Cut-and-Run Bait-and-Switch
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BY JAMES TARANTO
Friday, December 1, 2006 1:42 p.m. EST
The New York Times has another postelection epiphany:
<<< In the cacophony of competing plans about how to deal with Iraq, one reality now appears clear: despite the Democrats' victory this month in an election viewed as a referendum on the war, the idea of a rapid American troop withdrawal is fast receding as a viable option. >>>
This is a "news analysis" by David Sanger, but it echoes a theme the Times has sounded repeatedly since the election. First was this Nov. 12 editorial:
<<< The Democrats will not be able to savor their victory for long. Americans are waiting to hear if they have any good ideas for how to get out of Iraq without creating even wider chaos and terrorism.
Criticizing President Bush's gross mismanagement of the war was a winning electoral strategy. But criticism will not extricate the United States from this mess, nor will it persuade voters that the Democrats are ready to take back the White House. . . .
The Democrats will also need to look forward--and quickly. So far they have shared slogans, but no real policy. During the campaign, their most common call was for a "phased redeployment"--a euphemism for withdrawal--of American troops starting before the end of this year. >>>
Three days later, a "military analysis" by Michael Gordon took issue with the view "the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq should begin within four to six months":
<<< This argument is being challenged by a number of military officers, experts and former generals, including some who have been among the most vehement critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policies. >>>
Pre-election calls to cut and run are looking increasingly like a bait-and-switch. Even John Kerry*, who before the election was issuing intelligible if irresponsible cut-and-run calls, has returned to his usual tenebrous form, telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer yesterday:
<<< I hope we can all work together, but we've got to be tougher in our approach. I believe personally--and I've said this publicly--that you have to set a date for the expectation of when the Iraqis will take over their responsibility. And if you don't get tough and have those kinds of benchmarks, then they have an excuse to avoid it altogether. >>>
All together now: Two, four, six, eight! For the expectations of when the Iraqis will take over their responsibility we've got to set a date!
David Keene of the American Conservative Union describes a telling conversation between a pair of Beltway Democrats (ellipsis in original):
<<< An old Democratic friend of mine stopped by the Monocle last week and while there ran into a Democratic senator of long acquaintance. The Senator was, of course, quite pleased with the outcome of the election and is looking forward to the perks and responsibilities that go with being in the majority.
The two talked for a few minutes, but the Senator was more than a little taken aback when my friend asked him what he and his fellow Democrats intend to do with the war they managed to acquire with their new majority. "What do you mean?" he said. "Iraq is Bush's war and his problem."
"Oh, no," my friend responded, "it was his war until Nov. 9, but your party ran condemning the war, Bush's management of it and promised to end it in one way or another. Now, you guys are going to have to come up with a plan because you are in the majority and with the majority comes responsibility . . . especially on problems voters believe you promised to solve."
It was a sobering thought and the senator was momentarily speechless, but then got very, very cautious and assured my friend that most Democrats believe it would be dangerous to do anything precipitous. Fortunately, there was no one from MoveOn.Org at the next table. >>>
Keene concludes:
<<< "Iraq is many things, including a tar-baby that congressional Democrats are going to find as difficult to get away from as the Republicans they so gleefully beat up over the last few years." >>>
We'd put it a little differently: Iraq is a challenge, as well as an opportunity, for America, and if both major parties at last find it necessary to face that challenge responsibly, that is good for the country.
* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who voted for the Iraq war, then declared he was against it, then gave a mind-bogglingly convoluted explanation for his vote**, then lost the presidential election, then said he had been wrong after all to vote for the war, then asserted that the servicemen who are "stuck in Iraq" are a bunch of uneducated losers, then explained that what he meant was that the man who beat him in the presidential election (and who holds two Ivy League degrees) was an uneducated loser--all, by the way, after he served in Vietnam.
** "The vote is the vote. I voted to authorize. It was the right vote, and the reason I mentioned the threat is that we gave the--we had to give life to the threat. If there wasn't a legitimate threat, Saddam Hussein was not going to allow inspectors in. Now, let me make two points if I may. Ed [Gordon] questioned my answer. The reason I can't tell you to a certainty whether the president misled us is because I don't have any clue what he really knew about it, or whether he was just reading what was put in front of him. And I have no knowledge whether or not this president was in depth--I just don't know that. And that's an honest answer, and there are serious suspicions about the level to which this president really was involved in asking the questions that he should've. With respect to the question of, you know, the vote--let's remember where we were. If there hadn't been a vote, we would never have had inspectors. And if we hadn't voted the way we voted, we would not have been able to have a chance of going to the United Nations and stopping the president, in effect, who already had the votes, and who was obviously asking serious questions about whether or not the Congress was going to be there to enforce the effort to create a threat. So I think we did the right thing. I'm convinced we did."
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