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Now That We've 'Won,' Let's Come Home
The Iraq war's defenders like to bash the press for pushing the bad news and ignoring the good. Maybe they'll be happy to hear that the bad news doesn't rate anymore. When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC's) even bothered to mention it.
The only problem is that no news from Iraq isn't good news - it's no news. The night of the Baghdad bombing the CBS war correspondent Lara Logan appeared as Jon Stewart's guest on "The Daily Show" to lament the vanishing television coverage and the even steeper falloff in viewer interest. "Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier," she said. After pointing out that more soldiers died in Afghanistan than Iraq last month, she asked, "Who's paying attention to that?"
Her question was rhetorical, but there is an answer: Virtually no one. If you follow the nation's op-ed pages and the presidential campaign, Iraq seems as contentious an issue as Vietnam was in 1968. But in the country itself, Cindy vs. Michelle, not Shiites vs. Sunnis, is the hotter battle. This isn't the press's fault, and it isn't the public's fault. It's merely the way things are.
In America, the war has been a settled issue since early 2007. No matter what has happened in Iraq since then, no matter what anyone on any side of the Iraq debate has had to say about it, polls have consistently found that a majority of Americans judge the war a mistake and want out. For that majority, the war is over except for finalizing the withdrawal details. They've moved on without waiting for the results of Election Day 2008 or sampling the latest hectoring ad from moveon.org.
Perhaps if Americans had been asked for shared sacrifice at the war's inception, including a draft, they would be in 1968-ish turmoil now. But they weren't, and they aren't. In 2008, the Vietnam analogy doesn't hold. The center does.
The good news for Democrats - and the big opportunity for Barack Obama - is that John McCain and the war's last cheerleaders don't recognize that immutable reality. They're so barricaded in their own Vietnam bunker that they think the country is too. It's their constant and often shrill refrain that if only those peacenik McGovern Democrats and the "liberal media" acknowledged that violence is down in Iraq - as indeed it is, substantially - voters will want to press on to "victory" and not "surrender." And therefore go for Mr. McCain.
One neocon pundit, Charles Krauthammer, summed up this alternative-reality mind-set in a recent column piously commanding Mr. McCain to "make the election about Iraq" because "everything is changed," and "we are winning on every front." The war, he wrote, can be "the central winning plank of his campaign." (Italics his.)
This hyperventilating wasn't necessary, because this is what Mr. McCain is already trying to do. His first general election ad, boosted by a large media buy in swing states this month, was all about war. It invoked his Vietnam heroism and tried to have it both ways on Iraq by at once presenting Mr. McCain as a stay-the-course warrior and taking a (timid) swipe at President Bush. "Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war," Mr. McCain said in his voice-over. That unnamed fool would be our cowboy president, who in March told American troops how he envied their "in some ways romantic" task of "confronting danger."
But reminding voters of his identification with Iraq, no matter how he spins it, pays no political dividends to Mr. McCain. People just don't want to hear about it. Last week, the first polls conducted in Pennsylvania and Ohio since the ad began running there found him well behind in both states.
The G.O.P.'s badgering of Mr. Obama about the war is also backfiring. In sync with Mr. McCain, the Republican National Committee unveiled an online clock - "Track How Long Since Obama Was in Iraq!" - only to have Mr. Obama call the bluff by announcing that he will go to both Afghanistan and Iraq before the election. Unless he takes along his own Lieberman-like Jiminy Cricket to whisper factual corrections into his ear, this trip is likely to enhance his stature as a potential commander in chief.
The other whiny line of G.O.P.-McCain attack is to demand incessantly that Mr. Obama stop refusing to recognize the decline in violence in Iraq, stop calling for a hasty troop withdrawal and stop ignoring commanders on the ground in assessing his exit strategy. Here, too, Mr. Obama is calling their bluff, though not nearly as loudly as he will, I suspect, in the debates.
The fact is that Mr. Obama frequently recognizes "the reduction of violence in Iraq" (his words) and has said he is "encouraged" by it. He has never said that he would refuse to consult with commanders on the ground, and he has never called for a precipitous withdrawal. His mantra on Iraq, to the point of tedium, has always been that "we must be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in." His roughly 16-month timetable isn't hasty and isn't "retreat." As The Economist, a supporter of the war, recently put it, a safer Iraq does not necessarily validate Mr. McCain's "insistence on America staying indefinitely" and might make Mr. Obama's 16-month framework "more feasible."
After all, the point of the surge, as laid out by Mr. Bush, was to buy time for political reconciliation among the Iraqis. The results have been at best spotty, and even the crucial de-Baathification law celebrated by Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain in January remains inoperative. Mr. Obama's timetable is at least an effort to use any remaining American leverage to concentrate the Iraqi leaders' thinking. Mr. McCain offers only the status quo: a blank check holding America hostage to fate and ceding the president's civilian authority over war policy to Gen. David Petraeus and his successors.
Should voters tune in, they'll also discover that the McCain policy is nonsensical on its face. If "we are winning" and the surge is a "success," then what is the rationale for keeping American forces bogged down there while the Taliban regroups ominously in Afghanistan? Why, if this is victory, does Mr. McCain keep threatening that "chaos and genocide" will follow our departure? And why should we take the word of a prophet who failed to anticipate the chaos and ethnic cleansing that would greet our occupation?
And exactly how, as Mr. McCain keeps claiming, is an indefinite American occupation akin to our long-term military role in South Korea? The diminution of violence notwithstanding, Iraq is an active war zone. And unlike South Korea, it isn't asking America to remain to protect it from a threatening neighbor. Iraq's most malevolent neighbor, Iran, is arguably Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's closest ally. In the most recent survey, in February, only 27 percent of Iraqis said the American presence is improving their country's security. Far from begging us to stay, some Iraqi politicians, including Mr. Maliki, have been pandering to their own election-year voters by threatening to throw the Yankees out.
Mr. McCain's sorest Achilles' heel, of course, is his role in facilitating the fiasco in the first place. Someone in his campaign has figured this out. Go to JohnMcCain.com and, hilariously enough, you'll find a "McCain on Iraq Timeline" that conveniently begins in August 2003, months after "Mission Accomplished." Vanished into the memory hole are such earlier examples of the McCain Iraq wisdom as "the end is very much in sight" (April 9, 2003) and "there's not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shiites" (later that same month).
To finesse this embarrassing record, Mr. McCain asks us to believe that the only judgment that matters is who was "right" about the surge, not who was right about our reckless plunge into war. That's like saying he deserves credit for tossing life preservers to the survivors after encouraging the captain of the Titanic to plow full speed ahead into the iceberg.
But as Lara Logan asked, who's paying attention to any of this Iraq stuff anyway? That Mr. McCain makes an unpopular and half-forgotten war the centerpiece of his campaign may simply be a default posture - the legacy of his Vietnam service and a recognition that any war, good or bad, is still a stronger suit for him than delving into the details of health care, education, tax policy or the mortgage crisis.
Even so, it leaves him trapped in a Catch-22. If violence continues to subside in Iraq - if, as Mr. McCain has it, we keep "winning" - it will only call more attention to the internal contradictions of a policy that says success in Iraq should be punished by forcing American troops to stay there indefinitely. And if Iraq reignites, well, so much for "winning."
Not that the Obama policy is foolproof either. As everyone knows, there are no good options in Iraq. Our best hope for a bipartisan resolution of this disaster may be for a President Obama to appoint Mr. McCain as a special envoy to Baghdad, where he can stay for as long as he needs to administer our withdrawal or 100 years, whichever comes first.
--Frank Rich
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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34 Comments so far
Show AllMost people in the world understand that the Repuk party is so corrupt today that it should be banned and yet these writers are still referencing the evil with that "endearing" damned three-letter acronym. God Bless the United States of America!
redstatelefty: "Vote for Nader and get what you deserve: McCain."
We progressives are handing the Demoks full responsibility for any Repuk election, including Kamikaze McKane's. We gave the Demoks plenty of advance notice of the conditions they must meet to earn the progressive vote. The Demoks must impeach the top two criminals and fully vacate Iraq by election day or progressives are voting third party candidates.
We are very proud of our third party candidates and their platforms and we're looking forward to their winning at least 10% of the vote in many of the federal elections, and some sweeps of state and local offices too. America is almost ready to take its head out of err umm the sand and get a life.
Excellent.
Yes, if all is "peaceful" in Iraq then why should American soldiers stay? Especially if they create tempting targets for local patriots who want to see the Americans out of their country.
If the presence of American soldiers on Iraqi soil creates resentment and anger against the imperial Americans then why stay? Especially since there is no reason to believe a segment of Iraqis won't always resent a US presence?
And if Maliki prefers Iran to the US, if the Iraqis want the US out, the quiter things become the more reason for leaving as soon as possible. Especially if the presence of American soldiers stirs up resentment and keeps the "insurgents" focussed.
McCain was wrong about Vietnam (he believes we should have "won") and he's wrong about Iraq. There is a powerful shadow of neocon thinking coloring his view of that war. Let's hope Obama doesn't become so corrupt by the time he finally becomes president that he isn't "McCain light" when dealing with Iraq.
Dream on, Mr. Rich. We support Obama against McCain, but Iraq is a US colony(albatross) for many years to come. Think Phillipines, Panama, Korea, Okinawa, etc.
"We support Obama against McCain". Who is we? Many of US support Nader over McCain/Obama. If you look at the posts on CD over the past few months you will notice that Democrats have been experiencing the Ah! moment where they conclude that Obama and McCain are in the same Corporate Party. Keep a close eye out on the Obama campaign as this becomes more and more self-evident as we approach November.
Staying was the original plan. What Rich is doing here is disecting the logic McCain is using for staying. And if all is well there (we're "winning," right?) then why stay?
Has McCain dealt with that issue? The reasons for staying? Obama is talking of staying too.
But why should the US stay but for hegemonic reasons? Protecting our "interests" there? In Iraq, though, the longer we stay the longer our troops will be in danger. And the longer the US at home will be a target for terrorists.
Iraq is not "ours," Pottery Barn Rule or not. So long as we cling to our arrogant myths we will suffer for them.
While there's so much truth to josef's remark on the "same Corporate Party," one of two candidates will be elected president of the US in little more than four months.
My support for Obama as that choice is not diminished as I see significant differences between the two.
The differences between Obama and McCain are almost nonexistent. Ralph Nader is, in fact, the only candidate who seems willing to end the corporatization of our country. To believe that either Obama or McCain offer any substantive change is to be duped by the media. Military expenditures will remain the waste which has bankrupted this country if either Dem or Repub is elected into office. We need a new way of thinking, not just a new leader. Obama, while I personally like him, is simply another corporate/political shill. Little will change for us.
"Meet the new boss; same as the old boss."
- The Who
"To believe that either Obama or McCain offer any substantive change is to be duped by the media"
You are just plain wrong (and most pro nader CDers are). If Obama were President in 2003 we would not gone into Iraq. He would not been connected to Neocons. It's just that simple.
frank rich's article is DEAD ON THE MONEY.....this is the best article i've read on CD IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS.....mccain can run but he can't hide,behind his "surge" campaign.....the overhemingly majority of americans want this conflict over and the TROOPS to come home ASAP...this is the question mccain does not want to answer....WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO FOR AMERICA ? NOT IRAQ,NOT AFGHANISTAN
http://www.votestrike.com/
Obama's no different than any other politician. He just proved that by breaking his word. No big deal for politicians, but fairly big for someone that said he was different and just showed you he's not.
But McCain can't win, while Obama can most certainly lose. And he's makinfg a good start so far.
"But in the country itself, Cindy vs. Michelle, not Shiites vs. Sunnis, is the hotter battle. This isn't the press's fault, and it isn't the public's fault. It's merely the way things are."
That's such bullshit. It IS the press's fault because they choose what to broadcast. It IS the public's fault because they eat up the mindless crap that passes for news these days. They could easily demand more honest coverage by turning off their idiot boxes until the media steps up to it's duty and provides honest coverage of world events. But the public is lazy and self absorbed. You get what you deserve.
President-elect Obama should announce that he has a "secret plan" for Iraq. This will involve our great statesman, Henry Kissinger, to visit Iraq, negotiate with the Malaki government and declare that the Iraq army and security forces are now prepared, have "stood up", and we have won the war, and can "stand down". President-elect Obama will then be able to say that his new State Department will negotiate a whole new diplomatic treaty with Malaki, what will disband all the some 50 military bases, withdraw all the "exteritorial" contractors and private "security" forces, reduce the size of the US Embassy, its diplomatic personnel, and retain only a small number of Marines in their dress uniforms to provide security as we traditionally do in our embassies around the world. Hey, We won! There will be ticker-tape parades for our returning troops in honor for their brave and loyal service in the defense of our country.
Isn't it strange that the New York Times never mentions the ongoing American genocide in Iraq.
1,200,000 Iraqis died as a consequence of our invasion and occupation.
Who cares?
'"Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war," Mr. McCain said in his voice-over. That unnamed fool would be our cowboy president...'
No, this was an instance of fraud, I think, which all of the Bu$h junta are long in. Which is not to say that GWB is not a fool --he is, but this is not the reason.
Fuck you Frank Rich. You and your lukewarm mainstream democrat bullshit is part of the problem not the solution.
"You are just plain wrong (and most pro nader CDers are). If Obama were President in 2003 we would not gone into Iraq. He would not been connected to Neocons. It's just that simple."
ROFLMAO! That statement really IS "simple"!
Frank's "Titanic" analogy is priceless. I can't wait to send it to all my friends.
I would like to see front page news in every newspaper and on the news at six on every network...the complete mandate of the Project for the New American Century, every word and pictures of all of the signers. If every republican, or democrate for that matter, agrees with this imperial policy they can simply make their views known by an online ballot. I really don't think that the average Joe or Jane, in what used to be known as middle America, wants our entire treasury sunk into controlling the whole darn world when our country is falling apart at the seams. Just ask the people in the midwest who have lost everything if they are interested in living in an imperialistic country or would they rather have safe levees and adequate health care and a homeland security that actually takes care of homeland emergencies.
If there had been a draft at the beginning of this war it might have made a difference. However, the majority of those running this war, who were of an age to be drafted to fight in Viet Nam had considerable help in not being drafted. The draft still picks the less fortunate who don't have 'other priorities' or political clout to find legal safe havens. Those who managed to weather out the war in Viet Nam simply regrouped to begin more wars at later dates.
The real debate now should be between Nader and Obama. McCain is a self marginalized man of limited intelligence. He is going no where and his ideas have already been proven catastrophic by George W. Bush.
Our country is in deep trouble, and we need to seriously plan for the future and make decisions with the understanding that we don't have all the time we used to have. A big day of reckoning is not far off. Who has the better plan to give us a good future?
Is it Obama or is it Nader? We already know it's not McCain.
Why do we care what the Taliban does, other than the pipeline that Chevron wants to build through the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Even if you believe the phony story about hijackers causing the events of 9/11 it has never been alleged that the Taliban had anything to do with it.
Forget Caspian oil. Build solar farms, wind farms, and convert our transportation system to steel on steel. Spend the 1/2 trillion a year on converting our economy and forget the corporate profit driven military industrial complex imperialism.
Nader will NOT BE PRESIDENT. Do you people understand this? Most places he won't even be on the ballot. What part of the laws and rules of elections exclude third parties to the point of complete marginalization are you failing to understand? Vote for Nader, or stay home, and you elect Republicans. If you elect Republicans, you are the enemy of everything you claim to hold dear. The system does NOT allow proportional representation. A Democrat or a Republican WILL BE PRESIDENT. Those are your choices until the system is changed. This is FACT. Get your heads from your asses people. Is it any wonder Democrats ignore your issues? They know that no matter what they do you're going to stay home or vote third party anyhow, so why should they listen to you? You're not going to vote for them no matter what.
Solidify Democratic control of government (no, they don't have it now, they don't have a Senate majority and they don't have the Presidency) and then attack them from within using the primary system. I just love how all the naysayers claim that will never work, but ignore how the christian right did the exact thing to the Republican party. It took them decades, but it can be done.
Whining "I'm gonna take my ball and go home!" accomplishes nothing but assisting the enemy.
Just saw "Taxi To The Dark Side" this week at a barebones arthouse theater on its last legs. The financial powers that be in this fascist state have done everything in their power to make sure this film is NOT seen - including brokering a deal to keep it from showing on DISCOVERY Ch. on cable as planned.
I am not squeemish nor easliy put off by disturbing imagery - but i must say I was nearly struck numb and unable to move from my seat at the end of this film. The fully factual presentation of events and details make a statement which cannot be denied - WE have, in fact, become the NAZI's of the 21st Century.
Yeah, kitty tc is hectoring the same way lesser evilists have for the past 30 odd years. Most of the problem with that kind of argument is that it depends on no other kind of political action but voting. I don't think anyone actually believes Nader, McKinney or any other obscure candidate can win in Nov. But so long as "we" can never hope or expect to do anything but vote for a D or R candibot, both invariably generated and propped up by huge corporations and lobbyists, then we're condemned to the perpetual cycle of assholes ruling over us, and much of the world, such as Clinton and Bush.
In three years CDers will be bitching and raging about how disappointing Obama is, whether he gets us into more wars, keeps us mired in Iraq and possibly Iran, does nothing meaningful to change our dysfunctional health care system or redistribute wealth, or promote a democratic republic that our sacred founders envisioned and fought for, and we'll be little or no better off than we are now.
Obama signs off on telecom immunity and further war funding, but Obamamania decrees that he represents profound change on the horizon. Nader can't be elected and anyone voting for him has his head up his ass, according to kitty tc. That the whole country's head is up its collective ass because we can't break thru the dogma of this political duopoly that behaves exactly as RichM explains, doesn't occur to Nader haters like kitty. Powerful political action is simply voting for Obama. And we wonder why everyone's so immensely pissed off today?
Vote for Nader and get what you deserve: McCain.
"annabelle June 22nd, 2008 8:22 pm
If there had been a draft at the beginning of this war it might have made a difference. However, the majority of those running this war, who were of an age to be drafted to fight in Viet Nam had considerable help in not being drafted. The draft still picks the less fortunate who don't have 'other priorities' or political clout to find legal safe havens. Those who managed to weather out the war in Viet Nam simply regrouped to begin more wars at later dates."
Finally someone that gets what is wrong with a draft! Hooray!! A draft with no exemptions is the only thing that would work.
Nobody hates Nader that I see, he's just a non-factor. Other than the ability to throw the election to McCain as he did to Bush.
It doesn't matter who wins the election. Iraq will be the 51st state until the oil is pumped out. And after all of the cost to us (4100 dead and 30,000 seriously wounded and a trillion dollars) what makes anybody think the oil companies are going to cut us in on the deal anyway? They are going to sell it to the highest bidder on the world market for their own profit, and the highest bidders will be those countries with the best currency (with the trashing of the dollar, that isn't us if anybody has been paying attention). Americans are fools to have bought into this.
Too late, I think, to organize the impeachment of Cheney/Bush. The political will in Congress isn't in place. But, that doesn't bear upon the question of war crimes trials for these people at a later date, and that is the more important item. As to voting for Obama: There is nothing much that is positive as a reason to do so, as Obama cleary is the preferable candidate among the choices allowed by those in power--and someone who is allowed by those in power never will do much good. However, there is something even more negative avoided by voting for someone who might keep McCain out: the recent 5-4 vote to keep some modicum of habeas corpus shows how much worse things could get quickly. This is a starkly clear case of voting for the lesser-of-the-evils, which guarantees and evil in the end, I suppose. Can I get myself to pull the lever for Obama? I don't yet know. Depends on how severely Obama demonstrates that I shouldn't vote for him (see the recent FISA position he took). I would feel better about myself in so many ways if I vote for Nader or McKinney, but McCain....