When it comes to the discussion about pulling our troops out of Iraq, the battle lines are being drawn. But not necessarily in the ways you'd expect.
Take the latest statements on troop withdrawals from Sen. Sam Brownback and Sen. John McCain.
This weekend, on CNN's Late Edition, Brownback told Wolf Blitzer: "You've got the potential for us starting to pull troops out in the first half of next year." A development he termed "very significant."
Four days later on Larry King, McCain said that a plan to bring 20,000 troops home for Christmas would allow "the insurgents [to] just sit back and wait for them to leave."
Tell me again, which one of these guys is the arch-conservative Republican and which one is the darling of the moderates?
It's the same dynamic we saw this summer when Gen. Casey said that troops could begin returning home as soon as next spring -- and was promptly put in his place by the White House, which, like McCain, is sticking to the idea that talk of withdrawal will only embolden the enemy.
Republicans in Congress, anxious about being swept out of office in 2006 by the rising tide of anti-war feeling, are clearly testing the withdrawal waters.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, the Democrats are similarly divided.
Some, like Russ Feingold and John Kerry, are calling for a phased pullout. Feingold was the first to push for a specific timetable, and Kerry has recently called for the withdrawal of 20,000 troops following the Dec. 15 Iraq elections with the goal of withdrawing "the bulk of American combat forces by the end of 2006."
Kerry clearly sees Iraq as a unifying issue for Democrats in 2006. "If [Bush] fails to act," he wrote in an email to supporters this week, "we'll demand that Congress takes the decision out of his hands. And, if the Republican Congress fails to call the Bush administration to account, we will use the 2006 elections to take the decision out of their hands."
Hillary Clinton is the leading Democrat pushing a position that, on the obsolete left-right continuum, puts her to the right of Sam Brownback. According to a Hillary supporter who spoke to her at one of her recent Hollywood fundraisers: "Hillary basically said that since the White House is going to end up pulling troops out anyway before the election, Democrats can just stand by and let it happen without going out on a limb. She thinks that anyone one who lays out a plan is going to be immediately shot down. Better to just keep hammering the president for not having a plan of his own."
How very meta. Say that we need a plan, criticize the president for not having a plan, but avoid -- at all costs -- coming up with a plan of your own.
Sen. Harry Reid recently offered a glimpse of the "no plan" plan in action, when he urged the president to "change the course" in Iraq: "The president must in a clear and complete way lay out what military, political, and economic progress will be necessary in order to begin to bring our troops home...After two-and-a-half year of enormous sacrifice in Iraq, we can and must do better than empty rhetoric. The troops and the American people deserve a plan."
We certainly do. Care to offer one, Sen. Reid?
Demanding a plan from the president while avoiding putting forth one of your own may be smart politics when it comes to a wide range of issues but not when it comes to life and death, war and peace decisions.
Reid needs to do on Iraq what he did this week on the Senate floor: show the kind of bold leadership that finally holds the Republicans accountable.