Thoughts on the War and the Presidential Race

[kennetha]

I was, am, and will always be opposed to the war in Iraq. Like many others, I was royally ticked off with those Democrats who voted for IRWR. Even though I was an ardent Clinton supporter during the primaries, I had to swallow hard to get over that one. Up until recently, I've thought of the war as a winning issue for the Democrats and a losing issue for the Republicans. After all, our promise to end the war was a large part of what won the election of 2006. It wasn't the only issue. But it was definitely an issue on our behalf. When it became clear that the war would not end until a Democratic President took office, I took that to be further proof that we were going to roll to a multi-front victory in 2008.

But I'm beginning to worry a lot that the war may actually be a winning issue for the Republicans -- not necessarily the decisive or trumping issue, but a net positive for them and a net negative for us.

Why do I say that? Because of the way the "surge" is being portrayed as having "worked" to not only quell violence, but to make something that could be called victory by the Republican and Media spinmeisters seem well within reach. Americans are sensible enough to want to walk away from a lost cause and fool's errand, which I think the vast majority were until recently convince that the war was. But they will not want to walk away from victory. And the problem is that if this thing gets spun the wrong way, we Democrats will look like we are counseling walking away when victory is in sight. And the Republicans will look like they are recommending steadfastness at the prospect of victory.

I fear that McCain and the media are conspiring to lay a trap for Obama over this question of whether the surge has worked. If we Democrats grant that the surge has "worked" -- especially if we leave it open for the Republican's to spin just what working amounts to -- then it undercuts Obama's argument (one that many Democrats including me accept) that the war in Iraq "should never have been fought." That's because one of the stated objectives of the war -- to establish a stable, democratic, Iraq that is an ally in the war on terror, right in the heart of the turbulent Middle East, free of the murderous oppression of Saddam Hussein and to provide proof positive to all the naysayers that the Middle Eastern Arab states need not, after all, be governed by oppressive, brutal tyrants -- was certainly laudable, when taken in a vacuum.

The Democratic argument was and is that thinking that we could achieve those objectives by a preemptive invasion was sheer lunacy and hubris. When it looked like Iraq would devolve into interminable genocidal civil war and that our troops had been sent on a fools errand merely to stand between people who hated each other and wouldn't stop killing each other (or us), we were winning that argument. Especially when it became clear that there were no WMD, that Saddam was a threat to one one except the innocent citizens of Iraq and that he had nothing at all to do with 9/11. We were winning that argument overwhelmingly. Again, it's part of what enabled us to recapture the Congress.

But I fear the dynamic has changed as we have paid less and less attention to Iraq.

Saddam has long been off the scene and is completely irrelevant to the current state of play. Now the question is what is achievable from here and how did that come to be achievable. The McShame Repugnants have an argument that a kind of victory is still achievable, that the surge has been instrumental to making that victory possible, and that Obama's approach amounts to a kind of surrender. Never mind the original folly of Bush's original mismanagement of the war -- which McShame did indeed constantly blast Bush on. Never mind that the original fear tactics about WMD and giving them to terrorists were all based on lies and self-deception. McShame and the Repugnants want us to focus on where things stand now, what is achievable now.

To grant that the surge "worked" is to play into their hands. It is to let the debate be cast on their terms. It is to declare the old debates over and done with and no longer relevant -- no matter which side of those debates you were on. But if those debates are no longer relevant -- because they have been overtaken by (positive) events on the ground, then I fear that the war is a winner, not a loser for the Repugnant Thugs.

I think Obama must feel the same way. In the democratic primaries, there was a completely different calculation. So many of my fellow dems were just livid at Hillary and others for voting for the IRWR that they could never forgive, let alone forget. Obama exploited that astutely and maximally to his benefit. But now he's in danger of not being able to be a "father" to what the Republicans will sell as an emerging victory in Iraq. (Failure is an orphan, but success has a thousand fathers. But what if you're not even in a position to claim partial fatherhood of success? )


So of course we should DENY that the surge has worked. But that's a tricky argument to make. It has worked to quell violence. It hasn't worked to bring about ultimate political reconciliation. But has it worked to bring about a more realistic prospect of political reconciliation? Certainly the Repugnants, who want to continue this thing at all costs, will insist that it has. Do we have a compelling argument that it hasn't.

Can we get buy on Obama's (correct, in my judgment) that the war should never have been fought? Do we have to make a case that both Iraq and America will be better off if we now gracefully and cautiously exit? WOuld we be exiting in defeat? Or would we be exiting in victory? If in victory, isn't it wrong to say that the war should never have been fought? If in defeat, why now? When it looks like things have turned some sort of corner?

When it looked like this would devolve into endless Civil War and that our staying there was making matters worse, the argument was easy. It doesn't look so easy to me now.

What do other people think? I'd really like help thinking this through.

[kennetha]

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