Screw the Moderate Republicans

By Cenk Uygur
Created Sep 14 2007 - 9:17am

The Democrats should play politics. That's normally considered a dirty word, but in this case it can help. The Senate Democrats are worried that they can't get 60 votes in the Senate unless they pass a watered down, irrelevant Iraq withdrawal bill. And they're right, they can't.

But here's my solution -- don't.

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So, here is my solution. Pass a real withdrawal bill (giving our troops the money to come home in 12 months sounds about right), then let the Republicans block it with a filibuster. Beat the living crap out of them politically. Pass the same bill, let them block it again. Repeat and repeat and repeat, until they cry uncle.

They would also take a pounding on their credibility. John Warner claims he wants withdrawal, but if he doesn't vote that way, then is he really an honest broker? Whatever you do, don't give them political cover to pretend they voted for withdrawal while voting to let the president have complete discretion.

The way the Democrats have handled this so far, it seems that they are responsible for getting us out of Iraq. But in reality, it is the Senate Republicans who are responsible because they are blocking real action on withdrawal. Why not highlight this? Why would you take responsibility for Republican failure?

This is Politics 101. Why would you let your opponent have political cover and take heat from your own constituents for caving in? Why not instead pass a real bill and put tremendous pressure on your opponents to come around to your position?

Both campaigns were condemned by contemporaries for having been undertaken in a spirit of hubris, without adequate thought for preparation and without adequate knowledge of the distant land they were setting out to conquer.

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Is there any sense in a military “surge”? In Sicily, Athens made a dangerous double-or-nothing gamble, and lost. Still, having committed the necessary resources wholeheartedly, Athens arguably might have won — or at least not lost so badly — if its army had been better led in the field.

What would it take to win in Iraq, to crush the insurgency and suppress civil war? According to retired Army Colonel Paul Hughes, experience shows that successful peacekeeping requires deploying a force in a ratio of one soldier for every 50 citizens.

To pacify even Baghdad alone, a force of 130,000 troops would be needed in the city —about a ten-fold increase from current levels.

A gamble that huge is apparently too large even for the White House to stomach. What the President has actually proposed, a surge of about 20,000 troops, might make sense if intended as a face-saving measure, a show of strength before withdrawal.

With every additional month that passes on the present course, the United States and allies can expect to lose dozens of additional soldiers, with hundreds more wounded, without getting any closer to victory.

<snip>

If it is really intended as a gamble at victory, it is quite a long shot. The U.S. generals in Iraq might well throw up their hands in despair, as the Athenians would have if their pleas for recall or reinforcement had been answered so tepidly.

Clinging to hope against odds, President Bush has been slow to publicly recognize the grave problems in Iraq, and he was slow to craft a meaningful strategy either for victory or withdrawal.

http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5926