Iraq is hard

Harder, in fact, than Vietnam, if you listen to the "Beltway consensus." Specifically, the consensus is that it was no big deal when we pulled out of Vietnam, but that setting a timetable in Iraq would be premature and pulling the troops out would have deadly consequences for us in the future.

As Kevin Drum writes, however, the decision to pull out of Vietnam was expected to have enormous consequences. The fact that those consequences (dominos falling all the way to Seattle) didn't happen, didn't lessen the fears at the time.

In other words, Vietnam looked exactly as hard back then as Iraq does now. In Iraq we have an insurgency we don't know how to beat (check); we're afraid that if the insurgency wins it will spread to other countries (check); and we're afraid that if we leave we'll look spineless (check).

Those fears turned out to be exaggerated 30 years ago, and they'll probably turn out to be exaggerated again. We just need to be clear-eyed enough to admit to ourselves that today's problems aren't really all that different from yesterday's. They only seem that way.

The Beltway consensus is fond of saying that all Democrats do is whine; they produce no alternatives. Well, Feingold, by making a serious proposal to end the otherwise endless disaster that is our tenuous occupation of Iraq, is offering just such an alternative.

As Digby pointed out the other day, Democrats do need to propose alternatives in Iraq. But they're not, other than Feingold. Afraid to look soft on terrorism, they've played into Bush/Rove hands by actually putting a seal of approval on our continued presence in a losing battle and a war that is making us weaker. By the day. And the time to try to look even tougher than Bush on Iraq is long past. Arguing that we need more troops, not plans to pull troops out, is absurd. We don't have the boots, let alone the body armour.

I do not believe there is anything the national Democrats can do to change this policy. We have to change the government. Therefore, I think it's in their best interests to begin to define what winning and losing means before the Republicans do. In an e-mail exchange on this subject, reader Charles Saeger suggested:

Change:

"We cannot win the war in Iraq and staying could rouse terrorist sentiment against us"

to:

"The Republicans lost the war in Iraq and our continued presence is rousing terrorist sentiment against us."

I happen to think this has the benefit of being true. The Bush administration lost the war before it began because it was unwinnable as a purely American/British venture. He didn't mishandle it. He didn't misjudge. He lost it.

I know it's unpalatable to use their frame, but I think it's pretty ingrained in the American psyche. We are the ultimate "win-lose" culture. Because of that I believe it is in our political interest and the country's security interests to frame this as a Republican loss. Terrorism is still a threat. Nukes in the hands of bad actors are a very, very serious threat. We are economically and militarily weakened by Bush's response to 9/11.

The Republicans lost Iraq. Like Lincoln when he replaced McClellan, the voters of the United States need to replace the Republicans if we want to "win" the war on Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

I don't envy the Democratic leadership. They have to balance a mattress on a bottle of wine. They need to argue that Bush has lost this battle in the larger "war on terror" without tacitly expressing that what will soon be 2,000 young American lives were a complete and utter waste. But the battle has been lost, and being afraid to point that out isn't positioning them too well with a public that largely believes, now, that, yes, the battle has been lost.

If Democrats are going to continue to be traumatized by 1972 then they are no longer any more relevant as a national party than are the Whigs.