The politics of the Iraq War is incorrectly presented as a 2 sided struggle between those who want to stay in Iraq and those who want to leave. In reality, though, there is a 3rd side to this argument, one that has a lot of support amongst the national power elite. This 3rd force to a large extent shaped the Congressional debates over funding authorization and accounted for our defeat yesterday. Dealing with this faction effectively will determine whether or not we can get out of Iraq in the foreseeable future.
The Iraq War is the most emotional political issue of our day. As such, there is no shortage of opinions over what is going on over there and what to do about it. All of these ideas, though, can be simplified into three broad positions that dominate the debate today.
Position 1: Victory is in Sight
This is the usual Bush-Cheney-McCain-Leiberman crap that the war is a Noble Crusade for democracy, the surge is working, the People don't know the Truth because the Dirty Fucking Hippie Media is stabbing our soldiers in the back, and the Defeatocrat Cowards in Congress don't know that Freedom Isn't Free. Blah blah blah. Yaddy Yaddy Yaddy. The majority of the Republican delegation in Congress and 2/3rds of their rank and file by this crap. A small minority of independents and an insignificant number of Democrats do as well. According to the polls, they've got maybe 20-25 percent of the country as a whole.
Position 2: The War is Hopeless so We Should Leave
There are a lot of anti-war positions that come from a lot of directions, but a unifying theme in all of them is that the war is futile. If the war can't be won, then the only logical thing to do is withdraw from the war. Call it the Reid-Feingold doctrine. Right now, a majority of the Democrats in Congress and an overwhelming majority of the Democratic rank and file think this way. So does a plurality (possible even a small minority) of the country as a whole.
Position 3: The War is Hopeless but We Should Stay Anyway
This statement sounds contradictory and illogical, but those who believe it represent a crucial segment of our political leadership. Their thinking shaped how Congress has dealt with Iraq this year and why we lost yesterday. This line of thinking is held by a diverse group of people throughout the political establishment. They include Republicans like John Warner and Democrats like Jim Webb. They include figures in the administration like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. They include a lot of the power writers in the Washington press corps. They dominated the thinking behind the Iraq Study Group and their ideas shaped its findings.
These people are commonly misunderstood by the public. Many believe that they are antiwar because they openly criticized the president and the conduct of the war. This, however, is not true. Although the Iraq Study Group. for example, called on combat troops to be withdrawn by May 2008, they also called for 100,000 American troops to remain in Iraq for some kind of undefined support mission. The ISG cultivated an antiwar image in order to attract public support in order to keep the 100,000 in, not to pull the rest out. Many others think of these people as cowards unwilling to actually challenge Bush even they know the war won't succeed. This is true for some of them, but for many others it's not. Senator Webb is a good example. He's certainly been a principled and passionate defender of many progressive causes this year. He hasn't sucked up to Bush and has been emotional in his criticism of the war. He also voted against Reid-Feingold and voted for the war authorization yesterday.
What motivates this faction more than anything else is their self-identification with Washington. Even Webb, who sees himself in many ways as an outsider, spent the bulk of the 1980s as Secretary of the Navy and spent his time since physically living in the District. Once you identify yourself with the government, the honor and reputation of The Nation matter more to you than the lives of those sacrificed for it. Admitting defeat, therefore, is worse than losing 100 men a month. Avoiding the humiliation is worth the cost of continuing a stalemate indefinitely. They dress up this reality by emphasizing the disasters that will follow withdrawal (Civil War, refugees, genocide, regional war, etc) and by clutching at straws as to how some kind of magic diplomatic formula will bring us a decent settlement from a prolonged stalemate. In reality, though, what these people want is for the stalemate to continue long enough for us to get lucky and have something happen over there that will enable us to shift the blame in Iraq onto someone else.
If Bush was smart, he could have reestablished limited public support for the war behind this position. When the ISG was issued last November, its authors cleverly made it look like an antiwar document. Had Bush signed off on it, he could have withdrawn combat troops so gradually that there wouldn't have been much of a change on the ground before the next election. The Democratic candidates for president probably would have played it safe and grabbed onto it. The war would have continued on with a smaller American footprint until at least the 2010 elections.
Bush, however, as we all know, is an idiot. Ergo, he called the ISG report a "flaming turd" and escalated the war. Opposition to the war grew stronger within the Democratic Party and within the country as a whole. The ISG crowd punished Bush by not combining with the Republican dead enders and burying criticism of the war, but is still unwilling to admit defeat. The result of that was seen yesterday.
So, if this faction has the deciding votes on what Congress is going to do about Iraq and if they want to keep the war going, what can we do about them?
Action 1: Repeat after Me: THE WAR IS HOPELESS!
The most significant statement anybody made over Iraq in the last 6 months is when Senator Reid said that the war can't be won. He got his ass chewed out by the national media for it. The rest of the bigshots in the Democratic Party ran away from him. He was absolutely right, though, and taking that message to the public is the key to ending the war. Rather than running away from Reid, the Democrats should have been shouting he was right from the rooftops.Once the public concludes that the war can't be won then any position other than withdrawal is untenable. The antiwar movement, therefore, should use these four simple words as the centerpiece of its message to the country.
Action 2: Keep Congress Voting
The more Congress votes on Iraq, the more times members of Congress have to explain themselves. For the third way types, this means explaining to the country why they want to stay in a war they don't think we can win. Explaining themselves makes them reassess their positions, and as public support for the war dwindles some of them will conclude that its too late to fall back to a smaller war. Don't get too cynical about these people. They may never come around, but remember these aren't the Bush dead enders. These are folks who at some point woke up and smelled the coffee that the war wasn't working. They may do it again. Having Congress continuously explain themselves gives them ample opportunities to do it.
Action 3: Make Sure the Democratic Nominee for President is Unambiguously Anti-War
If the 3rd Way crowd doesn't come around, then our next chance to end the war will be the inauguration of the new president. The candidates running for the Democratic nomination, like all good politicians, want maximum freedom of action in coming up with policies to deal with the mess in Iraq. We shouldn't give it to them. Our goal should be to make it impossible to get the nomination without uttering the sentence The War is Hopeless so We Should Leave Iraq! Having taken a public position, no matter what they think they will be unable politically to keep the war going. By stating the obvious in public that the war is hopeless and by keeping Congress voting, we're already doing a lot to push the candidates in that direction. Notably, Clinton and Obama voted for Reid-Feingold and against the funding authorization last week. Both of them would prefer to be cagey, but those two votes pinned them down. Edwards and Richardson, the two leading candidates out of Congress, are being outspoken in their opposition to the war to gain leverage on these two. If we keep the pressure up, we'll get at least the beginning of a withdrawal by Jan 2009.