Many progressives are angry with Congressional Democrats for their failure to end the war in Iraq. This anger fails to take into account the durable foreign policy conventional wisdom that holds sway among many foreign policy professionals and large segments of the American public.
The American public detests the war in Iraq, but it blames the Bush Administration's incompetence more than its ideology. Consider what happened to Senator Obama when he deviated from the conventional wisdom this summer. He was branded as naive and inexperienced. What were his great mistakes? A desire to respond carefully to a hypothetical terrorist attack rather than simply lashing out immediately, a willingness to talk to unsavory international leaders, a desire to pursue Osama bin Laden, but a reticence to contemplate the use of nuclear weapons. For these eminently sane positions, he was accused of being a foreign policy amateur by all and sundry.
The criticism of Obama demonstrated what people really believe, namely that regardless of Iraq, Americans still favor force over diplomacy, believe that folks who "stand with us" (such as ostensibly Pakistan) ought to be held to lower standards rather than higher standards, and that the U.S. should never allow itself to be bound by concerns of others.
Now, if I am right and this does describe the durable foreign policy orientation of much of the public, ask yourself whether Democrats will gain or lose in the long-run from taking a stronger stance on Iraq. As a political matter, a reasonable calculus might be that it is better to recapture the White House first, and then end the war. The issue is not just Iraq, but whether ending the war in Iraq is worth the potential costs in terms of being able to pursue the rest of the progressive agenda.
Bernard
www.bernardfinel.com