Changing Course In Iraq
The mantra that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid used all year was that President Bush “needs to change course in Iraq”, which he did in January. When he announced his plans on a surge of troops to secure Anbar province and Baghdad, Democrats howled. John Murtha tried crafting a slow bleed strategy. That didn’t play well. Now that the surge is working, Democrats are retooling their strategy.
Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq’s diverse political factions.
And now the Democrats, along with wavering Republicans, will face an advertising blitz from Bush supporters determined to remain on offense. A new pressure group, Freedom’s Watch, will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign today designed to shore up support for Bush’s policies before the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, lays out a White House assessment of the war’s progress. The first installment of Petraeus’s testimony is scheduled to be delivered before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a fact both the administration and congressional Democrats say is simply a scheduling coincidence.
The leading Democratic candidates for the White House have fallen into line with the campaign to praise military progress while excoriating Iraqi leaders for their unwillingness to reach political accommodations that could end the sectarian warfare.
In other words, they’re scrambling. They’ve been scrambling ever since Harry Reid bragged about killing the Patriot Act. This is the same Harry Reid that declared defeat in Iraq several months ago.
Democrats bet the ranch on defeat in Iraq. Now they’re getting their comeuppance for being the Defeatist Party. This is a sign of their pure partisanship. A decade ago, men like Sam Nunn, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, John Breaux, Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman would’ve been critical of President Bush’s strategy but they would’ve worked with President Bush to put together a plan to defeat the terrorists. Pelosi’s and Reid’s Democrats haven’t sought victory. They’ve been defeatists because that’s what their Nutroots puppetmasters demanded.
Because they’ve been defeatists, they haven’t tried putting together a viable alternative to President Bush’s surge. Instead, they’ve based their campaign on Bush’s failures. That won’t work because, like President Bush said in his debate with John Kerry, a laundry list of complaints isn’t an agenda.
I repeatedly said last fall that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were the most inept pair of leaders in Congressional history. I’ll repeat that in light of their unwillingness to stand up to the idiots of the Nutroots movement. Had they stood their ground, their party’s presidential candidates wouldn’t have had to pander to them so much. In the end, this will return to haunt them.
Technorati Tags: Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Slow Bleed, Defeatocrats, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, President Bush, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
[...] Original post by Gary Gross and software by Elliott Back [...]
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Semper Scrambilatissimus!
August 22nd, 2007 at 4:09 pm
“they haven’t tried putting together a viable alternative to President Bush’s surge.”
Can you say cut and run? Or redeploy? Or cut funding?
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:17 pm
It is difficult to simultaneously maintain what passes for an open-minded, multicultural, sensitive position, and put up a convincing front of wanting U.S. military forces to successful anywhere, let alone in a strategically important part of the Middle East.
I’m not sure that this is unrelated: a recent Gallup poll shows that Congress has an 18% approval rating.
Offhand, I’d say that there’s something wrong in Washington, D.C., and that Americans are catching on.
I hope that the Republican party, regaining a majority, does better than the current bosses.
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:21 pm
And, responding to SEW’s comment, leading with “they haven’t tried putting together a viable alternative to President Bush’s surge.”
This may be unfair, but: viable for who? The U.S.A. isn’t the only player in the war on terror.
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Wishful Thinking!
LOL. First, let’s assume that the surge is working, but about which I could spend 1,000 words refuting. One of the major issues Democrats have put forward in this argument is to what end is this effort? The primary reason given was always to give the Maliki government “breathing room to form a government from all three segments of Iraqi culture (religion).”
Well, what with al-Maliki flipping us the figurative bird, saying they “can find friends elsewhere,” it was pretty good that the presnit backed down from his “not pleased” rhetoric, even if it did tip his hand. But isn’t al-Maliki’s slap in the face just adding fuel to the fire after the Iraqi parliment took the month off, while our soldiers bought the security in Baghdad and Anbar province with American blood?
Yeah, the surge is working. To what end? We can’t sustain this level of troops past next April, and then what? Does anyone think that al-Maliki is going to pull a government together? After visiting Iraq last week, Senators Levin and Warner suggested al-Maliki be replaced, so I guess that’s not exactly a sterling vote of confidence. And now that Bush is backed into the corner — he can’t replace al-Maliki — how many more young Americans are going to die before we reach January 20, 2009?
Blaming the Democrats, a CalCon fave, doesn’t work here, though. The Democrats have proposed several viable alternative plans, from phased withdrawal to pulling troops out to the periphery and allow the Iraqis to battle it out amongst themselves, none of which the stubborn presnit will even consider. We are stuck policing the Iraqi civil war, and worse, sabre-rattling at Iran and Syria. The problem Bush is faced with there is that Iran has a huge army, with foot soldiers who willing to fight with nothing more than a Koran for a weapon. And Syria’s Assad will doubtless cast his lot with Ahmadinejad. Then we’re hemmed in.
But Reid and Pelosi as puppets of the netroots? Hardly. I guess if the republicans listen to the blogosphere, its a movement (We-The-People?), but when Democrats listen to their constituents, largely online, and who along with enough sane republicans, total 70+ percent of the country, its… representative government?
I think that idea scares conservatives. Hence, another “Swift Boat” group out to discredit anyone who dares talk the reality on the ground in Iraq. At least now we know where Rove is going.
August 23rd, 2007 at 6:06 am
“The Democrats have proposed several viable alternative plans, from phased withdrawal to pulling troops out to the periphery and allow the Iraqis to battle it out amongst themselves…”
The first time I remember reading of a strategy similar to the donkeys’ “strategy” in Iraq was when I read “The Red Badge of Courage.”
February 20th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
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