Time for Democrats to stand up for standing down
Saul Landau
Progreso Weekly, 14 July 2005
As an Al Qaeda group claimed credit for hideous carnage in London on July 7 and official U.S. casualties in Iraq neared 1,800 dead and 13,000 wounded, high profile Democrats like Senators Hillary Clinton (NY), Joseph Biden (DE) and John Kerry (MA) continue to miss opportunities to lead their party into real opposition. By refusing to confront Bush for evading the terrorism issue and instead invading and occupying Iraq, they allow him to dictate the context of debate. After the President delivered a particularly vacuous sermon on the subject (Ft. Bragg, June 28, 2005), they criticized his "handling" of the war, but didn’t demand the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
While the courageous John Conyers (D-MI) forced Republican House leaders to permit his June hearings on the Downing Street Memos (reports of Bush-Blair agreements to invade Iraq long before Bush announced the fact) and Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and others in both Houses have demanded timetables for prompt withdrawal from Iraq, the mainstream presidential contenders for 2008 have permitted Bush to continue covering up his lies for the war, Iraq’s WMD and ties to Al-Qaeda.
These mainstream Democrats play by a rulebook that the Republican heavies have long discarded. Don’t they recall how Bill Clinton’s sexual peccadillo – a really important national security issue – became cause for impeachment? But Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld dissembling to get the country into war doesn’t even merit a hearing, much less national town hall meetings?
Do they lack will or suffer from fear? Bush’s June 28 remarks at Ft. Bragg deserved a harsh response. The role of U.S. troops, Bush said, was "vital" because they "contributed mightily to our efforts to secure our country." He didn’t offer connections between U.S. soldiers serving, dying, getting wounded and traumatized in Iraq and U.S. security. He just reiterated terrorism and the 9/11 events as if everyone knew the connection even though there wasn’t any. He then added: "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."
Democrats didn’t see what Pat Buchanan did: "If victory is vital to this country, how can President Bush ever entrust the outcome of this war to Iraqis?" asked Nixon’s former speech writer and Reform Party Candidate for President in 2000. (Miami Herald July 4)
Presidential hopefuls Biden, Clinton and Kerry continue to fudge, accusing Bush of mismanaging the war, while implying that the number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is insufficient. Kerry actually said during the campaign that Bush should send more troops to Iraq. (USA Today April 18, 2004)
If they call for immediate withdrawal, do they fear that the White House and its rightist shock troops will accuse them of the twin crimes of not supporting our troops and encouraging gay marriage? Has such apprehension stripped elementary logic and powers of analysis form the Party leaders? Polls showed that the nation has become downright edgy about the U.S. presence in Iraq. An early July Gallop poll has 57 percent of Americans deeming the war "not worth it."
Yet, at Ft. Bragg, Bush urged "perseverance," by which he presumably meant that he had no idea about what to do in Iraq. He told Americans to fly flags on July 4 and write letters to troops. Is this making sacrifices on the home front?
It took Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a presidential hopeful in 2008, to repeat for the second time in two weeks what no potential Democratic candidate has had the guts to say. "The White House is completely disconnected from reality. The reality is we're losing in Iraq." (US News and World Report Jun 19 and NBC Meet the Press July 3)
Democratic leaders refuse to face the obvious. Iraqis attack and kill American troops and members of the U.S.-recruited Iraqi police and military because as Buchanan said "...for many Iraqis, the cause of this war – why they fight – is that we are there." (Miami Herald July 4)
Democrats in both Houses could get a few Republicans and constitute a majority demanding that Bush bring the troops home before greater catastrophe befalls us. Generals and reporters alike have assured the public that the U.S. troops have not dented the power of the insurgency.
Vice President Cheney – a notorious liar – had the audacity to claim that the insurgency is in its "last throes" as U.S. troops fell dead and wounded alongside five times as many Iraqis, most of them linked to the occupation. But Biden, Clinton or Kerry didn’t contradict Cheney. It was Chuck Hagel (R-NE) who demanded "some kind of measurement standard in Iraq." He admonished the Administration: "So that we don't drift and just every now and then get a new speech saying, `Well, we're doing fine and just stay the course.’ Stay the course is not a policy.'' Hagel added: "We’re losing in Iraq."
Stay the course means the continuing stream of body bags and limbless youngsters, the ongoing suicide bombings and daily, bloody chaos. The young and middle aged men and women serving in Iraq understand the lethality of the resistance and the futility of empty slogans like "stay the course."
Bush’s answer lies in training Iraqi soldiers and police. But Iraqi troops cannot replace the U.S. forces, and not just because they lack training. They also lack legitimacy. But since Bush is willing to grant them such credentials, two Democratic McGoverns, George, former South Dakota Senator and presidential candidate, and Jim, congressman from Massachusetts, used the President’s logic to advance a modest proposal: a one to one formula. "The United States should accelerate and pay for the training of Iraqi security forces with the help of Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab allies. We can begin drawing down American forces to coincide with the number of trained Iraqi forces. By that measure, we should bring 30,000 of our troops home now." (Boston Globe June 6, 2005)
This proposal actually would put more Iraqis at risk since the resistance fighters target them and those about to join those forces. It will also not postpone the inevitable. The U.S. will leave and in the ensuing battles – may they be peaceful! Whoever wins will rule Iraq.
Leaving next week would certainly save more U.S. lives and might even lead to less chaos than any other strategy. If accompanied by an acknowledgement of error, it might work to slow the rate of conversion to (for?) young suicide-bound Islamists. The McGovern proposal implicitly acknowledges that the more cautious side of the Party needs some space. But they also make clear that U.S. presence policies bear responsibility for the sectarian carnage in Iraq.
Civil war exists. We read about it in the daily Iraq bomb stories. Thanks to Bush, Iraqis lack all security. Violence pervades their life. U.S. presence had moved Iraq from brutal dictatorship to what Patrick Seale called "uncontrollable chaos." (The Daily Star June 28, 2005)
What criminals did this? Offering false justifications for war and optimistic predictions for its rapid and harmonious outcome, Bush officials now try to avoid the word "quagmire" to describe the U.S. position in Iraq. The Bushies didn’t count on organized resistance, and glossed over what emerged as ethnic divisions once the U.S. had broken Iraq’s structural integrity.
The administration doesn’t give a timetable and Congress doesn’t ask. What would "victory" look like two-plus years after Bush declared "Mission Accomplished?" Bush has destroyed Iraq, but what other mission has he accomplished? Why should Democrats save him by saying: "Invading Iraq might have been a mistake, but now that we’re over there we have a responsibility."
Such "reasoning" gives reason a bad name. I hear echoes of Vietnam. Withdrawing would not weaken U.S. credibility. The world would breathe a sigh of relief if the United States immediately pulled out its troops. Bush would be praised for maturity and get credit for recognizing a mistake and correcting it. Don’t the Democrats see this?
Dozens of Iraqi and other witnesses testified in the June World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul that U.S. troops in Iraq make the Iraqi insurgency grow. It legitimizes them for much of the world.
Yet, in the Congressional Record and in op eds, arguments abound about how not persevering in Iraq gives victory to the terrorists, that somehow U.S. withdrawal would fortify fanatics in their wars against our civilization – here and in the parts of the region where we have made headway in exporting democracy. Quite the reverse is true. By staying in Iraq, the United States accomplishes all of these negative projections and reproduces resistance fighters.
Since the WMD and ties to Al Qaeda reasons for going to war have been discredited, leading Democrats need to demand daily from Bush the answers of why he really went to war with Iraq and not against the real terrorists. Perhaps, following Rep. Conyers’ lead, Democrats could pose that question and, in so doing, begin to regain the moral and political high ground as well.
Copyright 2005 Progreso Weekly
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