Bottom Line: Washington Democrats Want The War To Be A Republican Problem in 2008. Everything Else They Say is Blarney.

You are shocked that Bush is still getting his way on Iraq? Hello. Wake up. Don't be distracted by honking and blathering from Democrats. Of course the presidential candidates, even Hillary, are sounding stern about the Petreaus and Crocker reports and demanding deadlines and all that. They are running in the PRIMARIES, for God's sake. They know nothing is actually going to happen. Nothing is going to happen because Democrats don't want the slightest shred of responsibility dangling from their designer-label lapels for Iraq policy in the next 12 months.

Whoever wins the primaries (unless it's Kucinich; uh, sure) will back off the categorical anti-war talk and go all centrist. The main thing most Democrats want -- from the US Senate to every state legislature -- is to make sure that this disaster is hanging like an anvil around the Republican elephant's neck when election day comes.

That's the game. The rest is shell. Too bad about the dying.

Peace.

Comments

[Doofus]

It is indeed way past time to commence blaming
the Demos for what the Repos have done in Iraq.

And no doubt the Demos are mostly to blame for
GWB not removing troops from Iraq long ago,
because the Demos have only ignored Repos for
several years now.

Yes, it is clearly the fault of the Demos. And
you know what to do, People. Next year, elect
many Repos and teach those naughty Demos a well
deserved lesson.

Fool US once shame on you. Fool US twice shame
on US. Fool US three times? Never happen.

[LeoMarvin]

I don't think your thesis is completely cynical. Well maybe it is, but it's not completely wrong. What I do think may be both cynical and wrong is the implication in your comment, "Too bad about the dying." That suggests that the lives that are at risk aren’t a fundamental part of Democrats' political calculation. It seems plausible if not likely, regardless of what the Democrats do to stop the war, that if the Republicans win in 2008 they will continue the war indefinitely at a much greater cost in lives than those that will be lost until then. If the Democrats believe this too, and if they want to end the war with the fewest possible casualties, shouldn’t we be outraged if they did anything but assure that the Republicans don’t get a chance to make that decision?

[OrvilleHLarson]

Hillary Clinton favors the war in Iraq. She voted for it, and shows no inclination to end it. Yes, of course, she makes occasional noises about how bad it is, and wrings her hands, but it's all bullshit. Clinton's a neocon with the best of 'em.

[philjames]

But you must also include in this well-reasoned indictment of the Dems that the alternative is not simply that the Dems won't have Iraq as an issue against the Rethugs in 2008 but that if Bushco was actually forced yo begin troop withdrawals by the Dems it would then become the Dems quagmire and the Rethugs would blame Dems for everything that will go wrong in Iraq from then on. No sir its Bush's g*dd*mn war.

[plutorage]

I guess Hilary will be the "peace with honor" candidate this time, a role last filled by Nixon in 1968. I wonder if we will be out of Iraq before Hilary leaves office in 2017

[seatech1]

You're right. Unfortunately, we won't know how the Democratic candidates really feel about the war until after the 2008 elections. And that's a real shame, because they all know how all of us Democratic voters feel about it, now!

[Desiderata]

This truth just exposes all the more that few of the elected and their staffs in DC view the soldiers as more than McTroops: nameless as cows in a herd and just barely more worthy of tears when slaughtered.

[ikkytito]

I think you're right up till now. Dems have been laying back waiting. Afraid of the repub slime machine. But I'm getting the feeling -This attitude is about to change- Maybe it's the way the Repub candidates have been falling all over each other to support the war. A line is being drawn in the sand. The Democrats are getting lots of pressure to represent the electorate. My guess is another month-if things don't improve drastically- There will be a tidal wave of defections from the pro-war people. Then what-Hmm attack Iran to up the ante?

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

I blame Hillary.

plus, Hillary doesn't want to just blame Republicans for Iraq (and soon to be Iran), she wants to be the Military-Industrial Complex's girl and manage the fraudulent GWOT herself, because her vast "experience" tells her that Faustian bargains with the MIC is realism.

listen carefully to what she says. she never talks about getting out of Iraq, she only ever talks about *starting* to withdraw. pure snake oil.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

Unfortunately I have to agree. The congressional democrats don't trust the public not to buy into the republicans next back-stab narrative that the compliant media will surely transmit to them when the troops are brought home. And we all know, no matter how bad things are when the troops are removed, the republicans will declare that we were on the verge of victory and would have won in another Friedman unit but for the damned libruls.

I am of two minds on this. I despise the waste of lives and treasure represented by our staying in Iraq, but I'm not looking forward to listening to the wingnuts trying to rehabilitate Iraq for the rest of my life, as they have Vietnam. And I don't trust an American public that mostly supported the war going in,and would probably still be supporting it if the war returned us to the world of $1 /gal. gasoline,not to swallow it hook line and sinker.

After all these people put Bush in the White House TWICE.

Yes, I'm sorry about all the dying too. But the Republican party has become a festering cancer of fanaticism, irrationalism, corruption and outright insanity in the body politic of America. And the only way to excise that cancer is through the political destruction of the Republican party. And the Iraq war is going to be the scalpel.
I just don't see any other way.

[Absintheforall]

Well said!

[grendl]

The only people who are going to change Iraq, are the people of Iraq.

They have begun to see Al Qaeda for what they truly are, not advocates for Islam but total and utter chaos, and we’ve seen progress in Al Anbar because of it. Petraeus himself said this was the most telling sign of progress in Iraq.

But the most telling sign of progress will be when the people of Iraq stand up to stop the madness that is going on in their country. When they decide they’re fed up with American occupation, and tell us thank you for helping bring to justice the despot we helped arm for decades, now get the fuck out of our country.

They need a symbolic independence day, or week, or month, something to celebrate their nation’s unity which is to this date non-existent. Something to bring them together, like a vote to expel the U.S. occupation. What better way to show the Middle East the benefits of such a system of government. What better way to empower the people of Iraq.

Democracy can only succeed when it comes from within a population. It can’t be force fed a people at gunpoint, especially with such stark sectarian divisions as exists in Iraq.

[Fairfloss]

If your were an Iraqi and you were totally aware of the climate in the American Congress, which most Iraqi's are, in this wonderful electronic age and you did not understand what was going on, but did know the Americans pulled out of Vietnam and left a half of million Vietnamese that had helped them, supported them, to be taken prisoners and murdered by the North, would you be all that eager to help the Americans?

They don't trust us and I can't say that I blame them.

[FlowerGirl]

Why should they trust "us"? Do we?