For whqt purpose?
You must know we can’t bomb Iran, not without stirring up something too hot to handle.
I don’t necessarily see that a detailed plan is an advantage. It would certainly be foolish to cobble together some minutely specific program, only to see circumstances render it moot. Which brings us round to the main point.
It isn’t so much that the Dumbocrats know precisely how they will respond in any given set of circumstances, it is that we trust them to make a more reasonable response. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we cannot help in Iraq, we can only make things worse. Its one thing to make sacrifices in order to fix what you have broken, quite another to make futile sacrifices to a moribund plan.
The Bushiviks want to “stay the course” because that is thier one and only hope! If a miracle should arise…if the Iraqi government succeeds in uniting the Iraqi people in harmony, Shia Kurds and Sunni all dancing around the maypole and singing “Kumbabya”…they will claim that it is all the result of their prescient planning and brilliant stratetgic maneuvering. Praying for a miracle isn’t much of a plan, but its all they’ve got, and they’ve managed to convince themselves that it is feasible. Any other program either leads to defeat or an admits that defeat has already occured. If Saddam’s tanks had rolled up Pennsylvania Ave. and blown down the door to the Oval Office, they would still be claiming progress being made, and that only patience is required to ensure eventual victory.
I don’t trust any predetermined plan for dealing with the Iraq Debacle. But reviewing the Bushivik responses to events as they arose, I would very much prefer a different set of decision makers. The partisan identity is secondary: if the Republicans will thoroughly repudiate the stupidity and mendacity that they have, thus far, pledged undying loyalty…well, then, perhaps. Absent that miracle, they both need and deserve a electoral catastrophe. Serves them right, and serves us better.
Whoever gains power will be improvising, out of necessity. We have so utterly screwed the pooch, no plan is possible, only responding to situations as they arise. Perhaps the Dems will be no better, but they could hardly be worse.
Well, we’ll see. If the Democrats take my advice there are three possible results. Either they’ll win seats, they’ll stay the same, or they’ll lose seats.
If they win seats, my advice was correct. If they stay the same, at least my advice kept them from losing seats. If they lose seats, they need to follow my advice even more closely next time.
Who’s this “we,” kemosabe? I mean, you and me, I guess that’s a “we.” But I’m not sure that you and me is enough to wrest control away from the Republicans, and I’m definitely not sure that the majority of voters agree with what you wrote above.
The problem with the Republicans is that they’ve demonstrated incompetence and corruption. The problem with the Democrats is that they’ve demonstrated spinelessness, credulity, and an almost pathological phobia of risking a position. And I say that as someone who desperately wants to see them win.
Sure, a lot of people agree with me that they’d be better than the Republicans–but a lot of people also disagree with me on that. They’d rather see an incompetent in control than a coward, and they see Democrats as being ideological cowards, unwilling to advance a position and take the heat for doing so. (That, coupled with his excellent constituent services, was Jesse Helms’s secret to reelection in North Carolina: a lot of folks who disagreed with him on politics respected his unflinching adherence to his ideals and therefore voted for him. Go figure.)
Yes, a specific plan might change as circumstances change. The thing is, if Democrats regain control, they’ll need to be able to change their plans based on shifting circumstances. The world’s not a static place, and if you demand stasis before you put a plan forth, you’ll never have a plan, and you’ll never be elected by folks who want to see leadership. What a plan does is it demonstrates a willingness to do the ahrd work of coming up with ideas. What a good plan does is it demonstrates wisdom, perceptiveness, and knowledge.
That’s why Democrats should put a plan forward.
It’s a fair point that Democrats aren’t running for CiC this year. They are, however, running for Congress, and so their plan should be Congress-sized: talk about their plans for a military budget, talk about their plans for Congressional oversight of the war, talk about their plans for advising the President.
Daniel
Don’t you think a consistent national message might be more effective, even in a midterm election? It worked for the Pubs in 1994.
Wow. That is exactly what I tried to post earlier, alomst to a word, but I couldn’t get the server to respond.
But I’m not sure the Democrats need a unified answer to this questions, as so many pundits seem to say. Different strategies may play better or worse in different parts of the country. It certainly would help if they had a unified answer, but then the answer that would be obtained thru any kind of concensus would probably just be mush.
I think Feingold’s move is in that direction–the only way to “nationalize” this election (absent which, we lose again) is somehow to bring the focus to the only two national posts in our electoral government.
Given that there is not likely to be an upswelling of impeachment support manifesting in republican primaries, by setting out the lesser but still “national” issue of censure, F. provides a litmus test for upcoming election debates.
“So, candidate x, how will you vote re:censure?”
Frankly, if we can’t win on that truly mild rebuke (considering the extent of the constitional violation) we are not likely to prevail on the “Competants R-Us” theme.
btw, since I seem to be in the wrong thread, I would extend the censure concept to the iraq shitstorm as well…
Censure, schmesure. All that does is telegraph disaproval. It’s a cathartic act, nothing more. And with our troops still over there, just doesn’t look good.
If Iraq is going to play any role in this election, it needs to do so in the form of an alternative plan to what the Republicans are proposing. How about the Democrats proposing we set a timetable for withdrawl? We start bring the troops home at the end of this year, and draw down to no more than a nominal force acting in an advisory fashion by the end of 2007 (or mid 2008).
More than that – we should be committed to abandoning all our brand-new military “enduring bases” in Iraq by the end of 2007. We should flatly reject the “stationary aircraft carrier” thinking.
Meanwhile, General Abizaid is saying just the opposite. Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera
Well, if we don’t have troops there, we can’t have bases. But if we do have troops there, we proabably need a base or two. I don’t really know much about this, so I’m not personally invested in any particular answer.
The point is, having built the bases in the first place sends a strong message that we’re settling in for a long stay.
Here’s a good place to start: http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2005/03/enduring_bases_iraq.html
Sure, if Larry’s available, you fire Moe and put Larry in charge. But even if Moe’s spent the last 4 years poking you in the eye and slapping you on the head and calling you a numbskull, he’s still going to be a better choice than Curly. Moe might drive the bus into a ditch again, but Curly is guaranteed to drive the bus into a ditch. Moe is a blithering incompetent, that doesn’t mean Curly is better.
Or worse – that we’re planning to use Iraq as a staging ground to attack Iran or Syria.