So the Iraqis are voting, and by most accounts, things seem to be going fairly well. Huzzah for the Iraqis.
Yeah, see, here’s the thing. For those of us who opposed invading Iraq in the first place, it is very difficult now to argue against those (COUGHthewhitehouseCOUGH) who say thing like, “Now the Iraqis are voting in free and fair elections. Would you rather have them still under the brutal and tyrannical thumb of Saddam Hussein?”
Well, no, of course not. As I have said before, only a crazy person would say the Iraqis were better off before than they are now. And I’m sure that somewhere, a right-wing pundit or blog is devoting themselves to dredging up a quote from some crazy person saying just that sort of thing as proof that anyone left of Sean Hannity is a pinko lefty communist who hates America.
However, we see here the beauty of the Bush administration’s political strategy—having dragged the country into war and creating a giant mess, they have positioned themselves so that anyone criticizing their conduct of the war now looks like the idiot. Take, for instance, those on the Left advocating for a near-term pull-out/draw-down of US troops; by any rational assessment, such a move would be quickly followed by, at best, civil war in Iraq. Aside from the brazenly political calculus that “Bring the troops home” will appeal to voters, such a strategy seems nearly as stupid as going to war in the first place—bad for the US, bad for the Iraqis, bad for the rest of the countries in the region.
Meanwhile, calls for a timed withdrawal of US troops are an only slightly nicer way of saying “We’re out of here. You’re on your own.”
My point in all this is that Democrats calling for any of these options are shooting themselves in the foot. They can claim that the war is “deeply unpopular with the American people,” but I imagine that the body-count among US troops is going to have to go a lot higher before anyone advocating for the wholesale abandonment of the Iraq adventure won’t be taking a bath at the polls.
No, if we want to preserve any notion of honor or dignity, we’re stuck there. And probably for a long time to come.
So does this mean that the Bush administration is right? Absolutely not. At every opportunity, Democrats should be blasting away at the White House as the arrogant assholes who got us into this terrible situation. They lied again and again to get us into a war that they didn’t even bother to plan, and have never stopped lying once the whole thing blew up in their faces. These are the guys we want running our country? They should be screaming “Throw the bum out of office and let the professionals take over” every chance they get.
Of course, there’s a slight credibility issue here, since the majority of the Democratic party got bullied into supporting the administration’s run-up to war. Sadly, I’m not sure I have an answer for that.