Check out this article by
Fareed Zakaria --. It criticizes Howard Dean & other Democrats who think somehow that 'we broke it, so we must fix it' with fixing it meaning staying years in Iraq. Why can't 'fixing it' mean pulling the troops out immediately.
Being against the Iraq war doesn't make you a pacifist. During Vietnam, opposition to the war signaled a broader opposition to American involvement in the world. Many of those against that war were against all war. In the case of Iraq, while pacifists demonstrated in the streets, the mainstream opposition had a disagreement on strategy. Iraq, they argued, was a distraction from the war on terror; in fact it hurt the main struggle. I disagree--for one example, look at the effect of the Iraq war on Libya's decision to disarm--but it's a plausible thesis and not one indicating isolationism.
The broader problem, however, is that the Iraq war has happened. Arguing against it now is refighting history rather than presenting a vision for the future. More important, today the reconstruction of Iraq is at the center of American foreign policy. In dollars, public attention and potential consequences, it is the largest single project that the United States has undertaken in a generation. President George W. Bush has placed it at the heart of his world view, making an eloquent case that helping to turn Iraq into a stable, modern and democratic state will send a signal across the Middle East, encourage economic and political reform and stem the forces that fuel terrorism. The Democrats have to decide where they stand on this basic, big issue.
Dean says he thought the war was a terrible blunder--a "catastrophic mistake," said Al Gore when endorsing him--but now that we're there, we should stay and see it through. This makes no sense. If the war was a blunder--draining resources and distracting Washington--the smartest thing to do is get out fast. Dean has argued that America must stay in Iraq because it cannot allow the country to become a base for Al Qaeda. But that outcome could easily be avoided by our pulling out and turning the place over to a general or Shiite leader who will also have no interest in having his country become a Qaeda base. Why bother helping in a massive transformation of politics, economics and society in Iraq? In a sense, the most consistent Democrat in the race is not Dean, but Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who says the war was a mistake, so let's leave now.
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As a political strategy, the antiwar position is based on a bet that in six months Iraq will be at least as unstable and unsettled as it is now, and probably spiraling downward. If that is the case, the argument goes, President Bush's approval rating will keep dropping.
Perhaps. But if the situation in Iraq is scary, if instability is spreading across the country, America will be more fully and deeply engaged in a war with some very nasty enemies. In such a situation, will the average American--in, say, Pennsylvania or Michigan, states Democrats must win--look to Howard Dean to get them through the dangerous times, or to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell?