Rabbit Ears

It's definitely a trying situation for Democrats. Any time they say they support the troops the Bush Administration makes it seem like they support the policy. Anytime they say they don't support the policy the Bush Administration makes it sound like they don't suport the troops.

Which is a tough situation. And yet 70% of the American people, with little help from the media or even Democrats, support the basic policy of ending the occupation of Iraq. So maybe the key here is to stop listening to what the Bush Administration is saying about you and carry out the policy that brings us closest to that goal. Stop playing chess and start playing checkers.

I mean, Rep. McNerney, this is nice and all...

But in an interview yesterday, McNerney made clear his views have shifted since returning from Iraq. He said Democrats should be willing to negotiate with the generals in Iraq over just how much more time they might need. And, he said, Democrats should move beyond their confrontational approach, away from tough-minded, partisan withdrawal resolutions, to be more conciliatory with Republicans who might also be looking for a way out of the war.

"We should sit down with Republicans, see what would be acceptable to them to end the war and present it to the president, start negotiating from the beginning," he said, adding, "I don't know what the [Democratic] leadership is thinking. Sometimes they've done things that are beyond me."

NOTHING is acceptable to them. They want to play out the string and keep Americans dying in Iraq indefinitely. It's nice to want to negotiate to find the pony, but the only thing that will come out of it is getting 3 Republicans to agree to a withdrawal 7 years from now. But only if we invade Syria first.

This focus on Prime Minister Maliki is similarly absurd. You think some other Prime Minister is going to unify the country? Who? Iyad Allawi? Didn't we already try that? Meanwhile, Levin acknowledges progress on the military front after a hasty two-day trip, getting spun about the utility of Iraqi forces. So this is what to expect in September.

Senate Democrats largely will not challenge, but rather will embrace and celebrate, the notion that The Surge Is Working and that we are making "military progress," whatever that might mean this month. To "oppose the war," they instead will follow the strategy Hillary Clinton has adopted this year -- namely, blaming the Iraqis for failing to take advantage of the great opportunities we are creating for them. Levin's demand that Prime Minister Maliki be replaced is designed to accomplish exactly that. Democrats are afraid to challenge the U.S. military's claims that we are Winning, and are even afraid to oppose the Surge, so instead, they will take the safest course -- heaping the blame on the Iraqi government and demanding that they improve [...]

Iraq is so disintegrated, so ethnically cleansed, so broken that, as (Nir) Rosen points out, it does not really exist as an entity any longer:

Iraq has been changed irrevocably, I think. I don't think Iraq even -- you can say it exists anymore. There has been a very effective, systematic ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias --from areas that are now mostly Shia. . . . And Baghdad is now firmly in the hands of sectarian Shiite militias, and they're never going to let it go.

Rosen reports that the number of externally displaced Iraqis is now close to 3 million -- most of them Sunnis, representing a sizable portion of the Iraqi Sunni population which, in turn, further ensures Shiite sectarian militia control of most of the country. Always obscured by the exciting debate over whether we are "winning" is what happens if we "win" -- the installation of an Iran-and-Syria-friendly Shiite "government" surrounded by an ethnically divided country armed and ruled by sectarian militias loyal to a whole variety of Middle East actors. In light of all of that, Sen. Levin's claim of "military progress" is just incoherent.

Democrats have put themselves in a horrible spot. There is going to be a drawdown of troops, mainly because of physical realities of manpower, that they won't be responsible for, and it will be seen by the media as "piling on" to suggest it's insufficient, especially after they've determined that "the surge is working." The 100,000 or so contractors will stay, of course, there will be no talk of them. And there may be an internal coup that will be used as a rhetorical weapon by the White House ("We need to give the new Prime Minister time to succeed"). None of this will have any bearing on Iraq's inevitable slide into absolute chaos.

Things that the Democrats could do: highlight reports like this in the same way they're highlighted against you...

In Baghdad, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was downbeat in his assessment of Maliki's ability to end sectarian warfare between the Shiites and Sunni Arabs. He called progress toward national reconciliation "extremely disappointing" and said Maliki and other members of his government needed to reach compromises to help quell the bloodshed.

"We do expect results, as do the Iraqi people, and our support is not a blank check," Crocker told journalists.

Speak absolutely clearly that the surge is a failure.

“No matter how brilliantly and bravely our troops and their commanders perform — and they have performed brilliantly and bravely — they cannot and should not bear the responsibility of resolving grievances at the heart of Iraq’s civil war,” Mr. Obama said. “No military surge, no matter how brilliantly performed, can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region.”

Bird-dog the other side to get them on the record about Bush's war:

But, unlike most lawmakers who return from the war-torn country, Voinovich is refusing to offer an assessment of what he saw on his trip. “He’s not going to get into that right now — what’s working, what’s not working, is the surge working,” his spokesman, Chris Paulitz, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “He’s not really interested in a soundbite response.”

And be extremely firm in calling for a specific end to this war, asking Republicans for their support but also firmly explaining to them the consequences of their opposition; namely, the end of their political careers.

And quit listening to every word the Republicans say on this thing.