Okay, so Bush is tanking in the polls, people are getting fed up with the occupation of Iraq. What do we do now about the war, we who opposed it from the beginning.
Unfortunately, with a stunning lack of foresight and guts, the nation democratic leaders, by continuing to support Bush's act of aggression and invasion and only attacking his incompetence in carrying it out, cannot stand as an clear alternative. This is one of the truly bad consequences of the failure of the Dems to oppose the Iraqi war resolution and the campaign that Kerry ran last year.
Come '06, there will be a number of options for CheneyBush. If things get bad enough, the administration might be looking for any reason to bail and claim victory. It won't matter that Iraq is an Islamic theocracy at that point; they will be looking for the exits. They will claim that an election and a constitution make for a functioning democracry, and try to time any withdrawal so that any explosion of violence would happen after the midterms.
But what about the permanent bases? I've heard many cite this as evidence that the U.S. plans to stay forever. Certainly, permanent bases makes sense as the sort of thing neocon war planners would draw up in their dreams of empire. But if the situation continues to deteriorate, both in Iraq and the polls, the short term political needs of the Repubs will begin to loom larger than the neocon pipe dreams.
My guess is they will just try to muddle through, making at least a show of withdrawals or even real withdrawals, repeating slogans like automata and slinging mud in all directions and ginning up cultural issues for one last go. All to cover up ultimate failure.
So, what is the way forward for us?
At this point, the notion of national Democrats as a group earnestly proposing and discussing plans for Iraq now that all the bridges are burnt, all the ships scuttled, all the Rubicons crossed, and all the metaphors mixed, seems particularly pointless in a practical sense. Having a plan is fine for talking head shows, but they have no power to carry out anything. The Bush maladministration will do whatever it does in its poisonous miasma of insufferable pride, delusion, shamelessness, and pure political calculation, all couched in an ever shifting froth of justifications and spinning like crazy. Whenever the topic of Iraq comes up, that is what Dems should be talking about.
Unfortunately, there isn't always a solution to a particular problem, especially a botched and illegal invasion of a middle eastern country. We just have to find another problem that might have a solution.
And as far as I can tell, the only thing left to do is to fix the blame.
Unfortunately, the DC dems are more than a little complicit in this colossal debacle for which new words will have to be coined in the history books to fully describe. Failure to oppose the invasion from the outset in forceful terms and then the deception of Bush in the runup to the war has left them with little credibility to speak out. If Bush cuts and runs, I sometimes think they will be the last one calling for the U.S. to stay in Iraq as the helicopters are taking off from the roof of the embassy!
We have to set the record straight, or else we will continue to pay. Will we let Bush off the hook, to slink off after issuing a raft of pardons? We will allow the congressional Repubs to individually distance themselves from this disaster and stay in power? Will we allow them to use the incredibly short attention spans of the American public so that they can promote their "we lost Iraq because liberals stabbed us in the back because they didn't clap loud enough" in twenty years? We have to win enough elections in '06 by large enough margins to give the election tamperers second thoughts. Maybe then, the real airing of the dirty laundry can begin.
Since the Democrats have collectively painted themselves into a bad corner, we will continue to need new voices who can speak authentically in a way that people can identify with. We are going to need a a lot of them. The people who have credibility are the Hackett's and the Sheehan's, asking questions and demanding answers, uncouched in endless mealy mouthed political fine tuning to appeal to the mythical middle. Can we amplify them enough to make a difference?