Hard Choices for the Dems
There's no way of sugarcoating what happened in Congress last week in terms of the war appropriations vote. The Democrats got rolled. They knew it was gonna happen, as they didn't have enough votes to override Bush's veto, so they kept the lights on until September with the hope that the next three months will trigger enough GOP converts to make a stronger showing then. As pissed off as I was watching this unfold last week, I'm pragmatic enough to realize there was no way the Democrats could pull off an immediate defunding/withdrawal without finding themselves trapped in a PR avalanche of "withholding funds for the troops".
Under the circumstances, it's irrational for Daily Kos hardliners to be so enraged at the Democrats for not waging a fruitless and counterproductive fight on the floor of Congress at the present time. This is a two-party government, and the Democrats didn't have the votes they needed to end the war unless they committed the politically suicidal act (at least right now) of withholding war funds. Honestly, I'm not so sure they'll have the votes by September either, despite the conventional wisdom that a number of Republicans will abandon the President in the fall heading into the 2008 election cycle. We've been hearing these rumors of "pending Republican defections" of Iraq war support for about two years now, yet the numbers of dissenters remains microscopic.
Ultimately, the only way I expect to see this war end is if a Democratic President is elected in 2008, making Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's calculated votes against last week's war appropriations bill that much more significant. The message their vote sent to the more than 60% of American voters who want a near-term withdrawal from Iraq is that they won't be the kind of hair-splitting opportunists who only talk about badly the war is going, yet still plan to let it drag on for years longer out of fear of "crying uncle" and being tagged as weak on defense. Whether or not Hillary or Obama would actually do that if they were elected is another story, but their vote allows them to continue courting favor with the anti-war left while appearing to be "the few who got it right" as conditions in Iraq continue their inevitable collapse into unbridled anarchy.
Bottom line: the war in Iraq is likely to remain on autopilot heading into the 2008 election, meaning "the course will be stayed" until early 2009 or later. The only variable to that prediction is if Bush makes good on his winking suggestion that he would leave Iraq if the Iraqi government asked him too. It seems unlikely that Maliki would ever ask the Americans to leave seeing as how American troop presence is the only thing stopping Maliki from getting a bullet between his eyes. The Iraqi Parliament, on the other hand, seems like a very likely candidate to tell Bush to stuff it (after they return from their two-month summer vacation, of course) once the inconsequential "benchmarks without penalties" laid out by the Bush administration are inevitably unmet.
If the Iraqis do request America take a hike in the next few months, it would be the perfect out for the Bush administration, allowing him to "respectfully submit to the will of the democratically elected government of Iraq", declare victory and go home. Instantly, the war would be off the table for the 2008 election, requiring likely nominee Hillary Clinton (or whoever the Dem nominee is) to win on their own, without the counterwind of an unpopular war blowing at their back. There is not a Republican Presidential candidate in the lot that wouldn't jump at this opportunity, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the next 12 months produced a dynamic of this sort, generating a phased withdrawal of American troops beginning next summer per the orders of the majority of the Iraqi government.
Unless I'm way off base (wouldn't be the first time), that's the grim reality that war opponents face. The only chance of ending this war in the next year is if the Iraqi government requests our departure, in which case Bush and the Republican party are handed a measure of political victory in the 2008 election. Otherwise, the Democratic President elected in 2008 (ideally with a Democratic Congress still behind him/her) will be forced to take the reins themselves, beginning in early 2009.....after nearly two more years of needless bloodshed.
Under the circumstances, it's irrational for Daily Kos hardliners to be so enraged at the Democrats for not waging a fruitless and counterproductive fight on the floor of Congress at the present time. This is a two-party government, and the Democrats didn't have the votes they needed to end the war unless they committed the politically suicidal act (at least right now) of withholding war funds. Honestly, I'm not so sure they'll have the votes by September either, despite the conventional wisdom that a number of Republicans will abandon the President in the fall heading into the 2008 election cycle. We've been hearing these rumors of "pending Republican defections" of Iraq war support for about two years now, yet the numbers of dissenters remains microscopic.
Ultimately, the only way I expect to see this war end is if a Democratic President is elected in 2008, making Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's calculated votes against last week's war appropriations bill that much more significant. The message their vote sent to the more than 60% of American voters who want a near-term withdrawal from Iraq is that they won't be the kind of hair-splitting opportunists who only talk about badly the war is going, yet still plan to let it drag on for years longer out of fear of "crying uncle" and being tagged as weak on defense. Whether or not Hillary or Obama would actually do that if they were elected is another story, but their vote allows them to continue courting favor with the anti-war left while appearing to be "the few who got it right" as conditions in Iraq continue their inevitable collapse into unbridled anarchy.
Bottom line: the war in Iraq is likely to remain on autopilot heading into the 2008 election, meaning "the course will be stayed" until early 2009 or later. The only variable to that prediction is if Bush makes good on his winking suggestion that he would leave Iraq if the Iraqi government asked him too. It seems unlikely that Maliki would ever ask the Americans to leave seeing as how American troop presence is the only thing stopping Maliki from getting a bullet between his eyes. The Iraqi Parliament, on the other hand, seems like a very likely candidate to tell Bush to stuff it (after they return from their two-month summer vacation, of course) once the inconsequential "benchmarks without penalties" laid out by the Bush administration are inevitably unmet.
If the Iraqis do request America take a hike in the next few months, it would be the perfect out for the Bush administration, allowing him to "respectfully submit to the will of the democratically elected government of Iraq", declare victory and go home. Instantly, the war would be off the table for the 2008 election, requiring likely nominee Hillary Clinton (or whoever the Dem nominee is) to win on their own, without the counterwind of an unpopular war blowing at their back. There is not a Republican Presidential candidate in the lot that wouldn't jump at this opportunity, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the next 12 months produced a dynamic of this sort, generating a phased withdrawal of American troops beginning next summer per the orders of the majority of the Iraqi government.
Unless I'm way off base (wouldn't be the first time), that's the grim reality that war opponents face. The only chance of ending this war in the next year is if the Iraqi government requests our departure, in which case Bush and the Republican party are handed a measure of political victory in the 2008 election. Otherwise, the Democratic President elected in 2008 (ideally with a Democratic Congress still behind him/her) will be forced to take the reins themselves, beginning in early 2009.....after nearly two more years of needless bloodshed.
posted by Mark at 7:51 PM
1 Comments:
Im not so sure that ending the war would be such a big victory for Republicans. The Democrats should obviously get a lot of credit. They could easily say that the war would likely still be going on if they didn't take back Congress in 2006. This also puts other issues like Social Security, economic fairness, health care and other domestic issues back on the table which almost always hurt Republicans badly whenever they are an issue(read 1982 and 1986 Congressional elections and the 1992 Presidential election).
This I why I think it might actually be best if we can get this war behind us and focus on the problems that matter to ordinary people.
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