The Defeatist Democrat Party: A Lib Reality Check

The defeatists and cut-and-runners in the Democrat Party need to own up to it and admit their true colors.  

Everyone here loves to bash the DLC, but they at least have the virtue of consistency in their fundamental commitment to "staying the course" in Iraq, even at the cost of annoying the lib base through bipartisanship and support for the president.

So I am calling on the the so-called "Democrat Wing" of the Democrat Party here: the Deans, Feingolds, Conyerses, Gores, Kerrys and Kennedys.  And all the liberal Bloggers.  For the good of the country, they need to think hard about what they are saying; support our brave men and women in uniform; stop confirming America's well-founded suspicion that they are simply America-hating cut-and-run defeatists.

Liberal Democrats are defeatists in the public mind NOT because they oppose Bush and his misadventure in Iraq, but because they keep validating the GOP's framing of the debate.  Americans' suspicions are well-founded not because they are true but because they keep hearing the same debate on the same terms.  And they don't like to lose wars.

Most of you probably don't like my use of the phrase "Democrat Party" (or "lib" for that matter), because it's a Republican manipulation of discourse.  So why are Democrats all so blithe about agreeing with the president that we must win the "war" in Iraq, or a grand "war on terror?  How can one fight an abstraction, a feeling?  What territory are we fighting to win in Iraq?  

Iraqis are fighting a civil war, but our troops won their war in 2003.  Since then, they've been an occupation army, doing police work and reconstruction work they were never trained for, without a script, led by the same bunglers who gave us the Katrina response, stuck in a worsening crossfire between faceless sectarian mobs, none of whose interests align with ours.  

This is no longer a war to be "won" or "lost".  The only question is how long we will continue to occupy Iraq, where the only clear consensus from the Prime Minister on down is that our presence is making things worse...and at what further cost over and above the billions of dollars and thousands of Iraqi and American lives.

So, yes: It's time for the true Liberals of the DemocratIC Party to stand up and reject Republican frames across the board.  Don't speak of "the war in Iraq", or of "withdrawal" from the battlefield, anymore than you would speak of the "death tax"  Instead, acknowledge the victory and service already achieved by our troops, most of whom honorably did just what their commanders asked of them, however misguided.  Then let's talk about Republican incompetence, about accountability, about civil war, about permanent bases, and about sensibly ENDING AN OCCUPATION that has become a daily bloodbath.

I've been encouraged recently by the trend toward Democratic unity, and the recent decision by CT voters to oppose rather than emulate the GOP.  Now that we're together, let's stop speaking Republicanese, and take back our damn country.