I believe kos has made this point (even if many people who post his blog don't agree) that a candidate's position on the war isn't, by itself, what matters. I agree with this and thought I would expand my thoughts on this idea.
Disclaimer: I don't necessarily agree with any of the arguments I'm about to make. I am making them, well, for the sake of argument.
I think many people on here fall into the trap of saying "my position, and only my position is the correct one on Iraq," and that anyone who disagrees just "doesn't get it." Of course, I'm not lost on the irony of the fact that this is essentially the same argument that the Bush Administration uses against democrats when it comes to the war.
I've come to believe that someone arguing that we should stay in Iraq, or even send more troops to Iraq isn't necessarily wrong as long as they admit to themselves and others the reality in Iraq today and can make a rational argument for their position.
The first argument many people may pull out first is the argument that 60% of the American people are against the war in Iraq. Well, this is true. However, there are three counter arguments against this. First, one needs to separate polls that ask whether how Bush has run in the war in Iraq is good or bad and polls that ask whether they are against the war in Iraq regardless of the policy in place.
For example, the most recent poll on the subject, from CBS, shows that 66% of people say that they disapprove of how Bush has conducted the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, a smaller number (though still a majority) - 53% - think we shouldn't have gone into Iraq to begin with. That seems to show that at least 1 in 5 people who disapprove of how Bush has run the war in Iraq still think that we still should have invaded. In a Newsweek poll released just before the CBS poll, a plurality still believe that attacking Iraq was the right thing to do, despite 62% disapproving of how Bush has run the war.
This clearly seems to show that there is a definitive difference in public opinion over whether the war itself is wrong and whether how the war was conducted was wrong.
The second argument is that, even if a large number are against the Iraq War, that doesn't necessarily say what we should do about it. Even polls which ask whether the number of troops should be decreased (53% said so in an ABC poll in early August) doesn't answer the questions "how many" or "how soon."
The third argument is that polls shouldn't play a part in military policy anyway. This argument states that the best course in a war should not and cannot be based on what popular opinion is because one can't believe that the public has enough strategic knowledge of a war to make an informed decision on the topic.
So what was the point of the exercise I went through? The idea is that there is no such thing as the "I'm right, everyone else is wrong" position on the war. Thus, when it comes to the Iraq war, it isn't an issue of whether you want to bring troops home, or how quickly, or how many conditions should be met before we do so, if you believe we should at all - it has to do with whether you can rationally argue your position.
The problem for politicians like George W. Bush, Joe Lieberman, and many republicans in Congress is that they invalidate any argument they make on where the course of the war should go from here by painting a picture of where Iraq is currently that is obviously false.
If a politician can't even tell him or herself what the reality in Iraq is, how can one possibly expect that their solution to the problems that they believe exist are going to have any grounds in reality? That's not to say that their positions are, in the end, wrong, but that there is no reason to pay attention to a position presented by a person who doesn't know what's going on.
This is one reason why I believe that those who are anti-war shouldn't dismiss out of hand he positions of more hawkish (or, perhaps more correctly, less-dovish) politicians like Hillary Clinton or Harold Ford, Jr. (among others) because, even if you disagree with their specific policy positions, they are willing to admit what the reality in Iraq really is, and thus are at least starting from a position based in reality.
People can and do disagree over the particulars of a plan - what will happen to Iraq if we stay? What will happen to Iraq if we leave? - but I disagree with dismissing, out of hand, a position on the war simply because you disagree with it.
Thus, there are two ways to argue against republicans in this fall's election on the war. The first is a substantive policy debate - the question of "is your plan better or is mine." This should be a spirited and rational debate in which a position isn't necessarily dismissed as "not getting it" - assuming that the republican's starting point is based in reality.
That brings us to the second way to debate republicans on the war - that their position on the war is irrelevant because they aren't even willing to admit what the situation in Iraq is really like to start with.
And this thought process doesn't even have to be restricted to Iraq, though I think that's the issue that it fits best with this election cycle. Even issues like Social Security, education, etc, can fit into this mold.