The Democratic position on Iraq

November 14, 2005

In The Note today, ABC News’ gang said there were a number of factors to consider when analyzing what might happen in 2006 and beyond, but chief among them was:

* Whether there is a Democratic position on Iraq by September 25, 2006 (or not).

Tim Russert posed a similar question to Howard Dean on Meet the Press yesterday. Is it a fair question? I’m not sure.

It’s reasonable to say there is no “Democratic position on Iraq.” I’m also fairly comfortable with the idea that there’s no “Republican position on Iraq” either. There’s a fairly wide gulf between, say, Russ Feingold’s position on Iraq and Joe Lieberman’s, but isn’t there an equally significant difference between Chuck Hagel and Donald Rumsfeld?

What’s the official Dem line on the war? I have no idea. What’s the official GOP line? I suspect it’s some combination of “stay the course” and “freedom is on the march,” but beyond tired sloganeering, I don’t see a real policy. And yet, one party is labeled with the side with no coherent strategy — and it’s not the party that launched the war under false pretenses, with too few troops, and with no exit strategy.

In a speech in Philadelphia late last week, Sen. Rick Santorum, the third highest ranking Republican in the Senate, criticized how the war has been presented by the White House. In talking with reporters later, Santorum said the war has been “less than optimal” and “maybe some blame could be laid” at the White House. Is this the Republican position on Iraq? Probably not, but I haven’t seen a rush of GOP officials storming their way to microphones to express their disagreement, either.

To his credit, Harry Reid is trying to respond to the charge that Dems are without a policy (which, as far as I’m concerned, puts him one up on his Senate Republican counterparts).

Democrats have developed a very clear path forward. There are three areas we believe need to be addressed:

* First, 2006 should be a significant year of transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with Iraqis taking more and more responsibility for their own security. It’s time to take the training wheels off the Iraqi government. Iraqis must begin to run their own country. In 2006, the US and our allies must do everything we can to make that possible.

* Second, the Administration must advise the Iraqi people that U.S. military forces will not stay indefinitely in Iraq, and that it is their responsibility to achieve the broad-based and sustainable political environment essential for defeating the insurgency.

* Third, the President needs to submit — on a quarterly basis – a plan for success to Congress and the American people. This plan must specify the challenges and progress being made in Iraq, timetables for achieving our goals and estimated dates for redeployment from Iraq as these goals are met.

Reid, Durbin, and Levin unveiled this in legislative form today as the “United States Policy on Iraq Act,” adding it as an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act.

The Dems’ position, which seems to cover wide ground between competing approached (Feingold, Lieberman example), is pretty detailed for a party that has no position on the war. Take a look and let me know what you think.

as a matter of historic record, nixon won in ’68 on a “secret plan” to end the war in vietnam, and then won again, in ’72, on “peace with honor.”

so the track record is that you don’t need a “plan,” all you need is a “slogan.”

but more important, you’re getting at a key point: for some reason, many people have the american political system confused with a parliamentary system. While, broadly speaking, the dems stand for certain things and the gop stands for certain things, the party in opposition doesn’t have a coherent program, because they don’t have to be ready to govern tomorrow, the way a parliamentary party needs to prepare, while the party occupying the oval office doesn’t have a party-wide position on things, it tends to support the president.

so the people expecting the dems to have a plan for iraq are, in my estimation, sadly mistaken.

that said, i do think the dems should be saying “given this administration’s track record with honesty, we can’t formulate a plan while we are out of office, because we have no facts upon which we can rely.”

or, as dean put it yesterday, the democratic plan is to encourage telling “the truth,” and then we figure out which end is up.

  • Here is my suggestion for a democratic platform on the war.

    We will have a referendum in Iraq, asking the Iraqi people:

    “Should the US withdraw its combat forces from Iraq within 180 days?”

    If they say yes, we can be proud of having established a democracy and leave. If they say no, we have established our legitimately in the country and can expect support from our old allies. Either way we will have dealt Al Qaeda a blow and established that we support democracy, not authoritarianism.

  • I’m really glad you brought this up.

    All the back-biting about the Dems not having “a plan” is nonsense.

    1. Parties are a loose conglomeration of interests. These interests are always spread across a part of the political spectrum.

    2. The Dems are not in power, thus there is no real “party leader”. When you have the presidency, you have a figurehead that ends up representing the party position, at least as far as the media is concerned. Even having a house in Congress leaves you with only a weak leader symbol.

    My beef is less that there’s a party program, and more that politicians within the party don’t have their own individual positions well defined. But then, it’s that never-never land between elections, close enough for a stand to matter but not close enough to take a stand.

  • I would take Santorum’s comments more seriously if I thought for one second he believed them and wasn’t just saying that because he is in serious danger of loosing and thinks critizing the prez just a bit would play well.

  • I think you guys are sort of missing the point tho – we’re talking about the Dems having a plan NEXT September, when, ostensibly, they would be working towards and poised to take control of the Congress. Has it really only been 11 years in the minority that we are incapable of thinking of the Dems as being a “ruling” party and hide behind being out of power as an excuse not to formulate a clear Democratic alternative? I don’t think the Republicans used that strategy during their successful runup to 1994. The voters aren’t necessarily going to just hand power over to the Democrats – the Dems have to show why they deserve it.
    Re Iraq – I personally think we need to hand the “nation-building” over to the UN and wash our hands of the mess. I would wager that a lot of the insurgently is primarily anti-American in nature (go figure) and without the Americans pulling strings or serving as a target, it would be easier for Iraqis to unite around their government if that government wasn’t seen as an American puppet. Is there any discussion as to the permanent bases that the Bush regime has planned for Iraq? Maybe a discussion of those bases to could serve as the basis for a Democratic alternative policy.

  • Step one should be to clean out the neo-cons from the Pentagon. No strategy for Iraq will be successful as long as they are involved. They’re the ones who got us into this damn mess in the first place.

    Step two should be to work with the United Nations to form an international peace-keeping force to clean up the mess that the neo-cons created.

    Step three should be to turn full sovereignty and responsibility over to the Iraqis as soon as possible. It’s time for them to sink or swim.

    Step four is to indict, try, convict and incarcerate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes.

  • Iraq is a mess, and we’re stuck in a
    quagmire that Bushco put us into.

    The solution? Who knows? This
    is really a tough issue, and maybe
    an insoluble one. I don’t see how
    the Dems can unite behind a
    single plan to bring an end to
    this nightmare. While I fault them
    for not standing up for universal
    health care, global warming,
    alternative energy, a fair tax
    plan et al, it’s not reasonable,
    nor desirable, to enunciate a
    specific plan. But they should
    be out there hammering away
    at Bush for getting us into it.
    I am sick and tired of Dems
    copping out on “what’s done is
    done, and we have to move
    forward.” Do we let murderers
    go, and simply tell the families
    to move on? Of course not. So
    why should Bush get away with
    his war crimes?

    That should be the Dem
    strategy – impeachment, or at
    least an independent investigation
    as to how we got (conned) in there.

  • How can democrats formulate a plan when there is such a dearth of real information?

    Perhaps if Ahmed Chalibi were tortured, he’d tell us the truth – since torture is such a surefire truth serum.

  • Andy, i’m all for individiual democrats offering indvidual takes on what should be done. i’m all for the party coalescing around certain key themes – we can’t make any progress in iraq until people like cheney, rumsfeld, rice, and hadley are out of power; we need an honest representation to the american people of how we got here; we need an honest accounting of the security and training situations; we need a realistic assessment of what “staying the course” means. but there’s a difference between consistently articulating key “themes” and a “plan,” which is simply institutionally impossible for the democrats to achieve.

    and even if, in what i regard as an extreme longshot, the dems take control of both houses of congress next year, it will still be bush who is the commander-in-chief, and whose responsibility iraq will be, and no democratic “plan” will change that.

  • Program on the emergence of civilization.

    “14 species of large animals capable of domesitcation in the history of mankind.
    13 from Europe, Asia and northern Africa.
    None from the sub-Saharan African continent. ”
    Favor.
    And disfavor.

    They point out Africans’ failed attempts to domesticate the elephant and zebra, the latter being an animal they illustrate that had utmost importance for it’s applicability in transformation from a hunting/gathering to agrarian-based civilization.

    The roots of racism are not of this earth.

    Austrailia, aboriginals:::No domesticable animals.

    The North American continent had none. Now 99% of that population is gone.

    AIDS in Africa.

    [Edited for space – CB]

  • I think that grandpa is off his rocker.

    Come on grandpa, we’re talking about a Democratic plan for Iraq.

  • Forget the UN. We had our chance in 2003 (weapons inspections), and nobody is sending a peacekeeping force to Iraq to save our bacon now. Besides, the UN left Iraq because Al Qaida or similar bombed it out. We are clearly several painful steps away from it ever being possible for the UN to return.

    Looks like Reid has adopted a Clarkian approach, if you will, (i.e., it is more important to have your ideas adopted than it is to score partisan points, although he does some of that :)), and I reluctantly have to say this approach is the option that stands the best chance of being the least disastrous over the long term. I mean, I’d *like* to pull everyone out tomorrow, but unfortunately that neither equals not having invaded in the first place, nor mitigates the consequences.

  • America is the greatest country in the world and anyone who dares to attacks President Bush and the policies of this country are nothing but traitors and are no better that the terrorists who attack us on 9/11. The traitors should be imprisoned just like their fellow travelers, the terrorist, and afforded the same treatment.

    America is last standing super-power! It is our manifest destiny to be the governing force that brings democracy to the world. If we have to torture people to make sure that our country accomplishes its mission and in turn make sure we have the resources we need to maintain our standing as the last and only super-power in the world, so be it. The stronger we are, the better for those depending on us and our efforts to assure democracy takes hold in countries like Iraq. We know by their actions that the terrorists are evil and need to be eradicated by any means necessary. When it comes to the War On Terror, a strong national defense in not enough. We must go on the offense and torture is one of the most effective ways of making sure that the terrorists know that their days are numbered.

    Anyone who questions the actions of the U.S. and its War On Terror, including the use of torture is a traitor and should be treated just like the terrorist.

    I tired of these traitors undermining the War On Terror and in turn endangering the lives of our troops. We need to eradicate these traitors from our political landscape. It time to require everyone living in this country to take a loyalty oath, those that don’t should then be consider traitors and dealt with accordingly. We need to weed out the traitors among us and eliminate them if we are going to win the War On Terror.

    In fact we should consider any violent crime committed in the United States as an act of terror, and employ torture on those “criminal” terrorist operating domestically. The police in this country need to be federalized as our great President Bush has suggested. That way we can expand our efforts in the War On Terror to include any act of violence that occurs within the country. If we start to use torture not only against the terrorist that attack us for outside the country, but the “criminal” terrorist who create daily terror the people of this country from within, we should be able to assure our future as a Nation. We need eliminate those elements inside and outside our country that want to bring this great Nation down.

    If we can effectively employ torture both domestically and international, then we may have no more terror to fear in the not to distant future.

  • Democrats need an actual plan, not a polling strategy that plays tag along with the Republicans when they think that’s a good idea. I firmly believe that nearly all of the Democrats in the House and Senate knew the war was a bad idea in 2003 and would have voted against it had Bush & Co. not so masterfully manipulated the media and the public into being afraid of Saddam and WMDs. If they had stuck to their guns then and voted against the war, there would have been short term consequences yes, but in the long run they would have been proven right and democrats would all be heroes now, not just the “other party” that might deserve a chance next. You can’t go back and change your vote but like Senator Edwards in his Washington Post editorial this week, you can fight for what you believe in now and stick up for morals and principles. Those principles should be to speak up that the war was a bad idea to begin with and we need a plan to bring our troops home as soon as possible, months not years. Expose Bush & the neocons for what they are – liars – and they should be called that and democrats should demonstrate their honesty and integrity by calling Bush a liar and not backing off that claim. Fight at every turn – a president with an approval rating in the 30s should get absolutely nothing that he wants – not Alito, not tax cuts, nothing. The American people are the other 64% percent who don’t approve of what Bush is doing – by vetoing everything that he does, including filibustering, the democrats will be saying they are with the majority of American’s and they are doing the people’s business in Washington.

  • Wanna help the iraqis govern themselves and end the “insurgency”?

    Pull out all American troops.

    The so-called insurgency is not anti-Iraq…it’s anti-America.

    Saddam is gone. And though the turmoil of installing a new and, as of yet, unproven form of sovereignty remains, it is, undeniably, the existence of American forces and the involvement of the American government that continues the turmoil and inspires the insurgency.

  • Well, I don’t see any real troop withdrawal in the near future. And Democrats cannot simply call for pulling out all the troops without adding fuel to the notion that Democrats are weak on national defense and cannot stand up for and protect our own citizenry.

    I think there are Democrats who can lead the party on Iraq and how to handle what needs to happen. But I don’t think Feingold or Kerry are the ones that can lead on Iraq. I’m sorry to say it, but in my opinion, it is Lieberman and Biden and maybe Rockefeller who can best lead on this issue. Democrats calling for complete immediate withdrawal from iraq just drive the party further to the left into the clutches of the anti-war contingent of the party, and that can only lead to another electoral disaster as did the anti-war movement as represented by the McGovern candidacy in the 70’s.

    Getting out of Iraq is, in my opinion, extremely complicated. And I want a Democrat in the White House after the 2008 elections. And I want Democratic gains in the Senate and House after the 2006 elections. I just don’t think that appearing weak on terror and national defense is the way to get there.

    Sure this Administration misled the Congress and the public. Now we are all stuck with this great big mess. But there are Democrats who have some gravitas on this issue. They just aren’t the “democratic wing of the democratic party.”

  • This Atlantic article should help to formulate a plan: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-army entitled “Why Iraq Has No Army” and subtitled “An orderly exit from Iraq depends on the development of a viable Iraqi security force, but the Iraqis aren’t even close. The Bush administration doesn’t take the problem seriously—and it never has”

    It’s in-depth and practical. And it’s filled with useful talking points for Dems: “the administration announced with pride that it had bought 200 new armored vehicles for use in Iraq. “Two-plus years into the war, and we’re proud! Can you imagine if in March of 1944 we had proudly announced two hundred new vehicles?” By 1944 American factories had been retooled to produce 100,000 warplanes.”

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