iraq was more problematic politically for the Republicans than any of these precedents. The war opened up the same kind of struggle within the GOP that Democrats had long faced. It has forced Republican politicians to take a stance on whether President George W. Bush committed troops to a war that was both costly and unnecessary.

It has raised the question of whether regime change was the right way to fight the war on terrorism. It has brought up the issue of whether their party used false intelligence or manipulated information about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction to build support for a military operation. It has forced Republicans to defend their record on fighting the post-9/11 threat

If history is a guide, which it is, Iraq won't go away anytime soon. Republican candidates will have to wrestle with the legacy of that war for many years to come. The fact that Iraq remains a big issue is not surprising. What is surprising is the fact that so many candidates in the GOP don't seem prepared to put forward their responses. Iraq will remain one of the defining issues in party politics for decades to come.