And Now, The Real Battle Begins

Here is the no-shit headline of the week: "Elections may shift U.S. Iraq war policy".

Money quote: "More than half of voters said they disapproved of the war in Iraq, wanted troops to start coming home and didn't think the war has improved security in the United States, according to exit polls conducted Tuesday for The Associated Press and the television networks. Those most unhappy with the war helped put Democrats in control of Congress."

The new Congress doesn't convene until January, but the war debate has already begun.

First the Republicans... Since we all know that the White House doesn't have an Iraq plan/policy (still waiting for James Baker and his crew to think one up for them), I'll use Sen. McCain, the presumptive nominee for the elections in 2008 (a year in which in which we'll still be deeply mired in the Iraq mess if he has his way) to illustrate the GOP position. Sen. McCain was on 'Meet The Press' yesterday morning reiterating his support for sending in more troops. Maybe two years ago that would've made a difference, but now that option should be off the table and in the trash. At this point, the only way anyone should be definining "victory" is us getting out with the least amount of collateral damage possible. Tim Russert, to his credit, did point out to McCain that there is very little support for sending in more troops and the vast majority of Americans want to start getting out. Much like in his recent interview on 'Hardball', McCain seemed uninterested in addressing that pesky fact. In that interview, Chris Matthews had confronted McCain on the issue of where the tens of thousands of extra troops he wants to send to Iraq are going to come from, doing an audience experiment to point out that once asked to actually, you know, volunteer to go fight this war, the amount of support for the war decreases to about nothing.

McCain also said that this is a "critical time" in Iraq and that "we’re either going to lose this thing or win this thing within the next several months." This is, of course, the exact same thing these people have been saying since 2004. These people are delusional. This attitude isn't much better than that of the President, who is on the record as just hoping for the best and buying time until his term expires and then leaving the mess for the next President to clean up.

Bottom line-- the Republican position here was rejected by voters. Time to move on.

And so we come to the Democrats... Based on everything I have read, here is the Democrats' proposal: Establish a timetable for withdrawals to put pressure on the Iraqi government to take more responsibility, make 2007 a "year of transition" based on said timetable with remaining troops training Iraqi forces and/or moving to the periphery, consider the splitting of Iraq into three autonomous governments (Shia, Sunni, Kurd), and finishing withdrawls once this process is complete. Says Sen. Levin (D-Michigan), "We need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months... The point of this is to signal to the Iraqis that the open-ended commitment is over and that they are going to have to solve their own problems."

I have seen a lot of talk in the media that timetables are bad because it might 'embolden' the terrorists. Newsflash-- us invading Iraq emboldened them a hell of alot, so that argument is moot. The fact of the matter is that a stern timetable (with withdrawals beginning as soon as possible) is the only way we can get the Iraqis to truly 'stand up'. If we wait for them to stand up first, we'll still be in Iraq by the time the 2012 election rolls around. If this war is still an issue (and not something that is winding-down, as we focus our energies elsewhere) by the 2008 election, it will only be because the Republicans were too stubborn to realize withdrawal doesn't have to be synonymous with surrender.

We stayed in Vietnam for over a decade because we kept waiting for that miracle to come and make everything right. It never came (and it won't come now either), and ultimately President Nixon was forced to accept reality after a year or two of his own misguided escalation and end LBJ's mistake.

As for the assertion that us leaving would ensure that the Iraqis will be massacred, I would add that they're being plenty massacred now. If we remove the walking targets known as U.S. troops from the country and leave a political solution on the way out (ie. the three autonomous governments plan), I have to hope that the Iraqis can begin to undo the mess our misguided invasion created. I would also be fine with financial support to the country after we leave, but even that must be finite in duration. This wouldn't exactly be our first military withdrawal, you know. We've lived with the consequences before, we'll live with them again. And hopefully in the future, the trigger-happy fools who run our country's foreign policy won't be so quick to rush us off to war to serve their own ideological desires.

In conclusion, while no one is advocating going from extreme to the other ('stay the course' to 'withdraw everyone today'), the voters made it clear that they have no patience for anyone who wants to drag this failed experiment out any further, and they would like to see our troops coming home as soon as possible. Withdrawals-- on a timetable or not-- are the only option we want to hear about. Period. Any politician thinking about their political future in 2008 and beyond must accept this reality and move on. No more waiting for some undefinable victory, no more buying time. We need to cut our losses and start bringing this war to a close now, not in two or three years when Bush leaves and the next guy has to clean up his mess. Now.



(Oh, and Afghanistan? It's not going so well either. Just for the record.)