I found myself a little perturbed by the Daily Kos commentary this morning about how the Iraqi government was going to make monkeys out of the Bush Regime by taking all the Republicans' "cut and run" trash talk about the Democrats and shoving it down their throats with a 24-point reconciliation plan (originally 28 points).
According to numerous people, the plan, put forth by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki, was a vindication of the Democrats, at least the 13 who backed the Kerry-Feingold-Boxer-Leahy Amendment that called for redeployment of U.S. troops by July 7, 2007.
Perturbed in part because we hadn't yet seen the Maliki plan. We'd only been juiced up by the reports that the Times (of London) started making on Thursday. Those who have now seen the final version approved Sunday don't think much of it.
Here's what the Times itself says:
The text was, however, a watered down version of the document shown to The Times on Thursday. Iraq's presidency council and representatives from the Shia ruling coalition cut the document from 28 to 24 articles on Saturday night, said Faisal Abdullah, a spokesman for Khalid al-Attiyah, the Shia deputy speaker.
Noticeably missing from the final draft was a call for the Government to recognise the difference between resistance and terrorist groups and a written invitation for resistance groups to join a national dialogue.
The new wording reads only: "To adopt a credible national dialogue in dealing with all the different views and political positions that are opposing the views and positions of the Government and the political powers ..."
The published plan also removed a demand for the Government to agree upon a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign forces based on the readiness of Iraqi troops.
It dropped a pledge to revisit the constitution and cut a clause on reinstating employees who had jobs in ministries that had been dissolved under the US-occupation.
The last minute revisions reflected the tensions surrounding the document and the severe mistrust among Iraq's communities. Some Shia politicians denounced the campaign to reach out to Sunni rebels.
Hmmmm. Without a timetable, the reconciliation plan's resemblance to the Kerry-Feingold-Boxer-Leahy Amendment is a bit off-kilter. And exactly what is a reconciliation plan
without reconciliation?
I'm an Out Now man myself, although I'm happy to go along with the Redeploy Now approach that strategists wiser than I in electoral strategy think is appropriate. I'm even willing to give kudos to the 38 Democrats who voted last week for the far mushier, no specific timetable Levin Amendment. Anything to move the debate forward to bring about an end to the disastrous occupation that the yellowbelly liars of the Bush Regime have ensnared us in.
But why-o-why did the Dems have to wait so long to make a move?
Although I know many Kossacks disagree - Armando for one - I think they waited too long. Not Feingold, or Kerry or Murtha. These guys all made redeployment proposals before Christmas. But most of the rest of the Dems - Wes Clark, for instance - just kept dilly-dallying, so fearful of GOP "cut and run" spin that they stuck to the true-but-incomplete "incompetence" theme while hundreds more American soldiers and marines came home so their families could bury them or help them learn how to walk on a prosthesis.
Now, in June, 37 months after the occupation began, just days after Senate Democrats finally got around to suggesting withdrawal, General Casey offers a conceptual plan - no timetable, of course - that would bring some troops home by September, just in time for ... November. Democrats like Kerry can argue, quite rightly, that withdrawal of this nature was exactly what he and a handful of others have been seeking for a long time, most recently last week. And how dare Republicans smear them as cowards for doing so.
Unfortunately, despite some good oratory and gotchas in the Iraq debate, most of those Dems climbed aboard too late. Now, I fear, the momentum may well be with the Administration.
I warned about this last December 3 in Will Bush Pull a Nixon on Iraq?. Excerpts:
For six months I've been getting derisive hoots for saying that Democratic hesitance over being considered "weak on defense" is stoking my personal fear that it will be Bush and the GOP who benefit in the 2006 election cycle because of a withdrawal from Iraq.
{snip}
Let me add that the distance a certain mixed coterie of elected Democrats have put between themselves and John Murtha over the past week - which some of them and some folks in www.Land seem to see as wisely pragmatic - makes them, in my humble opinion, pukes who may actually cost the party dearly 11 months from now. Weaseliness on matters of grave import does not make for stunning talking points on the campaign trail.
I'm not trying to reprise the hoary matter of who voted how back in October 2002. I've made enough serious mistakes in my life to unhesitatingly give those who said "aye" to the war resolution the benefit of the doubt even though they angered me then. What I'm talking about is how they're behaving right. this. minute.
I'm also not referring to those elected Democrats - yes, I think there are some - who truly deeply passionately believe that staying in Iraq for the long haul (although with a different approach) is the honorable thing to do, and would stick with that stance even if they knew it would cost them votes. I disagree wholeheartedly, but I understand and can respect their point of view.
What I'm talking about are those who figure that their best move for getting re-elected, the best move to keep anybody from calling them national defense "weaklings," the best way for Democrats not to be called the "cut and run" party in the next election cycle is to avoid expressing anything close to Murtha's position, much less Russ Feingold's. To, instead, weave and dodge, while Iraqis and American Marines get blown up every day and hatred for the occupation worsens our long-term security and strengthens both the propaganda and battlefield experience of extremist thugs with a global agenda.
{snip}
On the other hand, these Dems whose cagey calculations on Iraq to save their own skins make me wish that asbestos were available in stationery form so I could relate to them just how much I despise their conscienceless machinations without setting my printer alight. And to let them know that, come next November, if their hemming and hawing proves to have the opposite effect among independent voters as they now imagine it will, I'll have less than zero sympathy for them even as I bemoan what could have been.
I desperately hope my concerns that the Dems have moved too late are wrong. I hope that even if the troops are coming home in droves by September that Americans who have become sick of the murderous lies, incompetence and corruption of the Bush Regime will not be taken in by these last-minute maneuvers and will put Ned Lamont and Jon Tester and a multitude of other Democrats into the Senate and House. But our chances would be so much better now, slightly more than four months from election day, if more Democrats had listened to Feingold, Kerry and Murtha half a year ago instead of worrying about so much about what Republicans spinmeisters and the rightwing pundithuggery would say.