Rest assured, Kevin, that you will get the blame NO MATTER WHAT. Thousands of casualties and trillions of dollars later, or now. Doesn't matter.

See how we've got the MSM trained?

If getting out of Iraq is the right thing to do, and it is, then Democrats should advocate and fight for it with all their might. No one can predict the future, but it's hard to get anything done if you're afraid those who support you today will turn on you at some unspecified future date.

Of course teh Dems will get blamed, and of course they will roll over and take it. They never learn.

I noticed something very interesting on Meet The Press. Gingrich was already setting the standard that the problem with the war is how we get out, not the fact that we got in to it. The Republicans will simply keep upping the ante, no matter how many times, no matter how many deaths, until the Democrats say NO!, and then they will blame the Democrats. The pundit class will go along with them because they supported getting in to the war, and they do not want to be considered wrong.

The big difference though between Vietnam and Iraq and how it will play in near history is Google and the Internet. Every word that every person said on the record is on the internet, these words can be found in seconds, and they can be replayed over and over. Plus we have a growing generation that believes and trusts this medium over others. To use a cliche - we are fighting the last war. We should just get out, even as a polititcal experiment (and it's the right thing to do and will save lives) and see how it plays on the internet. We have different instruments available today and the problems are different. It is the Progressive solution.

what happened to the calpundit i used to read, who would at least do the minimum of analysis?

Ackeman is wrong, it is not "accepted wisdom" - serious historians do NOT agree

Farely is wrong, conservatives will blame anyone but themselves no matter what.

Lemieux supports my statements, and then he says "Besides, Congress isn't going to defund the war anyway" ? Where does he pull THAT out from?

Rick

If Democrats press too hard on withdrawal from Iraq, the end result will probably be a rerun of the Vietnam myth: we could have won in Iraq, but feckless liberals snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and precipitated a national humiliation.

Therefore Democrats shouldn't press too hard to do the right thing and, indeed, do the thing the vast majority of people in the United States want to be done because a blogger thinks it theoretically could cost the Democrats an hypothetical election a few decades from now?

This is exactly the same kind of timidity that got the more naive and scared among us to support the Bushie Iraq War mess in the first place.

This is a 100% Republican SNAFU. There's no LBJ or McNamara here. Remember that.

We will be blamed for obstructing efforts at curbing global warming! We were blamed for original sin! What's new?

Lordy - of course Lemieux is right. My god, lets not be completely obtuse. The Repubs have screwed the pooch on this one - of course they'll blame it on someone else. The important thing is - are the Dems (and folks on the left in general) going to let them get away with it again?

The power of idiocy compels you in two out of 3 of those assertions.
Listen to Lemieux.
The DNC won't. To our sorrow.

The important thing is - are the Dems (and folks on the left in general) going to let them get away with it again?

Exactly. The Democrats don't have to act like battered wives -- we need to return to our ass-kicking Progressive and New Deal ways when we ran this country damn well, won two World Wars and took zero shit from the Republicans.

Trying to prognosticate what voters, the MSM, and/or your political enemies will be doing in ten hours, no less ten years, is not only impossible, it's impossibly stupid.
It's also the (real) reason John Kerry voted for the IWR, and the reason Chimpy is in office for another 762 days, 21 hours and 36 minutes.
Not that I'm counting.

We should do the right thing, simply because...it's the right thing. Vote as if your kid were over there.

We should do the right thing, simply because...it's the right thing. Vote as if your kid were over there.

Vote as if

1. the United States has no (read: zero, zilch, nada) money in the treasury,
2. we're $8.6 trillion in debt, and,
3. we're spending $1 billion a week and spilling countless gallons of blood on that godforsaken hellhole.

Does that work?

Kevin, it's another case of pundit's disease. Incommensurability strikes. Don't fall into the trap of thinking about Vietnam and Iraq as if they were alike.

The one main comparable aspect might be the behaviour patterns of the political class and power structures in Washington. Especially when you factor in that they key players are of course, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, a direct throwback to Nixon's administration 30 years on.

Neither the geopolitical situation nor the media landscape of 2009 will in any way resemble, say, 1976. Look around you. Look at the blog you're writing right now. It just makes no sense. Do not strategize by extrapolating from whatever supposedly happened 30 years ago.

solution: win the war.

I've only ever met two people who believed the Vietnam load of crap. Both of them were Republicans who will never vote for Democratic. It's a right wing shiboleth, and that's pretty much it. 36% of all Americans can sound like a lot of people when they scream really loadly. That there was an already occuring change in the political cycle, and Democrats lost the south in the comming years due to civil rights made it look like Vietnam had a broader effect than it did.

We lost our national security credentials amongst the public because we started a Disasterous war and then protested against it. We looked like we had no clue what we stoof for, and impression which has largely stuck and been amplified by the weak and vacilating nature of our leadership since that time.

All that having been said, it's time we used their arguments against them. The public knows we've been complaining about the support we've given the military. Perhaps we should tell the Americans the truth: That the Republican party stabbed them in the back, that they gave the troops little in the way of weapons, armor and utilities so that they could funnel the money to their corporate backers. Profiteering hearings, subpeonas, the whole bit. The public has an endless appetite when it comes for blaming people who aren't them, so we would do well to give them someone to blame.

Of course, I look forward to hearing from you 'moderates' how the American people will never stand for such a thing. How it will make then cling to bush even more tightly, all the other arguments you all make whenever someone comes up with a suggesting that doesn't including running and hiding.

Kevin -

I don't think more than a small number of conservative true believers think that victory in Vietnam was, to borrow a phrase from the current quagmire, "just around the corner."

What's needed is a different narrative of the GOP's ownership of the failure from the very beginning of the planning and execution of the Iraq adventure.

Here's one:
"Iraq and the 7 Habits of Highly Defective Presidents."

> Things might turn out a little better this time
> since Iraq is a purely Republican war

...and let's make sure it stays that way as long as things are going badly *and* as long as there is no concensus about what the nation's strategy in Iraq should be!
---
I think time is on the anti-war side, so let's be patient. As Stanley Kurtz remarked on the NRO Corner the other day, the party most likely to demand immediate withdrawal from Iraq 1-2 years from now is actually the GOP... His prediction was GOP congressional leaders eventually will walk to Bush and say "you're not going to destroy our party over this". Then everybody (apart from McCain and a small fringe group of neocon morons) is going to be in favor of "cutting and running".
---
I fear the incoming Democratic President and Dem congressional majority leaders will have a major foreign problem at their hands in 2009 thanks to Bush's incompetence -- but at least there's going to be a rare bipartisan consensus that "staying the course" isn't an option. That should give Dems political cover.

MARCU$

Kevin, you are being snarky, right?

The only way these gentlemen are being compelling is as examples of mindless dolts who are overly enamored with their own ability to type. I do not find any creative thinking in the drivel that you exerpted.

Just tired moans from the losing side.

I'm in general a temporizer, looking for a politically saleable middle ground, avoiding political backlash. But not on this. To do anything except call for immediate withdrawal is immoral, since it condemns to death dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of soliers that are the sons and daughters of my countrymen. And absolutely to no purpose. No matter how many we send to their death, the conservatives will howl for just a few more. And will blame us. But it is insane to do anything but stop now.

The only thing that I would say to assuage concerns about the blame game is that Democrats must place blame for the war on the Republicans in the first place, loud and long. This is a Republican war.

I think it's already conventional wisdom that most Americans -

a.) agreed with Bush's decision to invade Iraq.
b.) think Bush screwed up the operation beyond repair.

The Vietnam war technical snafu's were not widely known until sometime afterwards. With Iraq, people already have given Republicans the lions share of the blame.

Opps, what I accidently edited out, was that these guys sounded like they were parroting noise from the losing side.

My bad

Marcu$ is under the delusion that Bush will listen to leaders of the Republican party. He will listen to no one.

Kevin, you are engaging in typical liberal hand wringing about how your actions will be PERCEIVED. Not whether they are right or wrong, but how they will look.

Fortunately we have a Commander-in-Chief who is concerned with reality, not perceptions.

Yes, let's be cautious about how strongly we demand withdrawal so that dems can win future elections, and after winning these elections continue to be cautious so that they can win elections still further in the future.
Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Let's never be bold!

Everything is the fault of libruls. If it rains, it's the libruls fault. If it don't rain, it's the libruls fault.

It's the only thing that keeps us righties going everyday.

> We lost our national security credentials amongst
> the public because we started a Disasterous war
> and then protested against it. We looked like we
> had no clue what we stoof for, and impression
> which has largely stuck and been amplified by the
> weak and vacilating nature of our leadership since
> that time.

> All that having been said, it's time we used their
> arguments against them.

Excellent comments by Soullite! To be more precise, let's let Henry Waxman & co. loose and shine an investigative spotlight on every single corrupt and incompetent decision made in Iraq from 2002 to 2006. Let's make sure all the shit is brought out into the open before the next election.
---
I can't see how questioning the past will hurt the Dems. But I would not want to interfere with what the Bushies are doing in Iraq *right now*, as their incompetence and failures might rub off. Republicans are desperately looking for excuses; let's not give them any.

MARCU$

We should be so cautious about this in the name of winning elections, that if they want to send in more troops, we should say, "YES! (but only if it's part of a move to remove troops.")

One thing the American People will never go for, and that's for a politician that treats them as adults.

"...since Iraq is a purely Republican war"

But Bush's father got us into Somalia right before he left office. I remember telling people that it would go badly, and sure enough it did, and nearly everybody acts like Clinton got us into it.

Fortunately we have a Commander-in-Chief who is concerned with reality, not perceptions.

Oh. My. Fucking. God. You truly are insane. Absolutely certifiable insane. And unmedicated.

In some sense all three are right, because they all are looking at this from the perspective of political gain or loss, primarily.

Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. That's called principles, IMO.

What is pushing 'too hard' mean? Of course history will judge whatever happens differently than we do today. The GOP/conservatives/wingnuts doesn't know any else to do but run their 'we are innocent, the Dems did it' program.

Realistically, we won't cut off funds, but we can direct them very tightly through the Congress using real hardball if necessary. (Like defunding permanent bases, not authorizing an increase in overall force structure - coupled with cherries and plums that Bush cannot veto) How about trimming the Budget for the VP's office to 3 people and prohibiting loans of personnel or reallocation of money to the VP of whatever kind.

The GOP wouldn't allow a minimum wage increase without another high earner tax cut. We should follow their lead and just 'not take it anymore'.

The COngress, even with a mixed SCOTUS, has way more power than the Executive, if it is intent on useing that power. Eliminate the filibuster if necessary. Do what it takes that is within what the ctizens and the Constitution will support.

Let's do what's best for the country and stop the navel gazing about who will get blamed for it.

The Iraq war reeks of incompetence in every respect, even the military's role in it. I cannot think of any previous US engagement that was so stunningly stupidly managed. Except the Bay of Pigs and that was a 3-day blunder not a full-scale war.

Leave history to the historians.

Stop responding to "Al," people. It's probably Kevin or a troll getting a good chuckle out of it.

Democrats should never defund the war. Instead they
should fund the war with the "Iraq War Tax Act". This will powerfully concentrate everyone's mind.

How do you argue with these troops?

And by the way - would someone kindly remind these gas-bags that an overwhelming majority of those vets who ran, ran as Democrats.

Oh. And remind them of the purple-heart band-aids on the floor of the republican convention in 2004.

The Viet Nam dolchstosslegende did not become accepted among people who studied the war, but it did among the average American voter, particularly those who came to political age after 1976.

The Democrats suffered from it not because they ceded the field in Viet Nam, but because they ceded the field in American political discourse. I do not know why this occurred, but it did.

To avoid similar myth-making now, the Democrats need to spend the next two years exposing the lies and corruption of the war. I have my doubts that they will do so. Too many are owned by the national security industry. Too many are fearful of its power to destroy any candidate.

Americans are so in love with their self-image, the belief that American arms and American troops are noble and justified, that it isn't that hard to convince them to commit to war against any country or any people who are identified by their leaders as "the enemy."

We also don't believe we can lose. Americans are, after all, the best at everything. They cannot accept a loss in international basketball, let alone military action.

Thus, few Americans wanted to admit that the Viet Nam War was a loss; they preferred a myth that kept their most cherished self-delusions intact. The Republicans gave them one. The Democrats did not counter with the truth or with any other explanation.

Bryan C Kennedy's suggestion should be at the top of the agenda for Pelosi and Reid.

I'm with Lemieux.

But the difference is;
It will be impossible to blame the failure of the war on it's opponents, especially if we go with "surge" - because we got exactly the war the conservatives pushed for. They were in control. There's no way to blame this on Democrats.

I have a 23 year old son. I would not sacrifice him, nor would I ask any other mother to sacrifice her son that we might win a future election.

That is bloodchilling.

I would sacrifice just about anything, save the Constitution, to get these kids home now.

But Bush's father got us into Somalia right before he left office. I remember telling people that it would go badly, and sure enough it did, and nearly everybody acts like Clinton got us into it.

So Clinton chose not to get us into a military action over the USS Cole just before he left office and nearly everybody acts like the failure to act was Clinton's fault too. This is how the Republicans play the blame game and it isn't going to change any time so. Our side needs to stop whining and hit back.

I don't see the logic that "pressing too hard on withdrawal from Iraq" is bad for the Dems, when the voters just gave the Repubs a "thumpin", mainly because of Iraq.

The Dems should try something radical, by giving the people what they want for a change.

I'm with Harry Reid - let Bush have his last shot, but make it clear that the troops are coming home in 2007. If Bush's "Surge" strategy succeeds, great. But if it fails, the Democrats will be on the record as saying that a subsequent "Vault" strategy ain't gonna happen, and that they'll make Bush's stubborness on the war the focus of the 2008 elections. I suspect the GOP will be less than thrilled with that prospect.

So, what's our compelling counter-narrative? Just tell a story, tell a simple story. Can't we do a little of what they do?

I'd go with "George Bush lost the War on Terror."

After 9/11, everyone said we needed to catch Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. And we started that war and we were winning it!

But Saddam Hussein tried to kill George Bush's father, so George Bush wanted to invade Iraq to get even. He lied to all of us about weapons of mass destruction and he went in without any clear plan except getting even with Saddam. He thought Saddam Hussein, his enemy, was more important than Osama bin Laden, America's enemy.

Even worse, George Bush didn't listen to the generals when they told him he was fighting the war the wrong way, he didn't listen to them when things started falling apart and they told him he needed to change his plan according to win.

George Bush lost the war on terror when he gave up on Osama bin Laden so he could go after Saddam Hussein.

This is why Republicans are bad. They enabled him, they supported him, and he lost the war on terror.

Bush has made it clear he isn't going to end the war, no matter what Democrats do. He doesn't care about the opinion of the Iraq Study Group or the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All he cares about is riding into the history books on the back of his pet war. Therefore, as long as Bush is in office and the war remains unpopular, Democrats should continue to press their advantage.

Quandary? What quandary? Do the right thing. Get our people out. Admit we screwed up. All hell may break loose, but we have to let the dust settle there somewhat. Then we can figure out what is the right thing to do next. Forget politics. We need a leader who will commit to this. Period.

Extradite Rumsfeld: I'm with Lemieux.

Me too.

But the difference is; It will be impossible to blame the failure of the war on it's opponents, especially if we go with "surge"

But you're not.

"The blame-the-war's-opponents narrative will be trotted out and may hold no matter what the Democrats do" is absolutely correct. And it will sway some people, because they want to believe it.

Portraying this as a Publican war is a good idea, and will sway some other, more thinking, people. But permitting additional combat (oops, peace keeping) just to score political points is immoral.

Our troops aren't pawns in a war game to be played to partisan political advantage back home.

The overriding consideration should be to do what will be best for the Iraqis whose lives we've fucked up so royally.

Anecdotal data: I know dozens of moderate liberals, and none of them either believe, or would grant for the sake of argument, that liberals precipitated a premature withdrawal that lead to defeat in Vietnam. Every one of them believes that the war was doomed long before, and if liberals had gotten their way, we would have pulled out years before with exactly the same strategic outcome as would have occurred had we stayed there until 1985.

Is there any non-anecdotal data to counter the overwhelming sense all of us liberals and friends of liberals share that Ackerman's claim is full of crap?

f Democrats press too hard on withdrawal from Iraq, the end result will probably be a rerun of the Vietnam myth: we could have won in Iraq, but feckless liberals snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and precipitated a national humiliation.

If the Democrats are correct, and they push hard for the implementation of the correct policy, they will not be punished by the voters. The problems for the Democrats are two: (1) they do not agree among themselves what the correct policy is; (2) most of them are afraid of what will happen if they are wrong. If you are going to cite the VietNam war, remember that a Democrat won the Presidential election held right after the end of the VietNam war.

If the Dems bring an end to the war, and McCain (or whoever) says we might have won had we tried this surge, the Dem will just review all the Republican deceptions and failures and bring up the "tar baby" again.

I am not saying that I know what the Democrats should do, only that they should do what they agree is the right thing to do. If they are correct, they'll do well in the next election.

As Tom DeLay and Colbert say, it's the fault of the American people. In a few months, they will meld the American People into Democrats regardless of contrary facts.

alex, an incoming Democratic Congress will be in a much more powerful position politically to stop Bush from prolonging the war if it permits him one last "surge" to achieve victory in Iraq, while making it clear that they're not going to go along with one failure after another through 2008. I think the Republican Party is genuinely at risk of being split by the war, and that the Democrats can win a big majority in 2008 by taking advantage of that. A big win in 2008 will give us the opportunity to get out of Iraq, and while I'd love to get out now I'm also painfully aware that with Bush in the White House it ain't gonna happen.

Woh! Al said something I agree with

Kevin, you are engaging in typical liberal hand wringing about how your actions will be PERCEIVED. Not whether they are right or wrong, but how they will look.

And then he goes and screws it up with the typical verbal diahrea

Do the right thing. We don't owe history a narrative, but we certainly owe the troops, their families, and Iraq something.

Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq was, and is, a crime. It was accomplished through a deliberate conspiracy to defraud the United States -- through Bush's repeated, deliberate, elaborate and sickening lies about what he knew at the time was a nonexistent "threat" from nonexistent "Iraqi WMD" and nonexistent "links between Saddam and Al Qaeda". It was, and is, a war of unprovoked aggression and a criminal misuse of the United States military for corrupt purposes of private financial gain for the principals of the Bush administration and their cronies and financial backers in the US-based multinational oil companies.

The Congress should use its Constitutional authority to end this criminal enterprise by cutting off funding for the war, demanding that Bush use the funds already in the pipeline from the last SEVENTY BILLION DOLLAR war appropriation to pay for bringing all US troops home from Iraq beginning immediately, and then impeaching and removing Bush and Cheney from office for their crimes against the United States.

I am sick of this blithering, craven political calculation by Democrats who stand for nothing and care about nothing except their misguided notions of political advantage.

The majority of Americans want the war ended and the troops brought home. The majority of Americans believe that Bush lied to mislead the country into war, and agree that if he did so, he should be impeached.

Why won't the Democrats do what the majority of Americans who voted them into control of the Congress want them to do?

Is it because most of them don't care what the American people want, and are fundamentally greedy bootlickers of right-wing corporate power, just like the Republicans?

Let me add to Lemieux's point.

It's absurd to ask working class Americans to sacrifice their children so Democrats won't have to deal with a manufactured history in a decade.

The fix is not to allow the GOP to keep killing GIs, including guardsmen and reservists. The fix is for Democrats to run candidates who know enough about security issues to refute these allegations convincingly.

The myth that anti-way activists lost the Vietnam War is partially persuasive because Democrats didn't challenge the narrative created by the Right.

When the Democrats behave in such a feckless manner, American voters can't be blamed for getting the impression Democrats are feckless.

...I am not saying that I know what the Democrats should do... MatthewRMarler at 4:23 PM

Any assertion or prognostication that is dependent on Republicans not being assholes should be dismissed immediately without any consideration.

This is the first principle of political analysis in 21st Century USA. You do not adhere to this principle at the peril of the loss of your own credibility.

Lemieux is wrong; if the Democrats go along with what the Republicans want, and leave the management of the situation in Iraq in their hands, then the Republicans in turn will give the Democrats their fair due, and not try to falsely plant the blame for failure on them.

[...]

No, sorry, I tried to keep a straight face there, but I'm never going to be able to say something as ridiculous as that without cracking up.

Every one of them believes that the war was doomed long before, and if liberals had gotten their way, we would have pulled out years before with exactly the same strategic outcome as would have occurred had we stayed there until 1985.

Not only that: when Nixon revealed his plan after winning the election, liberals said that Nixon would fail exactly as LBJ had failed; when Nixon announced a tentative agreement in 1972, liberals pointed out that it was substantially what Humphrey had proposed in 1968. The liberals were correct, and that was why I voted against Nixon in both 1968 and 1972 (not that it mattered much in 1972; I knew McGovern had no chance of winning.)

This time around, half the Democrats voted for the war, and they have repeatedly voted for its funding. They might have joined Robert Byrd in a filibuster, but they did not; they did not even have the long debate that he tried to get. they can not all of them absolve themselves completely of responsibility. But if they do the right thing now, the judgment of the ballots will not be so heavy upon them.

It seems like a whole bunch of people see through the game the Democrats are trying to play.

Who are the Dems trying to please by this game of calculation?

It seems like it's an effort to appeal to Broder and the other Beltway elites.

Dems should focus more on what the voters want. Remember, the Beltway assholes are the ones who got us into this war.

I'm sure glad those people all have degrees from elite institutions.

Bryan C Kennedy;

Iraq War Tax Act. . . Great Idea.

Kevin, you make sense most of the time, but not now. It appears that you are doing some Hillary-like triangulating. If you must do fear-based political calculations, Lemieux is correct. But also, please realize this. Iraq is not simply immoral because of death, gore, livelihood and life-destroying mayhem and carnage. Bush backers want the White House to keep the Pentagon and contractors busy with this because THEY MAKE MONEY at it.

It is no accident that voter turnout is low in the US. Not all disaffected voters stay home for the same reason. As a long-time voluteer, I know that a large chunk stay home out of sheer disgust at careerism and lack of principle. I wonder if that doesn't serve the interests of career politicians like both Clintons and Reid. If Reid had courage, he'd be shining a big light on who's benefiting from this war. But will he risk his campaign contributions?

All our conversations establish a social norm. The media work very hard at determining what's acceptable in public policy conversation (which is why I no longer listen to NPR). Like I said in the beginning, Kevin, you are usually a cut-the-crap kind of writer. Don't get the heebie-jeebies now. Stop being a political calculator. Walk around the block. Find your identiy as a human being. Then come back and write it again.

How about the Liberals and Democrats who let Bush go to war in the first place?

Hillary "Much too Calculating to stick her neck out" Clinton and John "War Hero" Kerry were not up to the task. They put their political future ahead of limiting human suffering.

The most far-sighted candidates, like Dean and Kuscinich were ignored or sabotaged by the Democratic Party Machine. They knew how many American Voters wanted revenge and would act out of Blind Rage at any warlike move by Cheney/Bush.

So Hillary and Kerry counted their cards and voted for the WAR.

Now that the popularity of the WAR is over, Liberals and Democrats can wring their hands in despair.

Now our tail is stuck in a crack and 650,000 are dead in Iraq and we are afraid of "destabilization" or a bloodbath if we leave.

Little Bush should have listened to Big Bush before he wagged the dog and started World War Three.

Now it will take 1.5 million trained and equipped men to pacify Iraq. Or we could just leave.

Iraq War Tax Act. . . Great Idea.
Posted by: Extradite Rumsfeld on December 19, 2006 at 4:36 PM | PERMALINK

. . . and it should be a GASOLINE TAX.

Why not make your main concern what your president, George W. Bush should do and stop worrying your pretty little head about Democrats?

I am a ticket-splitter and a swing voter. I prefer for both parties to try to do the right thing, and I generally find weaknesses in both parties.

KD introduced this as a topic about Democrats, so that's what I wrote about.

That's why.

I don't think more than a small number of conservative true believers think that victory in Vietnam was, to borrow a phrase from the current quagmire, "just around the corner."--keptsimple

Nobody who knows anything about the Vietnam War thinks victory was just around the corner.

But the facts don't prevent the Right Wing from selling the emotional pitch that the liberals lost the war.

The lesson would seem to be that the facts have nothing to do with how people interpret history.

I am sick of this blithering, craven political calculation by Democrats who stand for nothing and care about nothing except their misguided notions of political advantage.

It was the Congressional Democrats political calculations that compelled them to vote to give Bush the war powers to invade Iraq. It is also why I do not want to be a Democrat. Citizens like myself are unable to break through any of the monopoly parties politicians' notions of political advantage in order to have them make policy that is in the best interests of the commonweal. I heard Hillary on NPR this morning saying we needed to use the insurance corporations to provide affordable healthcare to everyone. Even if the Democrats win every vote, they are not going to do the right thing.

I have a friend who never votes. He says voting gives legitimacy to these corporate shills we call politicians. I have always vigorously disagreed, but perhaps I am the one who is wrong.

SecularAnimist writes:

Why won't the Democrats do what the majority of Americans who voted them into control of the Congress want them to do?

Because the Democrats have to be careful to not be seen as being against a possible victory right off the bat now that they're in charge. By allowing Bush his final "surge" while making it clear that the troops will come home afterwards, they're in a far better position to counter accusations from Republicans about not wanting to win. I think we all know that Bush isn't going to go along anyway, so setting up the terms of the 2008 campaign debate on ground more favorable to the Democrats is in fact going to get us out of Iraq sooner than we would with President McCain in the White House.

Lemieux says it doesn't matter because Republicans are going to smear us no matter what we do

clearly, which is why advocating strongly for our position is the only sensible option. fuck the Repubs. fuck the smear machine, the lies, innuendo, the blaming us for growing a spine. what's the question here? reality is on our side.

But what does Ali G have to say?

First, you're too reasonable.
You can see all sides of the argument.
Second, haven't you heard of PR?
PR works on a strategy to deflect the problem you forsee. Johnson & Johnson did it when tylenol had a problem.
You devise a plan to blame the Republicans for what you know they're going to say. You then employ it as you withdraw the troops.
Third, you have a victim's mentality.
You already quaver and quiver afraid of the fact that you'll be blamed, ahead of time, and that freezes you into non-action and hand wringing.
Fourth, how's this? "True patriots don't kill their own soldiers in a senseless war. We are now in a civil war, and it is senseless to continue to let our troops be killed. So we're moving them out of harms way, to be better able to defend us when the time comes. Anyone who criticizes this as 'cut and run' is a traitor who would gladly let other peoples' children die in a senseless war."
Fifth, stand up for what you believe in.

By allowing Bush his final "surge" while making it clear that the troops will come home afterwards, they're in a far better position to counter accusations from Republicans about not wanting to win.--David W.

Hmmmm

Wasn't this the theory behind supporting the Iraq War in the beginning?

How'd that work out for Tom Daschle? Max Cleland?

When will the Dems have bought enough credibility to oppose the Iraq occupation?

If Dems don't have the meddle to do the right thing now, what's going to change after "the surge" that no one thinks will work?

Dems should be more worried about losing votes to the Green Party or some other anti-war candidate. That's gonna be more of a problem in '08 than Dems needing to appeal to the 12% of Americans who believe in the surge nonsense.

In the middle Seventies my city's monopoly newspaper had a publisher who lied about his military service. Everyone thought he flew jets for the Air Force in Johnson's War (Viet Nam.) My father went to a business seminar type event and this guy gave a rousing talk about how the politicians would not let the military fight and win the war. I know about it because my father brought the story home and I think bought into it. The publisher was later fired for lying about ever serving in the military. I guess he was a Bush wannabe.

My point is that Americans are so invested with winning and having an invincible military that they cannot imagine that we could lose and have to blame someone for a failed strategy. We lost the moment we sent troops to fight against the nationalist self-determination of the majority of people. We will always lose that fight unless we are willing to kill tens of millions of people.

What Kevin seems to be missing today, is the Lefty-Blogosphere McCain-bashing.

c'mon Kevin, open up a McCain-bashing thread! I wanna bash McCain!

The rejoinder:

If the loud hawks didn't volunteer to join the military, and aren't volunteering now, and aren't encouraging their friends and family to go fight, or at the very least aren't returning their gigantic tax breaks to the federal government to help fund the war, then they're obviously just maneuvering for political power and pork. They insist that war is the only way, but only as long as it's not their own blood in the sand. If it comes to THAT, well then, they're willing to talk other options.

If Henry Kissinger had gone to jail for war crimes, there would not be any question about responsibility for Vietnam.

Democrats should not passively let Republicans control the narrative. Build a narrative of Republican corruption and criminal incompetence.

I have a 23 year old son. I would not sacrifice him, nor would I ask any other mother to sacrifice her son that we might win a future election.

That is bloodchilling.

I would sacrifice just about anything, save the Constitution, to get these kids home now.
Global Citizen

I concur, except my boys are 22 (day after tomorrow) and 18. Nobody's kid should die for this ever again.

Carl Nyberg: Dems should focus more on what the voters want.

but ... but ... but that would be tantamount to a representative form of government.

Carl Nyberg,

The Democrats are at risk as Bush is trying to wrong-foot them on Iraq before they take power in Congress by making "victory" the issue rather than bringing our troops home. If Bush succeeds in portraying the Democrats as losers from the start, the next two years will be spent debating on Bush's terms. By giving Bush his "surge" while making it clear that the troops are coming home afterwards, the Democrats will make "bring 'em home" the central issue, which is what a majority of Americans want.

It's said that one of the main things that was different about Ulysses S. Grant when he took command of the Union Army was that, unlike previous Union commanders, he didn't wring his hands worrying about what Robert E. Lee was going to do. Instead, he insisted on his army continuing to move forward, worrying instead about what it was going to do to Lee.

The point of this analogy, with respect to Democrats, should be clear.

Alek H., Grant also got caught by surprise at Shiloh, and damn near lost.

Grant's decision to challenge Lee at Cold Harbor also not only was costly in terms of Union soldier's lives, it sapped morale which made his army less agressive when they did manage to turn Lee's front later at Petersburg, only to then hesitate and allow Lee to establish a line of defense and prolong the war for months.

The point of the above facts is that paying no heed to the moves and position of the enemy can be stupid at times too.

I, too, find each gentleman's arguments compelling. However, I am especially intrigued by the use of "wankerism," and intend to incorporate it liberally into future discourse. Thank you for this valuable service.

The point of the above facts is that paying no heed to the moves and position of the enemy can be stupid at times too.

I don't disagree with you. I didn't intend to argue that Democrats should ignore the GOP's moves. I'm simply saying that, too often, the party is like a football team that plays not to lose.

Democrats in the recent election did a much better job of playing to win, and they won. Far too often, though, they've wanted to wait until they saw what the Republicans were going to do/say, and then prepare some kind of "well, yes, but" defense.

Screw that. Go on the offensive.

I would like to read this conversation if Phill Carter or J.D. Henderson were part of it.

The Democrats shouldn't agree to a surge until Bush agrees to tell the truth about why he decided to invade in the first place.

After we hear the president and his advisers grilled on why we're there, what the goals are and whether the goals are achievable, then we can decide whether a surge makes sense.

I don't think any politician has ever lost an election due to under-estimating the analytical power of the voters. When you combine the number of relatively stupid people with the number who do not engage in analysis becuase they simply vote for their "team" (R or D), with the number of people who consider all political policy bullshit, its a huge bloc.

That bloc has had a good five years of propaganda designed to, in a bit of what I find to be extreme irony, elevate the "enemy" of the United States from a group of twenty guys in a cave to something like Smersh, or, in reality, the former USSR.

What is needed now is some good counter-propaganda. For example, its extremely relevant that most of the violence now in Iraq is in the nature of a civil war. If, as would have been the case had we invaded the former USSR, all of the violent resistance was organized against the US (a 2000's version of the French resistance?) then, in fact, we would actually be in a "war" with somebody.

The current actual facts on the ground indicate that we are much more like a police force trying to keep the Bloods and Crips from killing each other than some sort of WWII or Cold War conflict.

This could be packaged as a "new" idea, which would require "new" tactics. Its not so much that the Bush administration needs some face-saving way out, its that all of the ill-informed voters who thought that the U.S. Military had something to "win" over there needs to be re-educated.

As there was nothing to "win" in the first place we actually have not "lost" either.

The Democratic party, not the party of losers, the party of the wise.

What has been lacking in the Iraq war is a seminal battlefield event the public perception of which convinces most Americans that the game is up, a sort of "Tet Offensive", in Vietnam, late 1968. The Iraq debacle has been death by a thousand cuts, with game over essentially about the time Commander Codpiece strode across the Abraham Lincoln's flight-deck, when the insurgency really began in earnest, and continuing now for over three years of ever-increasing carnage and instability. After Tet, the MSM, and especially newspaper editorials, really began to turn against the war, though well behind the public in its own views of the hopelessness of continuing the effort in Vietnam. Perhaps the Democrats are awaiting a similar call for withdrawal, led by the media, as they (the Dems) won't leverage off of the public opinion polls - and the mid-term election results - to get out in front of the issue without fearing classic Repub "they LOST (fill-in-the-blank)" attacks. At this point, the Iraq clusterfuck has cost the lives of 3000 US military - Vietnam ground through 58000...the argument about "lives lost in vain" today pales in comparison to what was lost from ca. 1964-73 in pursuit of a equally grievous foreign policy misadventure.

"in a quandary"????

How many times does a person have to get hit on the head with a 2x4 before they understand what the guy holding the 2x4 does with a 2x4? For the weak of imagination, the 2x4 is a metaphor for Post-Atwaterian Republican Propaganda Strategy (PARPS).

Jeez, man -- wake up already.

To debate this clusterfuck from any premise other than the fact it was and is a war crime of the first magnitude is to engage in a fundamentally dishonest exercize.

To succeed in Iraq apparently means to continue the crime that is in progress.

The only way to end this crime is to fucking end it.

NOW.

Alek, I'm with you. I just don't want to see the Democrats put themselves in an exposed position, especially when Bush is inviting them to do so. To go with another analogy, Bush is all but screaming that he's gonna run with the "victory" blitz defense, so instead of having the Democrats try for the end zone on the first play from scrimmage next month, go with dink passes that advance the ball on their terms.

Sometimes, an alcoholic cannot take that first step, and admit he has a problem, until he hits bottom.

I say we buy old Georgie one last bottle of night-train.

Ackerman, Lemieux and Farley are focused on the political impact of the war. Bush is focused on how success or failure in the war will affect the world.

This post of Kevin's confirms the commonly held view that Republicans are more serious about governing than Democrats.

Kevin understands we must withdraw but doesn't know "how to handle withdrawal politically in order to minimize damage to the Democratic Party." But Kevin, it's like bridge, if you've got to finesse to win, you finesse -- ain't no other way. Here, the only way is to blame the Republicans for their war, blame the Republicans for their war, blame the Republicans for their war, support the troops by bringing them home, support the troops by brining them home, and so on and so on. But damn it, quit the hand wringing and blame the other guys.

I think we may never know whether Korea or Vietnam were "worth it" or whether we "won" or "lost." It beyond obvious that we never really gave a rat's ass about the Korean or the Vietnamese people, those wars only make any kind of sense in the context of the Cold War in general.

Historians could make a pretty good argument that WWII proved that the portability of mechanized force, sea power, and the aircraft carrier had now altered the balance of power so much that a war based upon "capturing and holding territory" was basically obsolete.

The reason Dems are still getting beat over the head with Vietnam is that a significant portion of the populatino thinks that the object was the same as when Eisenhower invaded France.

In actuality we (as in the United States) never intended to occupy and subdue North Vietnam, nor, Korea.

The political opening at the moment is that frankly, no one except maybe Ann Coulter really proposed occypying Iraq against its will. Thus, with a proper re-working of what the hell we are there to accomplish it, the Dems can be the party that "wins" this "war."

IMO there is not much upside in proving Bush was a moron. It proves 65% of the country or so were also morons, which is proving too much.

The Democrats shouldn't agree to a surge until Bush agrees to tell the truth about why he decided to invade in the first place.

Sure, he'll just ask his BFF Joe Lieberman to explain, and eyes will promptly glaze over. Like it or not, we're not ever going to get Bush to admit he lied to America to get his war on. Trying to get him to do so won't get enough traction to accomplish anything much.

After we hear the president and his advisers grilled on why we're there, what the goals are and whether the goals are achievable, then we can decide whether a surge makes sense.

I'd just have Reid and Pelosi tell Bush how long those extra troops will be lent to fight in Iraq, given the strain it will put on U.S. forces elsewhere, and not give Bush the option of fudging the issue with fuzzy goals. In other words, tell Bush "Here's your surge, no refills."

Bush is focused on how success or failure in the war will affect the world.

If Bush was focussed on that, he never would have started the war, and if he had, he would have planned for the aftermath and made sure far more troops were immediately available before launching the war.

(Well, presuming that he's not some psychopath seeking to destabilize the world and make things worse for everyone.)

Bush's actions make clear that Republicans are not at all serious about governing.

ex-liberal, do you believe Bush has been focused on accomplishing a foreign policy goal or military mission in Iraq, but he never cared about the domestic implications?

What is that foreign policy goal? What is the military mission? What grade would you give Bush for accomplishing his goal or mission?

ex-liberal wrote: "Ackerman, Lemieux and Farley are focused on the political impact of the war. Bush is focused on how success or failure in the war will affect the world."

Are you a professional clown, or do you just do this repetitive tripping over your own feet and falling on your face act for fun?

Here's what I assume Bush is doing.

Bush is asking for more troops so that he can blame the Democrats when the Iraq occupation fails.

If the Democrats give Bush more troops and six months what keeps Bush from playing the same game in six months? "Double down again"

Democrats shouldn't give more troops against the recommendations of the JCS. It would be immoral and foolish.

Bush is just dying to creating a way of blaming the Dems for the problems he's created.

Have you heard Right Wingers claim that Democrats supported the Iraq War? Have you heard them say Democrats saw the same intelligence as Bush?

Bush is trying to dupe the Dems into taking the blame for his mess. Dems are cowards and fools to get played by Bush on this surge nonsense.

cmdicely, why would you assume Bush is not trying to destabilize the world?

It's good domestic politics because when the people are afraid they vote GOP.

It's good kleptocracy because military expenditures are ripe opportunities to enrich second-rate businessmen (aka Republicans) and generally milk the system for kickbacks.

It is immoral to let possible political ramifications a decade or two away deter us from getting our troops out of harm's way.

Ackerman, Lemieux and Farley are focused on the impact of Repulican political slime after Iraq is lost. Democrats do not want to be blamed for losing the occupation that was doomed from the very beginning. The MSM will join the Repulicans and blame the Democrats and their lack of political will for losing the occupation.

Bush is focused on how to satisfy his oil benefactors and his Saudi benefactors and how the failure of his occupation of Iraq will affect their profits and political power.

The Democrats need to give Bush something else to worry about, and I think that will be Congressional hearings on his administration's corruption during the Iraq occupation. Make losing the Iraq occupation a direct consequence of Bush's corruption and back it up with televised hearings.

We lost in Iraq because of Republican corruption. We lost in Iraq becaue of Haliburton corruption. We lost in Iraq because of Blackwater corruption.

What about losing in Afghanistan?

We lost in Afghanistan because of Republican drug smuggling. (Hmmm, needs work.)

We lost in Afghanistan because of Army Rangers bank robbery. (Hmmm, cannot blame soldiers, even if guilty.)

We lost in Afghanistan because of Republican corruption. (Bingo!)

Extradite Rumsfeld wrote, Iraq War Tax Act...and it should be a GASOLINE TAX.

SCREW that. That's a tax on the lower and middle classes.

The tax should be on those who (if not all individually, at least on average) put this AntiChrist responsible for the current disastrous state of affairs in Iraq in the White House: namely, the rich.

The question here isn't so much about withdrawal, which I believe Ackerman, Farley, and Lemieux all support, but about how to handle withdrawal politically in order to minimize damage to the Democratic Party. (Kevin)

The question is "funding a God-awful war rather than allowing Bush to, as they say, heighten the contradictions." Ackerman supports funding the war, exactly as previous cowardly fools supported authorizing the war. So brilliant, these triple bankshot, vote for what you oppose strategies...

cmdicely, why would you assume Bush is not trying to destabilize the world?

I wouldn't, except as a rhetorical counterfactual assumption.

I give the soldiers a hard time. I do not like the military, but if you want the troops to live, you want to bring them home now.

If you support the troops, bring them home!

I said something like this back when Murtha first brought up withdrawal. During that debate on the House floor, the Republicans could not say 'support the troops' enough, yet they are the ones who want to keep them in Iraq.

Kevin Drum: "The question here isn't so much about withdrawal, ... but about how to handle withdrawal politically in order to minimize damage to the Democratic Party."

In this case, the prescription for those people suffering from BDS (Battered Democrat Syndrome), is almost distressingly simple:

Don't continue to allow the GOP carte-blanche to frame the debate.

In fact, why even talk with these Republicans as though they still retain some semblance of credibility on this or any other issue? At their own initiative, they've managed to create the biggest single self-inflicted foreign policy fiasco in our lifetimes. They have no one to blame but themselves, it's time for a long-overdue reckoning.

Hell, these self-righteous partisan asswipes were all for prematurely collecting the political dividends when the president landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 2, 2003 and proclaimed that everything was just peachy-keen and hunky-dory under a banner that pronounced"Mission Accomplished".

45 months later to the day, the Republicans have absolutely no business weaseling out of their responsibility for this international FUBAR now, and the Democrats have absolutely no business letting them do so.

For once, the congressional Democrats and their staff really need to listen to their own rank-and-file and their greater constituency, and not merely seek a Beltway-constrained consensus amongst themselves. There's no public clarion call for "bipartisanship" with the White House or congressional Republicans. The voters' message to Capitol Hill Democrats last November 7 was clearly "You really need to grow a pair -- NOW."

Kevin, who gives a damn what people might think? Do you only act in a moral fashion so that people will see you doing it? This war is immoral and wrong and predicated on lies. It meets none of the criteria for a just war. We should get out immediately and say we did it because it was immoral to stay. Will innocent people die if we leave? Sure. Will innocent people die if we stay? Sure. Is it the number of dead bodies that matters if the war is moral or not?

I'm pissed. I'm sick of this.

Grant won. Period. Sure, he made mistakes, but he won. He knew what he had and he used it. We should do the same. We'll make mistakes. Big deal. It'll take longer than we thought. So what? We'll win.

And instead of repeatedly saying, "Go on the offensive," well, GO ON THE OFFENSIVE!

Here's what "the offensive" is:

1. Bush screwed up the fight against terrorism. Can we blame him for 9/11? You bet we can. George Tennet went into Condi Rice's office with his "hair on fire"--a metaphor for scared witless about what intelligence is telling him--in July 2001, and she blows him off. Bush gets briefed on Aug. 6, 2001 that bin Laden wants to strike in US, and Bush tells the briefer, "You covered your ass." Does he act? No.

2. Bush then screwed up the fight against terrorism again. As one of the posters pointed out, he cut and run from Afghanistan, just before he had bin Laden, in order to start a stupid war.

3. An invasion of Iraq was stupid from the word "go." Lefties and righties (like Scowcroft) told him this. Take the lid (Saddam Hussein) off, and the boiling ethnic cauldron underneath would be revealed. It was in the papers a couple weeks ago that the Pentagon did a study in 1999 that said even with 400K troops, the country might STILL descend into civil war. Not to mention that nearly every occupation of the 20th century ultimately failed.

4. He lied, lied, lied to get the country to go to war. Bob Graham said in the Wash.Post earlier year that he saw the classified National Intelligence Estimate (as a Senator on the Intelligence Committee), and it was FULL of hesitations, questions, disagreements, and cautions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence agencies were NOT in any way sure that S. Hussein had WMD--some thought he did, some thought he didn't. The public, shorter NIE released later had every one of these cautions removed. And that's just one set of lies. He also constantly said that the war on terror involved Iraq--but when called on it, he admitted Iraq wasn't part of 9/11. Then he went back to linking the "war on terror" with Iraq. He lied to Democrats in Congress; he lied to the American people.

5. Bush completely screwed up the war once he started it. There was a massive bureaucratic effort, called The Future of Iraq Project, held (I believe) under State Dept. auspices. Hundreds of politicians, bureaucrats, businesspeople, academics, and even NGOs (I think) were interviewed about the potential problems of such an invasion, and suggested solutions. Nearly everything that they predicted has come to pass. The Administration COMPLETELY IGNORED this report and its suggestions.

6. Then they fought the war on the cheap, with too-few troops, crappy armor and bad policies that enraged Iraqis, like (as Naomi Klein outlined) abrupt privatization coupled with the disbanding of the military--how about putting hundreds of thousands of men out of work in one day, just after you've put thousands of soldiers out of work? Good work, fellas. The unemployed laborers, who are now pissed, don't know any unemployed former soldiers, with access to huge caches of weaponry? Dream on.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Please, feel free to add to this.

In the meantime, STOP WHINING! Just keep repeating the above over and over. If Congressional Democrats don't like it, I honestly don't care. Screw them. The ones who got elected in the recent election didn't care, either.

We lost in Iraq because of Republican corruption. We lost in Iraq becaue of Haliburton corruption. We lost in Iraq because of Blackwater corruption.

And we lost in Iraq mainly because the Democratic leadership bent us over, lubed us up and quietly held our hands while the bush team fucked us in the arse with a Taser.

So yes, there are beaucoups of blame that the Democratic Party owns.

My fertive hope is that those Dems admit to commiting horrific blunders and taking their share of the blame, but then bash the face in of any Repugnican who dares to blame the Dems for more than their share.

Fat chance, the Dem leadership will pussy out (sorry) once again.

How do future Iraq refugees and asylees fit into all this? If the US pulls out, many Iraquis will have to leave, no? Does that affect the political balance of power?

hostile: "It was the Congressional De