ABC News: Democrats Already Challenging Bush Over Iraq Policy
Jan. 5, 2007— The new Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill today called for President Bush to abandon plans for a surge of new troops in Iraq, a plan the White House is expected to announce later this month.
Calling the conflict in Iraq a “civil war,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urged President Bush to begin a phased “redeployment” of American troops out of Iraq over the next months. They rejected the administration’s reported plans to add as many as 20,000 more troops to quell violence in Baghdad and elsewhere.
“We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future, but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success,” Pelosi said in a joint letter to Bush, dated today. “Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain.”
The Democratic leaders said they believe the solution to the conflict in Iraq is political rather than military.
I think that Karl Rove may be doing some orchestrating here. I don’t think he’s the political genius some do (if he were, Plamegate would have died, stillborn), but this one is an easy catch. Bush was planning on skedaddling from Iraq before 2008 anyway, since it has long been obvious that Iraq cannot be pacified without taking on Iran and Syria, and Bush, for whatever reason, has no intention of doing so.
Now come the Democrats bearing gifts on silver platters. I expect that Bush is pushing a surge because he knows it will inflame and harden Democratic opposition, and as a result the Democrats will force Bush (kicking and screaming, oh my) into withdrawing from Iraq. Bush will end up with what he wants - Iraq no longer hung around the Republican Party’s neck like a rotting albatross going into 2008 - but the disaster in Iraq that will follow withdrawal will instead be hung around the Democratic party’s neck.
Like a noose.
Which will all be well and good, except for the disastrous medium and long term consequences for the United States itself.
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A hollywood liberal’s wetdream fantasy. BushHitler is a cynical bastard who would bring about untold death and destruction in Iraq so that the Democrats can be blamed. I just watched that movie, frankly that’s all that comes out of the city of dreams now.
Maybe, just maybe you are the sick, twisted cynic. Do you think? I certainly do.
But if you’re suggesting that Bush would place political considerations ahead of what is actually the right/honorable course of action.. well that would make him a Democrat wouldn’t it?
No, it would make him a politician.
Actually, a RINO politician. Which could be construed, I suppose, as a Democrat of sorts.
Why do you think the democrats will be blamed for failure in Iraq when they are not blamed for failure in Viet Nam?
Since I’m quite familiar with both situations (I’m sixty, and was an active antiwar, anti-American leftist during the 1960s), I understand the differences. In a nutshell: There is no draft today, and there is an alternative conservative media powerful enough to pin the blame on a forced withdrawal where Bush wants it: the Democratic majority in Congress which is so swollen with arrogance and stupidity it is already making the point that it can “shut Republicans out” and do whatever it wishes.
With power comes responsibility. With absolute power comes absolute responsibility. And the biggest kicker is that Americans already don’t trust the Democrats not to sell the nation down the river. The Democrats are making policy based on a terrible misreading of the American public: They think that Americans care more about getting out of Iraq than they care about a disastrous defeat. They are wrong. Americans hate defeat, and once it becomes obvious the Democrats have engineered a terrible one, they will devastate the party. A large part of American disenchantment with GWB over the war came from the (correct) perception that he was not seriously fighting to defeat our enemies.
I didn’t vote for Republicans in 2006. A major reason was the expectation that we would be out of Iraq and facing disaster whether we had Republicans or Democrats in control of the legislature. This way, the Democrats are going to shoulder most of the blame for what I see coming. And they will pay heavily for that in 2008.
This Democrat interregnum is temporary, at best. Now Republicans can watch the disaster unfold, and develop new policies and, I hope, candidates who will be ranged against the sort of failures of will, imagination, and courage that have dogged their party since 9/11.
Baloney. You have it exactly backward.
Bush wouldn’t have replaced General Pace with the much more aggressive Petraeus if he planned on retreating.
He also wouldn’t have put an admiral in charge of CENTCOM unless he had a plan for the three naval battle groups now in the Persian Gulf.
Bush also wouldn’t have had a two-hour video conference with al Maliki this morning, after which the Iraqis announced a crackdown on militias, if the plan was for an American surrender.
Stick to commenting on domestic politics.
The problematic rap on Petraeus is that he isn’t, and won’t be, aggressive enough:
KING DAVID RETURNS By RALPH PETERS - New York Post Online Edition: Seven
And in the spirit of your own offering, allow me to thank you for your clueless bullshit.
That’s about the dumbest analysis I read yet.
I find most all of these analyses to be in contrast to what I see. From day one, Bush has exhibited the same behaviors, both in words and in deeds: that we can win in Iraq. With regard to the “surge”, which is really just a euphemism for an escalation, he honestly believes it will change the paradigm in Iraq. There is zero evidence to suggest that it will.
As we all know, Iraq is a complicated country and both Iran and Syria grow stronger as long as Iraq is chaotic. We can thank Mr. Bush for that. I’d like to see a poll of Iraqis to see how many would like to go back to the days of Saddam…I mean…the kids could at least go to school. We had him totally boxed in and Saddam represented ZERO threat to America. What a waste of money, lives, and credibility this war has been.
With regard to the Dems, Americans overwhelmingly support their agenda and it is statistically likely that they will gain a large number of seats in 2008. Deal.
Oh, horseshit. Were the public not fed up with the chronic betrayals of the National interest, the Republicans would still hold Congress. And were there any other viable alternative to the Republicans, the Democrats would be cooling their heels as well.