IRAQ, the Democrats, and your opinion please....

Boy oh boy, the media is having a field day with the "growing rift in the Democratic Party" about Iraq. It's a "growing" rift, you see, which means the GOP (warning! NSFW! link to obnoxious Republican drivel!) is lauding it as yet another sign of the uber-nuanced Dems unable to parse together a coherent stance, even with the President in the 30s.

I understand the media and the dittoheads believing the bullshit about a politically dangerous divide in our party, but we're falling for the ploy too. What I want to know is why? Our party is not split on Iraq. Let's repeat that all together now: Our party is not split on Iraq. But....but...O'Loofah says Moveon.org wants to hijack the party, and Tweety says Hillary is pissing off the anti-war Dems. Let's filter out the noise, and look at the facts.

First, the myth of a split comes primarily from sloppy wordsmithing. Hillary is against an "immediate pullout." Is that what Murtha is advocating? Is that what any Democrat is advocating? Or is that just a GOP strawman argument? Ding, ding! By using the phrase "immediate pullout" and thus validating it as even an option, the Democrats are playing right in to GOP's hands and manufacturing a non-existent tension within our party. In June, only one in eight Americans want an "immediate" pullout (like, tomorrow immediate), so why Democrats would even mention that position, let alone make it representative of our party, is beyond me.The linked poll is from June. A poll quotes in the DailyKos comments is more recent and shows only 19% support "immediate pullout", though "immediate pullout" is not defined for the respondent.

Not a single elected Democrat wants the "immediate" pullout of American troops from the region forever.

Now, why are so many Democrats talking about "immediate" pullout? Because Democrats differ on what the term "immediate" means. As I said above, not one damn Congressional donkey wants our troops to pack up tomorrow and come home and leave Iraq to disintegrate into civil war. But is six months "immediate"? What about a year? If a year is immediate, hasn't the President himself advocated the "immediate" withdrawal of troops?

What all this word-parsing illustrates is that it is not our position that is splintered, but our vocabulary. Case in point: the Black Commentator brilliantly highlights Obama's word games:

In the near term Obama, a semanticist with a vengeance, says, "we need to focus our attention on how to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq. Notice that I say `reduce,' and not `fully withdraw.'" "Withdrawal" and "timetables" are bad words, and Obama will have nothing to do with them.

...we need not a time-table, in the sense of a precise date for U.S. troop pull-outs, but a time-frame for such a phased withdrawal.

Now, watch how Hillary too does the "timetable" two-step:

I do not believe that we should allow this to be an open-ended commitment without limits or end. Nor do I believe that we can or should pull out of Iraq immediately....It is time for the President to stop serving up platitudes and present us with a plan for finishing this war with success and honor - not a rigid timetable that terrorists can exploit, but a public plan for winning and concluding the war.

And, let's scooch over to the left a bit and see what Feingold has to say (btw, that link has some excellent presidential propaganda):

'We need leadership, and we need a policy on Iraq that includes a flexible timetable for completing our military mission there, so that we can focus on our national security priority - defeating the global terrorist networks that threaten the U.S.'

Notice the common theme (also known as, gasp!, a unified position):

1. We cannot set up an inflexible, do-or-die deadline for the complete withdraw of U.S. troops.
   
   
2. We cannot proceed open-endedly, without any sort of timeframe whatsoever to mark our progress.

   
   
   

Second, Democrats, doves and hawks alike, agree that there should be a significant drawdown of troops in 2006. Wanna see how unified our party is on Iraq? Both Feingold and Hillary agree that, if conditions are proper, we should begin a gradual troop pullout in 2006. Murtha agrees with that position. Fuck it, even Lieberman agrees with less troops in Iraq in 2006! Don't believe me?

If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come.

Do I really have to link you over to (gulp) FOX NEWS to prove to you how unified our party is on the issue of withdrawal? Democrats all agree that the time has come to shift the burden of securing Iraq from primarily US forces to Iraqi forces. But not just international forces. Murtha, Obama, Dean, everyone agrees that we will need troops there after a pulldown, but they should be assisted by a greater international presence.

SO WHY IS OUR PARTY EMBRACING THE FAUX SPLIT?

In one word, 2008. It behooves Clinton to latch onto the internal debate because by acting like the 1-in-8 Americans calling for a truly "immediate" withdrawl are crazy lefties, she thinks she can appeal to independents and conservative Democrats. Obama plays the word game because he doesn't want to be tied to one faction of the Democratic party this early in the game. Senators left and right try to "distinguish" themselves by concoting gray positions in what they think is a black-and-white debate within our party (pull out now, or stay and fight). In short, our party is embracing--nay, fueling--the faux split to serve their own self-interests rather than the collective needs of the party as a whole.

The reality though is allowing this idea of a policy split to ferment only hurts our chances of gaining seats in 2006. Let's not delude ourselves into thinking that the war won't be a major issue in the midterm elections. It will possibly be THE issue, and voters want to elect leaders who are clear about the future of the war, not politicians who offer nothing but internal bickering. 2006 will require us to market our unified position effectively.

We are so good at calling out the Administration with effective talking points. Defensively, we sing with one voice. But offensively, when it comes to presenting our own position, everyone begins to look down and mumble something about "success" and "plan," but our message lost because everyone is singing their own tune. Same lyrics, different melody.

Democrats have succeeded in bringing the Iraq war back to the forefront. We've succeeded in forcing Bush's hand and having him present his best--a mediocre "plan for victory" that Americans know won't work. It is our responsibility now to prove to Americans that when the Administration drops the ball, we will pick it up. That we will, in single purpose and single voice, lead our nation to victory.

Americans don't want politicians who play word games to cover their asses. They want leaders and a national party that stands on solid ground with a clear message: we will end this war, and America will be safer because of it.

crossposted at akou and POLITICAL CORTEX

there is a HUGE difference between Murtha, Pelosi, McGovern and other House Dems and the "plans for success" in the Senate ...

pretending there are not HUGE differences won't change that ...

the Democratic Party needs to institute a process that gives all Democrats a real voice in the policy choices and the goal has to be to reach a negotiated compromise ...

btw, Murtha's plan does call for an immediate redeployment of U.S. troops (out of Iraq) consistent with the safety of U.S. forces. there are no other conditions ... Murtha said "Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home."

that sounds pretty "immediate" to me ...