Sorry, folks. Read it and weep.
Read the title again slowly. It DOES NOT say that Democrats are afraid to end the war. They're afraid the war will end. They could end it beginning tomorrow with a resolution against continued funding. Bush agrees. Even Cheney agrees.
They won't. Collectively, the Democrats won't. It's not that they don't have the will to do it, oh no, not at all. It's because they have a major conflict of interest. Stand with me here and look at the landscape.
Being Anti-Iraq War is a Rallying Point. Sure, there are some Dems who are sincere about ending it, Feingold, Kerry and others, especially in the House. But as it has been written at this site a thousand times over, if Roe v Wade was overturned tomorrow, the extreme right would lose its main motivator and fund-raising cause with nothing nearly so important to do next. Babies trump Dinosaurs. Moderates hate what's happening. Independents hate what's happening. Lots of Republicans hate what's happening. Combine this with how badly Bush shot himself in the foot with Hurricane Katrina especially among African-Americans, and the body-blow the GOP dealt itself among Hispanics with its immigration "hate-based initiative" and the only constituency left for the GOP in two years will be the super-rich and the Apocalyptics who are Ready To Walk With The Lord In His Second Coming. Hell, even the corporations are hiring Dem-leaning lobbyists. By 2008, the cake is well and truly baked.
Ending the War Makes the Dems "Own" the Loss. Hunteris right. The best anyone can hope for is a non-catastrophic semi-retreat but it's still a devastating loss, leaving us less influential, more vulnerable and with none of the President's objectives accomplished save the high hangin' of Saddam. I saw another diary title today, that the Dems now own the war, or something like that. I didn't read it. I'm sure it was about how failing to end the war gave Dems a moral blah blah blah, and I'm sure it was brilliantly written. There is nothing, repeat, nothing that Democrats could do at this point that would make anyone other than George W. Bush the Grand Historical Father of this disaster. It was midwifed by Cheney, wetnursed by Rumsfeld (sorry for that image, folks) but as much as John F. Kennedy is forever linked with the Bay of Pigs, the 43rd President of the United States George W. Bush owns this debacle. And he's no Jack Kennedy, to quote a TANG alum of Mr. Bush. And our President is the one human in the world who could end the American bloodletting with a single word: WITHDRAW. Why would his political enemies, the Democrats, take him off the hook?
There is Great Political Advantage to be Gained by the Democrats through Continuing the War. My cynicism is showing, but I think the writing on the wall is clear: How many casualties are acceptable to the Democrats? Just enough to get us well into the 2008 campaign, no more, no less. I had a friend who, soon after Bush started to unglue the Constitution post-9/11, said that Bush was going to destroy the country. Wrong. But he WILL destroy the Republican Party. If troops are still there in 2008, the GOP will lose so many seats in both chambers that the Democrats will have a Congress that is proof against both veto and filibuster. By sheer dint of numbers, it could take decades for the GOP to climb back to parity--in fact, they'll probably split first, into moderate Republicans and leaping screaming drooling moron Republicans.
We are in the Midst of a Counter Revolution. Face it folks, we had a coup in 2000. The GOP pulled it off but just barely and with the complicity of the media and all other traditional watchdogs who were having more fun reporting the twists and turns than what was really at stake. At the cost of American lives, the Democrats are extracting their revenge over the long term in the most bass-ackwards counter-revolution imaginable, to wit: George the Usurper is sending Americans to be killed to preserve the Presidency that was stolen for him and thus destroying the movement that brought him the Crown. Think about it: A movement's self-destruction is taking place 7,000 miles away from the movement itself.
There are Serious Military Questions Around a Congressional Withdrawal. We're not leaving Iraq. We have to have a military presence in the Middle East generally and Iraq specifically. No Democrat in his or her right mind is calling for immediate and complete abandonment. They wouldn't do that to their next Presidential candidate, who might just get elected and decide "Damn, it would be great to have some artillery outside of Anbar Province." I also had serious trouble with what the GOP tried to do with Clinton by attempting to force defunding while troops were in the air, even though I thought NATO had no business in Bosnia. Vietnam, you say? That was different. At its most active, it went through 50,000 American dead, four Presidents and two parties. In Iraq, all we need to do to save American lives is hunker down and go deep into force protection mode. How ironic that Gitmo, so associated with our Middle East disaster, will be the model for the American presence in a hostile land.
Note that I have a strong opposition to calling this a "war" when legally and politically, it is not. We are trying to help a fragile government quash an overwhelmingly domestic insurgency that's probably getting some help from outside as well, if not by nations then by wealthy individuals--Sunni individuals most likely (the Jewish diaspora supports Israel; why wouldn't the Sunni support their own?). "War" is just convenient shorthand. I used to be rabidly opposed to using this term in connection with what was happening in Iraq but that was back when maybe half the people in the country took Bush seriously. That number is plunging irrevocably to the 25th percentile. So terminology doesn't matter much anymore.
What does matter is, American men and women are dying in combat, and so are innocent Iraqis (I believe the reports that say our presence fuels further violence). And they will die for two more years, until (i) impeaching Bush becomes not just viable but necessary in the minds of both parties, (ii) a Democrat is elected President, or (iii) such an overwhelming Democratic majority is elected to Congress in 2008 that the Republican President will be a political eunuch. THEN we'll see the repeal of all military authority previously granted to Bush the Idiot King.
And it's all because the Democrats in Congress have a conflict of interest they are not capable of rising above.