The Washington Post reminds us today that the Democrats are splintering over Iraq. Refusal to coalesce around a single position, and to hammer it home, given the massive unpopularity of the President and his war now, is political idiocy. Here's the message, guys:
1. Bush misled this country into war.
a. Whether or not he believed Iraq had WMD, that was never his real goal. This lie must be exposed and punished. Bush and his administration must apologize for not being honest that the real goal was to experiment with creating a democracy in Iraq, and there was nothing urgent about war in March 2003.
b. The Iraq war has nothing to do with 9/11. It was the wrong war at the wrong time. We have spent $200 billion to capture Saddam Hussein when we should have been trying to seize Bin Laden.
c. Bush started this war with no plan except to be greeted by flowers as a liberator.
2. So long as he refuses to admit these lies and errors, we have to conclude that Bush lacks the judgment and character to lead. Democrats, the Congress, and the People have to step up and do what is right. This is not just "dwelling in the past." It is crucial to our security in the future to acknowledge and learn from our mistakes.
3. The war (as many on this blog say) is really over - this is an occupation. We are the trigger to violence, and our presence generates terrorists and terrorist sympathizers THAT WOULD NOT EXIST OTHERWISE. We are endangering our country and aiding the terrorists by continuing this occupation in Iraq.
4. The insurgency is not in its "last throes." Cheney has to admit he was wrong to say this. He has to admit that he was mistaken or, worse, trying to mislead the public. Until he admits this, it is clear that he lacks the good judgment and moral authority to lead. Again, punishing mistakes is crucial if we are to learn from them and prevent making the same foreign policy blunders again.
5. We need a firm timetable to withdraw.
a. This will remove forcible resistance to occupation and lessen casualties (why bother if we are leaving anyway?) .
b. Only a firm timetable for withdrawal will force the Iraqi Shi'ites and Kurds to make the serious political deal with the Sunnis that will make a stable government. The current Iraqi government would prefer to have the US commit to stay indefinitely and fight its war against Sunnis, than to have to make a deal to bring them into the government. They have no incentive to "stand up" as long as we have an open-ended commitment to stay if they don't.
c. We can't wait for "goals" to be "achieved" before we withdraw. Loosey-goosey language like that just means the Iraqi government will delay and play for time. We have to force the issue by making the Shi'ites and Kurds realize they have to run the show themselves.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Squandering an Opportunity
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 10:14 AM
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7 comments:
It's like Dave Barry says: if your car was stranded on the side of the road, the Democrats would come over to try to help you fix it, but somehow end up setting fire to your car.
Right now they're too involved pimping themselves individually for 2008. Sid is right -- the Republicans are amazingly on message all the time (as this ridiculous War On Xmas (TM) shows) and the Dems just can't compete with that. Sigh.
// posted by Bell Curve
I think it the problem of being "on message" is tied to how much of a centralized, hierarchical leadership you want. The difference in strategies is in part a result of the two parties' coalitions. The Republican voters have strong preferences for what I would regard as tyrranical rule - a single "strong" leader, discipline, emphasis on nationalism over liberty etc. The Democrats' voters have strong preferences for individualism, liberty, pluralism etc.
The Republicans stay "on message" through a process of top heavy organization and often savage discipline. Remember what happened to Voinavich R-OH when he just suggested that Bush's UN Ammabassador should get another week of diliberation before being reported to the floor. Within 36 hours the theocrats had web ads followed up by ads on TV in Ohio attacking Voinavich for being disloyal, a "liberal" and worse. Remember that Tom DeLay got his nickname "the Hammer" mostly for imposing discipline on other Republicans not for "hammering" Democrats.
// posted by Raised By Republicans
Oh, I meant to conclude my comment with a question: Given all that do we really want the Democratic party to be more the Republicans in this regard?
// posted by Raised By Republicans
RBR you make me laugh. There is a book out now by George Lakoff called "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think" in which he applies cognative sciences to understanding how we obtain and frame our value systems. In the book, he basically says that Republican values are based on the patresfamilias approach with a patriarchal system while Democratic values are based on the "nurturing home". Where you fall on the political spectrum depends in large part, the type of home you were raised in. This then is transferred to your view of the role of government as you get older. It seems a bit too pop psychology for some. But when you read it, it makes perfectly good sense.
If you go to Amazon the very first customer review, from "Jim political man" actually summarizes the book very well.
// posted by USWest
That's funny. Back in the 50's political scientists wrote books with the goal of determinig the particular psychological defect that lead to being a Communist. Gabrial Almond of all people wrote one. The premise was that no sane person could be a Communist and if we could isolate the source of this particular form of mental illness the world would be safer from the Red Mennace.
I would love it if someone figured out exactly what mental dissorder leads to being a Bush style Republican.
// posted by Raised By Republicans
I am somewhat familiar with Lakoff's argument, and it's all a bit much. What I find useful is the description of how conservatives and liberals communicate, which helps explain why US politics is so often a dialog of the deaf. In other words, I find the childhood determinism overreaching, but not the statement that conservative and liberal ideologies differ in metaphors and total worldview, not just in policy preferences.
// posted by LTG
Quick hello from Australia. Do all of The Citizens support a firm timetable or fixed deadline for withdrawal? From comments I've seen, RxR and I support a firm deadline for rapid phased withdrawal, and LTG and USWest support a more nuanced fixed timetable for phased withdrawal. Bell Curve? How about you? And are we all thinking that this starts sometime in the next 3-6 months?
If so, I would say this suggests Democrats are finally coalescing around a clear alternative. But it is vital that the Democrats propose a specific plan in Congress (both houses) in the next couple of months. If not, Bush will then announce that his commanders (i.e., his subordinates) have told him he can reduce troop levels... and in so doing he will neutralize the issue.
// posted by Dr. Strangelove
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