The way I see it, Democrats are seen as anti-war, unable and unwilling to do what it takes in the war on terror, yet everyone is unhappy with how Bush is handling the war. How do we advocate pullout without seeming weak?

Here's an idea: propose shifting resources from Iraq to Afghanistan to hunt for Bin Laden and to finishg the job shutting down Al Qaeda. Show we're not anti-war, as Kos says, but anti this war.

Those of us who opposed the invasion of Iraq from the get-go, and those who have come to see it as a tragic mistake, need to consider a lesson we should have learned from our experience in Afghanistan in the 1980's.  In that instance we created chaos and a fundamentalist army for the purpose of defeating the Soviets -- and having done so, and with at least nine fully armed militia outfits in the field, we folded our tents, walked away, and said, essentially, you guys fight it out till someone wins.  We washed our hands of it in 1991.  The upshot was chaotic conditions, another million dead, the Taliban regime, and a safe sanctuary for al-Qaeda to organize and train.  While I don't know if we could have successfully solved some of the problems, the point is we didn't even try.  We need to understand that any engagement in war is also about returning from combat operations to a new political reality that at least in part serves some of the interests of the source of the conflict. 

Juan Cole this week laid it out in a suggested ten point plan -- at least he has an idea that is not a simplistic slogan like "Bring the Troops Home." (and to hell with the rest.)  Cole makes the case that a Civil War in Iraq would cost millions of lives, probably draw in the neighbor states on the part of their proxies in Iraq, and potentially could be uncontrolable.  No matter where we stood at the outset of this thing -- we are obligated to face the reality of now -- the conditions of today -- and not some sort of ideal situation that might have been had we not invaded, and had Bush not engineered so many profound mistakes in the post combat period.  The Democrats -- and indeed Independents who have paid attention -- need to be about demanding that Congress do oversight agressively, and in that process call for new strategies to be laid before it that will result in disengagement, but also are designed to minimize chaos and the victory of Islamist forces such as what the Taliban represented in Afghanistan. 

I agree that Afghanistan is equally iffy, but in different ways.  The key to some degree of success in Afghanistan is and always has been to persuade Pakistan to disengage from the Taliban.  That still has not really happened.  We need much more public focus on the situation. 

I believe Dean was for the Afghanistan invasion, was he not?

"Cindy Sheehan has given us a golden opportunity by elevating the discourse to a higher level...will the democratic politicos sieze the opportunity? "

I think Democrats must be careful about looking to Cindy for leadership.  Her discourse as far as I can discern is largely a regurgitation of the usual talking points commonly heard on the left.  Sure, she superficially makes a sympathetic figure, but it is risky to invest too much in her other than a temporary icon.

As one who was opposed to the war from the beginning, I've never quite understood why it is so imperative that Democrats do a mea culpa about the Resolution for war. What purpose does this serve?

The problem is most Americans took the exact same position as the Democrats on this, and making them rub their noses in it is, in a way, rubbing voters noses in it. That seems counterproductive.

Democrats can have it both ways here. We can say that we were misled as you were, we put politics aside as you did, we united as a nation after 9/11, as you did, but they lied to us, they let us down and they pulled us apart, and they bungled this war far worse than any of us could have imagined.

We are you, America, and we want a change. 

Liberal hawks need to methodically but aggressively insist on the distinction. It was perhaps a mistake to support Bush's war, but nowhere on the level of waging it as incompetently and dishonestly as Bush did.

Memekiller

This is not a war at the nation state level so shifting to Afghanistan keeps us locked into the wrong paradigm. (I cringe as I use that word, but it fits.)

We need to refocus on the stateless enemy.  The objective is to stop the Osama bin Ladens and the others who practice  transnational war via terrorism.

We need to employ military, political, intelligence, economics, etc to "fight" the stateless enemy.  Part of the fight is to find ways to remove the reason for their making the US the focus of their fight.  

"... perhaps a mistake ..."? What about a mistake of historical monumental proportions.

If we, as Americans, don't recast this as something OTHER than a war, we will never get it right. This is not a military thing, at least not solely, and casting it as a war implies a primary role for the military.

Terrorism is ongoing. Terrorism has multiple causes and multiple objectives. But mostly, terrorism is not state-based. So no white flags, no surrender.

Just as criminal activity is an ongoing, multi-leveled set of activities, so to is terrorism.

We need to reinvigorate our law enforcement capabilities, maybe even with a new 'international law unit' to hunt down terrorists anywhere in the world. Maybe we infuse new money into a terrorist international justice system that encourages a new international emphasis on going after terror cells.

But if we keep thinking of this as war - we'll be searching for a 'win' 50 years from now.

If the people of Cleveland and other places like Cleveland ever figure out what's really going on, there's going to be hell to pay.