{"id":9589,"date":"2007-01-11T13:54:05","date_gmt":"2007-01-11T18:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9589.html"},"modified":"2007-01-11T13:54:05","modified_gmt":"2007-01-11T18:54:05","slug":"more-troops-in-2003-vs-more-troops-in-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/more-troops-in-2003-vs-more-troops-in-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"More troops (in 2003) vs. more troops (in 2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a rule, I generally ignore Jonah Goldberg’s columns — they’re hardly worth responding to — but his argument today<\/a> has become increasingly common among conservatives, and therefore needs to be shot down quickly and thoroughly.<\/p>\n

Here we have a president forthrightly trying to win a war, and the opposition — which not long ago was in favor of increasing troops, when Bush was against that — won’t say what it wants. This is flatly immoral. If you believe the war can’t be won and there’s nothing to be gained by staying, then, to paraphrase Sen. John Kerry, you’re asking more men to die for a mistake. You should demand withdrawal. But that might cost votes, so the Dems don’t. And, of course, Kerry, Pelosi and other Democrats were in favor of more troops before they were against it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Wall Street Journal editorial board made a nearly identical<\/a> argument today.<\/p>\n

You might have thought President Bush’s announcement yesterday that he intends to deploy several thousand more combat soldiers to Iraq would have been sweet policy vindication for the Democrats. They’re the ones who spent the better part of the past four years using Eric Shinseki — the former Army Chief of Staff who, prior to the war, estimated it would take up to half a million troops to occupy the country — as a cudgel with which to beat this President over the head.<\/p>\n

Thus former House minority leader, now Speaker Nancy Pelosi, citing General Shinseki in May 2004, on “Meet the Press”: “What I’m saying to you, [is] that we need more troops on the ground.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See? Those dastardly Dems said they want<\/i> more troops. Now that Bush is giving them what they asked for, they’re complaining! How outrageous!<\/p>\n

Please. I had hoped common sense would dictate slightly better analysis than what Goldberg and the WSJ have come up with, but this latest argument is not only wrong, it’s ridiculous.
\n
\nLet’s set the record straight. Most congressional Dems didn’t want Bush to invade Iraq, but if the president was going to pursue this course, he should do so with the necessary number of troops, not some kind of Rumsfeld-inspired slimmed-down force that would fulfill some neocon fantasy.<\/p>\n

The fact that Dems wanted a larger fighting force a couple of years ago<\/i> does not mean they’re contradicting themselves when they reject troop escalation now<\/i>. The prior position was about an effective occupation. That stage is long over, and has been replaced with a civil war.<\/p>\n

Goldberg argues that Dems favored more troops “not long ago.” Kevin Drum explained<\/a> why this is just not true, either.<\/p>\n

In fact, if by “not long ago” Goldberg means sometime in the past year, then he’d be hard pressed to find more than a handful of Democrats — Pelosi and Kerry certainly not among them — who even came close to suggesting we send more troops to Iraq. The Reed-Levin amendment, calling for a phased withdrawal to begin in 2006, garnered the support of 38 out of 44 Democratic senators when it was put to a vote last June. In the House, I don’t think the Republican leadership ever allowed a vote on a similar resolution, but on the resolution they did<\/i> allow a vote on, three-quarters of House Dems supported a phased withdrawal even though the resolution was worded to make virtual traitors out of anyone who voted that way.<\/p>\n

It’s certainly true that Democrats have not all been of one mind about the Iraq war. But “in favor of increasing troops”? Please.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I realize the president’s speech last night was a dud, and the “new” policy is likely to fail. But if the right is stuck with this as their best argument the day after the “new way forward” is unveiled, they may as well give up now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a rule, I generally ignore Jonah Goldberg’s columns — they’re hardly worth responding to — but his argument today has become increasingly common among conservatives, and therefore needs to be shot down quickly and thoroughly. Here we have a president forthrightly trying to win a war, and the opposition — which not long ago […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}