Iraq and a Hard Place

Improbably, Iraq is once again emerging as a winner issue for Republicans for the fall elections.

Despite the fact that the majority of the American public believes it was a mistake to enter Iraq and despite the bungling by the Bush administration of nearly every aspect of the war, from the prewar intelligence on WMDs to the dismissal of estimates of required troop levels much higher than those actually deployed to the inadequate equipment for our soldiers to the infamously premature “Mission Accomplished” announcement to the similarly premature declaration that the insurgency was in its “last throes” and on and on and on…. Despite all of this evidence that Republicans have failed miserably in both rushing into a war and in executing it once there, Democrats continue to flounder and flail when attempting to present an alternative course for Iraq.

Some, like Senator John Kerry, are pressing for definite timetables to bring the troops home. While the wisdom of such a policy may be debatable, it is at least a coherent plan: The war is wrong. Bring the troops home.

Others are searching for a more compromised position, one that acknowledges both the perils of setting a fixed timetable and the need to begin transitioning American soldiers out of Iraq to grant the Iraqi government greater autonomy and responsibility. This policy better reflects the difficulties on the ground, but it is logically inconsistent. It requires a kind of doublethink – the war is wrong; don’t end the war – that does not easily capture many supporters.

Ever since many Senate Democrats supported the authorization to use force in Iraq, the party has been stuck trying to criticize a war it is at least partly responsible for getting us into. The results, unsurprisingly, have been less than stellar.

Meanwhile, Republicans happily step in and fill the vacuum with denunciations of plans like Mr. Kerry’s as “defeatism,” “surrender,” or “retreat.” Senator John McCain presents the options as a simple choice: “Withdraw and fail, or commit and succeed.” Of course, this “choice” ignores that we have been committed for over three years and success remains elusive (unless of course one judges success by Republican electoral victories). No Republican policy more definite than “stay the course” has been proposed to give hope that continued commitment will ultimately bring more success than our previous commitment has.

Still, it is the Democrats who are on the defensive regarding the war, reacting to Swift Boat-ish questions of their patriotism and dismissive characterizations of their policies as “cutting and running.”

What is needed for Iraq is not partisan jockeying where “leaders” search for the policy that will get members of their party elected rather than the right policy. What is needed is a coherent, agreeable vision of what we would like to leave Iraq looking like and a realistic assessment of the national sacrifices in manpower and resources required to get there. If we are not willing to make those necessary sacrifices, the troops must be brought home quickly.

To this point, the Democrats appear to be reacting to the national mood – voting for authorization of the war in 2003, criticizing those, like Howard Dean and Russ Feingold, who called for troop withdrawals long ago, but now pushing for an end to the operation – rather than promoting an independent policy on Iraq. So long as they are reacting rather than leading, the Republicans will be able to successfully portray Democrats as wavering and without a workable plan.

The Democrats hoped to stick the Republicans with the Iraq albatross come November, but despite repeated and continued Republican failures on the war, for now at least, it is the Democrats who remain stuck.