A few days ago,
Atrios said:
We will never leave Iraq while George Bush is president, because
they've decided that leaving is losing.
Although I agree with his view of the situation, I heartily disagree with Atrios on his conclusion, especially as a matter of strategy. The presumed Iraq strategy among many in the Democratic movement is that we ought to crush the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, and then our guy or gal withdraws the troops. I think we may be forced to take this route, but I think it is a very undesirable outcome.
It would be far better for the Democrats to seize congress in 2006, and impose a sensible exit strategy on the White House. Then the Democrats should crush the Republican candidate in 2008. There are several reasons why this is more sensible.
- The Iraq War, or GWAT, Iraq edition, or whatever we're calling it now, will be historically contained within George Bush's presidency. Iraq is a tar-baby, and no Democratic presidential hopeful should dare touch it. For the future of the Democratic party, it may turn out to be a blessing that Kerry lost his bid for the White House. Clearly, the Democrats are going to have to be the driving force behind any correction in our Iraq strategy, but George Bush should be our agent in implementing it, willing or not. I fear that no matter what strategy is adopted, our exit from Iraq will be a catastrophe. Responsibility for this coming catastrophe should hang on the man responsible, not on the poor sap who comes in next.
- We can pound some sense into the Iraq strategy sooner (by two years) if we take the congressional approach. Hopefully, by forcing action sooner it'll be a somewhat smaller catastrophe.
- The Democrat(s) who I hope will assume office in 2008 will have a relatively clean break. They'll still have a lot of mess to fix, but at least they won't have this blasted war consuming attention, money and political capital. We can instead focus on fixing the million or so things that Bush screwed up right here in the USA, repairing our alliances, and girding for the financial shitstorm that will inevitably result from Bush's ruinous spending.
Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll be able to accomplish something beyond damage mitigation. For example, the twisted monster that is our health care system continues to lumber along, destroying lives and costing untold billions. The fact that our economy continues to hemorrhage manufacturing jobs can be largely attributed to our busted health care system. We remain pitifully dependant on fossil fuels. New Orleans still sits in ruin. Et cetera.
The legacy of this generation of Democrats should be more than just getting out of Iraq. However, if that is the role we must play, we may find it to be our sole contribution for a long time.
- If we win on the Hill in 2006, then the effort to force the Bush Administration to end the war will be a perfect environment from which a Democrat could vault from Congress to a presidential campaign. The public will see Democrats making a clear, principled stand. They will see us drag the once powerful Bush Administration, kicking and screaming, into the realm of reason. Most importantly, they will see us acting like leaders.
- As the war grows more unpopular, the Republicans will eventually take the same strategy with the war as they have with the Abramoff scandal; they will paint it as a bipartisan scandal. If the Democrats allow the war to continue beyond 2008, then there will be some credibility to this claim (assuming we win back the White House in 2008). If anything good comes out of the Iraq war, then Bush can keep the credit for it. Similarly, he should keep the blame.
Colin Powell famously said about Iraq, "We broke it. We bought it." The Democratic strategy should be to take this literally. The "we" in this case is the Bush administration. We should make them fix it, and then boot them out of office once they've done it.