If the Democrats refuse to go along with Bush's "next-last-push" and put a stop to the Iraq debacle, a new war will break out. It will be the war for American memory and it will seek to enshrine an answer to the question: who lost Iraq?
Many congressional Democrats are no doubt wondering today about the long-term impact on their careers and on the place of the party in American life should they challenge administration plans to escalate the war. We know that polls indicate that voters and citizens are against escalation by a wide margin. We know that Democrats today hold majorities in both houses of Congress in large measure due to the electorate's dissatisfaction with the war. At the same time, we know that right wing war supporters are desperate to divest themselves of responsibility for the war. We well know that should the Democrats stop the war, the right will be flogging the message that the 110th Congress "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory" replete with references to Vietnam. We know this is false and that the right will in no measure be inhibited from pushing their message by scrupples about the truth.
The right came to power based on their ability to mold perceptions with intense floods of messaging that wear smooth reality's sharp edges. This strategy has proved very powerful because their memory has proven longer than the electorate's over and over again. And their messages are always flattering; it's always somebody else's fault.
Do the means exist today for the progressive left and the Democratic Party to counter this propaganda dynamic? The stakes are high. The messaging infrastructure that is being developed on the left is not yet mature. However, maturity is achieved in just such crucibles as that we will find ourselves in as we counter the onsault of lies and propaganda from the right about what went wrong in Iraq. What we can forge in that crucible is a newly mature and rebuilt confidence in the Democratic Party and the goals of the progressive left on the part of the American electorate. The stakes are high, but opportunities like this do not often come along.
The battle for the electorate's perception of what went wrong in Iraq will be intense. We are way ahead right now but once the war is over some advantages swing quickly to the other side: hard choices made by Democrats versus "we-were-this-close-to-victory" pie in the sky from the GOP. And yes, Iraq will still be there and it will be a mess. The ramifications of the failure of the GOP's war will continue to dominate our foreign policy for a long time. At the same time, many American lives have been profoundly changed and damaged by death and injury in the war zone. Working to improve the lives of all the survivors will remain an important task on the domestic front. The right will call it a GOP war, the GOP will call it Bush's war and all of them will claim we were on track for "victory" but the Democrats and progressives failed us.
What would this mean for the Democratic Party in the long-term? Will we be able to stem the tide of the right wing message machine so that the American people remember that the Democratic congress put an end to the folly? Will people remember that the Democratic 110th Congress responded to the electorate's wishes and took the difficult decision to end the war? Will we remember that no victory was possible and that ending the war, though a choice with limited benefits compared to the fever dream of the march of freedom, was the mature, responsible and correct choice?
Should Democrats stop the war, the battle for memories will begin.