Will the Troops Give Democrats Some Spine?

Maybe this will shake the Democratic Party out of its stupor: the troops want out of Iraq. Pronto. So, stop shaking in your boots, stop trying to out-hawk the Republicans by mouthing the worn-out slogan "support your troops" and stop running around thinking that you can only win back power by sacrificing the lives of more soldiers. The people -- the troops -- are saying, "enough is enough."

As the Zogby poll shows, 29 percent of the troops think we should be out of Iraq now. A whopping 72 percent say that the troops should be home within a year. What more do the Democrats need to see to grasp the broad rejection of the idea that this war should continue even one more day? An outright revolt by the troops?

I've always been uneasy about the politicians who so easily recite the words "support the troops." It's always seemed easy for the president, who never saw combat, and the vice-president, who had "other priorities" when he was called to duty, to glorify the war because they've never actually been under fire or held a dying soldier in their arms. But, here you go, the troops are being quite clear: supporting us means getting us the hell out of Iraq.

Anyone who has listened to the building opposition to the war shouldn't find the troops' feelings surprising. And that's what I find most disturbing and enraging. Sure, I'm angry at the Republican Party and the president and vice-president who deserve to be impeached and removed from office for their illegal, dishonest, callous "leadership."

But, the stain of this war rests at the doorstep of the Democrats, too. I welcome veterans or any new face to the electoral arena -- but not if the lesson from this war is that our party has to rush out and recruit a "band of brothers" to prove that we care about the country and its security. Every horrible aspect of the invasion we now face -- the death and destruction, the inevitable civil war and the destabilization of the entire region -- was entirely predictable.

No, the lesson is that the party cannot be lead by people like Hillary Clinton and her ilk who do not have the moral compass it takes to stand up, in the face of fear-driven poll numbers, and say, "no, this war is wrong and I don't care about the political cost, I'm going to fight like hell to stop something that will devastate our world and threaten our national security."

Real leadership for our party means finding people who can say that patriotism and national security are not measured by the number of bombs we can drop. It's measured by being smart enough to not squander one trillion dollars (a modest, real estimate of the long-term cost of the war) to destroy another country and fans the flames of hatred and, instead, use that money to cover every person who lacks health insurance in America, hire 3.5 million elementary school teachers, build 24,000 new schools for those teachers or provide 40 million scholarships for university students, our future generation of leaders.

The sad thing is that even if the troops come home now, 2,300 American men and women will have lost their lives -- not to mention tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children. The troops should be brought home now. And, then, Democrats must go to the polls and hold accountable those in our own party who have blood on their hands.