Will Pols Be Punished For Not Ending The Iraq Debacle?
Posted on Mon May 28, 2007 at 07:27:41 AM EST
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Paul Krugman makes an interesting point, while missing a main one:
Democrats, still fearing that they will end up accused of being weak on terror and not supporting the troops, gave Mr. Bush another year’s war funding. Democratic Party activists were furious, because polls show a public utterly disillusioned with Mr. Bush and anxious to see the war ended. But it’s not clear that the leadership was wrong to be cautious. The truth is that the nightmare of the Bush years won’t really be over until politicians are convinced that voters will punish, not reward, Bush-style fear-mongering. And that hasn’t happened yet.
It seems true that politicians are not convinced that voters will punish Bush-style fearmongering. But that is not the Democrats' problem. The Dems' problems is precisely that they need to be convinced of that before they will act with political courage. And everyone knows this. The last few days I have been harping on the Democrats' central political weakness - that are believed to have no convictions they will fight for.
Krugman, perhaps slyly, perhaps inadvertently, provides the same indictment - in deciding how to act on the Iraq Debacle, Democrats have their finger to the wind - they are for it before they are against it. Whatever "it" is.
The fundamental misconception one sees in almost all the analysis of the Politics of Iraq and comparing 2006 and 2008 is that in 2006 the Throw The Bums Out dynamic worked, for the Dems were out of power. It is now a Democratic Congress and voters who expected some action from the Congress on Iraq will not be blaming Bush-style fearmongering, they will be blaming Dem craveness. Instead of seizing a political opportunity and a chance to do the right thing, the Democrats in Congress have not acted in shrewd or courageous ways.
But what can they do some will ask? First, do no harm. The Iraq Supplemental saga was a fiasco and did great harm imo. No more of that please.
Second, propose a strategy that might work, the Reid/Feingold/ McGovern framework I have discussed many times here.
Third, seize the initiative in the political debate. Today the NYTimes provides a story that tells you everything that is wrong about the continued US presence in Iraq:
Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents.. . . But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.
“I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
And do not cower at every single insult that the GOP might hurl. It really is embarrassing.
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