Are you tired of politicans who speak in circles and their out of touch consultants, (children of the wealthy) as a former campaign worker I know, who give them terrible advice. Why can't they speak directly on the issues? Well this is the question for the ages, I provide my contribution below.
Clearly, most rationale people ideologues excluded know Iraq isn’t going as planned. This begs the question, why cannot the politicians, sensible democrats excluding former Democrat Joe Liebermann or Zell Miller speak affirmative with respect to Iraq.
As I write this we lost 24 soldiers over the last 24 hours, the deadliest day in Iraq to date. What are the mistakes made in the messaging on Iraq? One the hand we have Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama putting forth measures to cap the number of troops in Iraq as a means to guard against the escalation of this flawed policy.
While on the one hand, it works for the policy shops in Washington that subscribe to incremental change, it misses a key point and buys into the idea that Iraq is in the US foreign policy interest
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Any candidate who wants to win in 2008 must state in clear language if he or she wishes to avoid the John Kerry trap. Iraq is no longer in the US interest/US Strategic interest and it’s time to bring our soldiers home and/or redeploy them to areas in the US interest to better wage modern warfare against terrorism.
This statement cuts to the point and removes the supports which underpin the Bush argument that an "Iraq that could sustain itself, govern itself and is not a threat to its neighbors is in the interest of America." Notice President Bush argues interest, so to undercut this argument one must destroy the support upon which his argument rest.
By repeating boldly: Iraq is no longer in the US interest/US Strategic interest, (add the additional part about terrorism and modern warfare as the situation permits) one begs the question why are we there if it’s no longer in our interest. In fact, this accelerates further question leading to the idea of rapid redeployment.
Adding the words Strategic interest illustrates that the candidate thought long and hard about this decision, making the candidate sound less knee jerk and passive.
Next, use the troops to make the argument for redeployment. In this statement we should focus on the words honor and service.
"The troops have performed above and beyond and at this point we honor their service best by bringing them home and redeploying them to meet the threats of modern warfare.
Or shorter to the point: Let’s honor there service and their accomplishments, let’s bring them home.
We need to put the other side on the defensive with the words honor and service. As the other side argues further after setting this frame they are put on the defensive as the belligerent who fails to honor the service of our troops.
We need to win the language in this debate and not allow President Bush to continue to advance the idea that Iraq is even in the US interest. We must stay on the attack with simple language that whittles away with two key points. As a Blue Dog Democrats, this is my post to my fellow KOS friends, spread it and add to the discourse. Provide suggestions I am open to chat.
[ full disclosure I am an John Edwards supporter in 2008 and I supported him in 2004. I once actively supported this war. I worked on a few Democratic campaigns so I am biased
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