The Democratic leadership really needs to shut up already about "Iraq plans" sayeth
Eric Martin:
If I was supreme emperor of the Democratic Party, this is what I would do: I would gather every Democratic politician, pundit and public figure and usher them into one enormous conference room. . . I would cast a piercing gaze across the room, making eye contact with as many faces as I could manage. Lieberman, Pelosi, Dean, Murtha, Hillary, etc. Then, with the tension properly built, I would place my forefinger over my lips and say, "SHHHH!!" After that, I would walk off stage, my mission accomplished.
And he is exactly right about this. You'd think that the Dems would learn at least a few things about being a minority party after five years. Here's how it is supposed to work . . .[more]
Eric goes on:
Instead of letting Bush dangle in the wind, with his own policies around his neck like an albatross, the Democrats have, amazingly, shifted the focus back on themselves. And to what end. Instead of talking about Bush and Iraq (in a favorable light: intelligence manipulation, poor planning, etc.) and the many other scandals and failures surrounding the President, the press is talking about the Democrats.
And that is really the point. So many things have gone wrong in Iraq it's hard to know even where to begin. But for some reason the press is determined to hound Democrats about a plan in a way that they never even bothered to with Bush three years ago - you know that guy who is always running around in those stupid Commander-in-Chief jackets. Eric goes on to convince me that Hillary, not Pelosi or Murtha or Kerry, has the right idea on how to approach this:
You know who has a better plan? Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton (this should come as no surprise because, um, she's getting advice from the only strategic thinker left in the Democratic Party - her husband). Neither of them are offering anything radically different than Bush, and neither of them are big on the specifics, but why should they be? Bush isn't. Nobody is.
As counter-intuitive as it might seem, there is no need for the Dems to have a plan for Iraq, not now - perhaps not even in 2006. Its not our job, we're the minority party. And as those memos penned all those years ago, war is a core function of the presidency. This is especially true since BushCo wasn't all that interested in hearing Democratic ideas when things were all rose petals and candy plans. But now that they have screwed the pooch they're demanding that the minority party fix their mess.
Fuck that, this is social security reform all over again. Bush talks about some vague idea and demands that the Dems put forth a specific plan that the VRWC can tear to shreds. If Bush wants Iraq fixed he should do it himself and the Democrats should be sitting back and ask "Why isn't Bush succeeding in Iraq?"
Let me put it this way, if you were Rove and Bush, and you knew that you had to begin pulling out troops in 2006, and you knew that with the current troop levels we can't defeat the insurgency so with fewer troops we will be even less successful, would you be upset or relieved to hear that at least some Democrats were leading the charge on withdrawal? If I were Rove or Bush I would let out an enormous sigh of relief. Say thank you. There's the exit strategy: The Democrats made us do it! Just like Vietnam
I'll be the first to admit that at first glance this seems harsh and against all of our instincts, all of us know that when you find yourself in a hole the first thing should be to stop digging. Everyday there are people here calling for withdrawal, and that is a good thing. There is a big difference in citizens speaking out and the leadership doing it. In a sense all of us are between a rock and a hard place with the war in a way that has never occurred in history. Publius calls it the "post post-9/11" world.
But Karl Rove destroyed that world by exploiting the post-9/11 bond for political ends. Essentially, in a time of war, he put Democrats in a catch-22 on Iraq. Democrats could either support the war or oppose it (or, I suppose, do whatever it was that Kerry did). If they opposed it, they would be accused of betraying the post-9/11 bond. If they supported it, however, the success of the war would be used to punish them politically - just as the successful removal of the Taliban was used as a political weapon in 2002. It was damned if you do, damned if you don't. It was like someone saying, "That man is a traitor if he doesn't give me the sword I need to kill him."
Withdrawl is the right and necessary policy for Iraq right now, but Bush isn't going to listen to those calls no matter what and the leadership is not going to convince enough GOPers to join them in Congress to get the troops out. For better or for worse the troops are in Iraq until the 'Commander in Chief' decides otherwise.
So what should the Dem leadership say when asked "What is the Democratic plan for Iraq?" For example when a reporter asks "well what is your plan?" What should follow next is a litany of all the mistakes made by BushCo followed by a "I wouldn't do any of that"
They should be talking about the costs so far. If this article is correct we've out stripped the total costs of Vietnam '64-72 in three short years. I would be asking, what do we have to show for that money? How about demanding an audit, perhaps that missing $8 billion marked for the reconstruction will turn up.
Do you know how hard it is to lose $8 bln. - if it was a stack of $100 bills it would be nearly 5 miles high. And that's just the money problems. I haven't even gotten into the torture, the Chalibi mess, the no plan for the aftermath, and the private mercenaries' trophy killings
OK, deep breath, it just that all this 'plan' nonsense really gets my hackles up. The Dem leadership really needs to learn how to act as a minority/opposition party - and the biggest lesson is 90% of your time should be spent talking about how the governing party is screwing everything up. Not offering up 'plans' that have no hope of being implemented in the immediate future and which allow Bush to use the plan as a boogieman about how the Dems surrendered to the terrorists, and gosh darn it, just when we were about to win it all.