Perhaps the mistake here is to talk about "imminent" failure or the "brink" of failure. That sets you up as wrong absent some unequivocal sign that things are indeed a failure.




Like Bush economic policies, Bush military policies will cause damage and unambiguously fail in their objectives. But we don't know when that lack of ambiguity will be. This the peril of basing your policy preferences on reality as opposed to fantasy.

Calls to take one last stab at changing the course would have more credibility if I felt the callers would ever concede that, if the course isn't changed, it's time to start cutting our losses.

Good for you, Matt, for calling bullshit on this "stay the course" mentality.

The Bush Administration cannot salvage the situation because they have neither the competence to do it alone, or the influence with our allies to get them to help.

Everyone knows it's time to get out. And everyone knows the Bush Administration is waiting for the politically opportune time to do it.

This has nothing to do with "standing up Iraqis." It's about winning elections here at home.

Stay the course Dems are conceding this issue to Republicans by allowing them to set the timetable.

Wrong move.

Matt

Your point does highlight why Bush never deviates from his stated talking points and never admits failure of being wrong.

Why is this so hard to grasp.  The goal as far as Biden, Clark, Tom Friedman and others is for Iraq to be able to stand on its own as a multi-ethnic, constitutional democratic state.   Bush from the moment he failed to tell the American People the truth he made that harder.  The appointment of Bremmer and the continual failure to protect the Iraqis makes these goals ever harder to achieve.  That is not the same thing as saying we should remove our troops now.  The problems in Iraq are not so surprising given Saddems misrule.  However, there are courses of action  between "staying the course" and pulling out now.

I've said it before. I'll say it again.



There is absolutely no reason to waste your time labeling yourself "stay the course" or "we have to change course."



Senator Biden should accept the president's terminology. Nay, he should say in his patented dismissive good ol' regular guy way:



"Tim, this isn't about whether we stand down as the Iraqis stand up, or whether we withdraw our forces. Everyone agrees, at this point, that the goal is to get out of Iraq as soon as possible while leaving a stable government in place. The question is how we do this. At the moment, the president has no plan. At the moment, there is no criterion to indicate the completetion of the mission. At the moment, all we know is that the president wants to stay in Iraq indefinitely."



Just keep saying that. "I support standing down as the Iraqis stand up. I join the president in this goal. What's his plan? What's the absolute deadline for withdrawing American forces? 2010? The president's plan is to stay in Iraq indefinitely. There's no end in sight."



"Yes, let's stay the course until the Iraqis are free. But we have to have a plan. What is the president's plan. He had no plan for New Orleans. He has no plan for Iraq. He plans to stay there indefinitely. 2010. 2015. 2020. Those are all dates that are consistent with what the president has said. The president wants to stay in Iraq indefinitely."



As I've said before, and may have said once or twice here, the message is "The president wants to stay in Iraq indefinitely."



That's a true statement. It makes it clear that president is weak, indecisive and has no plan. Say it over and over again. Say it until one of those gutless weenies at the gaggle ask Scotty: "Scott, there are some Democrats saying that the president means to stay in Iraq indefinitely. Do you have a comment?"



Biden can also step above the fray with this line. "Let's not get into partisan rhetorical squabbles here. We all agree on the ultimate goal. I'm happy to say we should stay the course until the job is done if that will move along the discussion. But I need to know what the job is, when it will be done and when the deadline is for saying that we've done the best we can. Rignt now, all I know is that the president wants to stay in Iraq indefinitely."

Indeed, Brad. Matt, Matt. . . . Failure looks like this:
--The failure to emplace a constitution and a parliamentary government of some description.
--The fracturing of Iraq into competing fiefdoms.
--Genocide.

That failure may happen later this year, or early next year--or in the next couple of weeks or even days, given Zarqawi's declaration of war, the accelerating pace of explosion and slaughter now underway around Baghdad, and the October 15 vote on the constitution, in the wake of which the pulse of Iraqi democracy may well immediately decease except in the fevered minds of the administration's machers. That's not nothing, Matt--that's catastrophic disaster. You see failure; you ain't seen nothing yet. You are still not engaging with this monumental disaster with your customary seriousness and focus. I understand: You were never ON the bus. Well, neither was I, friend. But now it's careening toward us. . . .

I think Matthew might turn to Todd Gitlin some time and ask him about the feelings bright young 20-somethings had about vietnam lo these 40 years ago now.

The much-vaunted iraq-vietnam comparison has always been true on precisely one level: unwinnable wars sold on false pretenses. But finding a politically acceptable way out is what took years....

I'd suspect that of any of the national Democratic figures, Wes Clark would give you the straightest and most knowledgeable answer, since he's been both on the 'failure' end (Vietnam) and the successful end (Kosovo) of the spectrum of war.


Virtually everthing that Clark predicted would happen in Iraq (since his testimony before the HASC in 2002) has come true. It would be a mistake to think that he's not doing his best to advance the truth in this case. Even if it may not be the answer we'd all like to hear, I'm going to have to accept that it may be the only answer.

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I'm disappointed that you only had time to ask a 'soundbite' question, since the answer is neither simple or easy. (Sounds to me like he's learned the art of the soundbite, though).

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Have you considered doing an in-depth interview with Clark? You should make the effort.... it would be a fascinating conversation.

I don't think Matt's criticism is valid in the larger scheme of things. This is politics. I think he’s expecting elected officials to do the media’s job to inform the public of controversial views.

There are plenty of things I blame politicians for, but we can’t blame them for every irrational tendency of our culture. The American public deeply values and votes for leaders who will “stay the course” and pretend we’re invincible, irrationally hope against all odds, because that’s what the public generally believes. We vote for rhetoric and ideology over wonkiness, which may be the death of us, but it’s not our politician’s fault.

I blame our culture first and foremost, but I blame the media far more than the politicians. A politician is supposed to be a whore to some extent, albeit a competent whore hopefully.

It’s the media’s job to ask hard questions as only they can comfortably do  in the hypothetical, specifically because they’re not charged with making decisions or leading. It’s their job to inform the public so our culture can learn and evolve.

It’s the media which is failing most miserably imho, maybe because they’re owned by conglomerates driven by other agendas and advertisement. Maybe because media pundits just punch the clock and don't really have to give a shit becasue they'll be fine regardless. But even there I see a great deal of public blame becasue we generally worship schlock.

The thing is, hardly anyone who says we are "on the brink of failure" defines what the opposite of failure - i.e., success - means.

While I disagree about how close we are to failure, you are 100% correct about an undefined "success."

Success became undefineable on September 11, 2001, when the Bush Administration decided Iraq was reponsible, despite not having a shred of evidence.

It's a whole lot easier to say bring them home no matter what follows

Nobody is saying that. Not Clark. Not Juan Cole. Not Howard Dean. Nobody.

What's the rational way to withdraw without leaving a regional conflagration and a terrorist "feedlot" in our wake is a more important question than when to withdraw.

Yes, that's the question. That's the question the president needs to answer. If the best way to ask that question is to not use the word "withdraw", fine. But ask the damned question.

This whole question of how we describe the process of disengagement from Iraq, whether as a political question or as a policy question, is an enormous distraction from the issue at hand.

What's the plan? What's the plan for the Iraqis standing up? Juan Cole has one, that involves withdrawing first from the urban areas and providing armored and air support to Iraqi forces. What's the president's plan for standing up? What's Biden's?

THAT'S the question. Politically, asking it points out the president's failure, but I don't really care about the politics. We've gotta disengegage while minimizing the additional damage done to Iraq, and to ourselves as part of that process of disengagement. American disengagement has to happen as soon as it possibly can under that constraint.



The need to disengage is something that everyone agrees on. It's time to stop arguing about it.

The Dems should say that Bush's invasion of Iraq succeeded in overthrowing Saddam and getting them started, but now it is up to the Iraqi people to solve their own problems, and our presence is making that less rather than more likely.  Moreover, Katrina shows that we have urgent needs at home.  Propose that we announce that after the Oct 15 vote on the constitution, we will begin withdrawing from urban areas and rotating troops home.  Propose that we announce that we want no permanent bases in Iraq, and that Iraqis must manage their own oil reserves.  Say that if Bush wants to stay indefinitely and establish permanent bases, he must say so, put adequate amounts in the budget (and provide adequate revenue) to accomplish those things and explain exactly what it would take to begin withdrawing troops. 

Folks, I don't have a solution to the catastrophe that Iraq has become, but so far, the comments from the Democratic politicians have been disappointing.  I don't know how much worse Iraq would have to get for Joe Biden to come around to the idea that we are doing more harm than good.  

Whether or not people like politicians who "stay the course", this seems an insane policy for Iraq.  But if it's not to be "stay the course", then what is the policy to be?  Democrats will have to deal with this.  Believe me, the subject will come up in the 2006 elections.

Here's what I think: I don't know if most of the Democratic politicians are leaving me, or if I am leaving them, but we sure ain't together.

The thing to remember is that we will have to begin withdrawing troops in short order, whether anyone calls for withdrawal or not. We do not have a real choice in the matter. Having Democrats calling for withdrawal does give the administration some political cover, as they may say something like, "we could have won the war, except those nasty Democrats undermined the war effort." Indeed, we are already seeing versions of this. Democrats may either try to appear tough, like Biden, and try to give the impression that they are behind the war, but critical of its prosecution. Or they can just say the whole thing was a mistake, they were misled, our troops died in vain. I can't tell you which is more politically effective, though I know which is in accordance with reality.

Failure is what is happening now. It is slow-motion failure, but nothing like a victory. I would define catastrophic failure as the creation of a de facto autonomous terrorist state consisting of some part of what we presently call Iraq, from which another large-scale terrorist attack is launched on the U.S. What will we do then? Re-invade?

mexdem, you sum up my feelings pretty accurately.  It's not just counter productive to set a timeline for withdrawal -- but also counter productive to define publicly what the signs are that it's "too late". It'd be telling the insurgents exactly what they have to aim for.

The two people I think have been voices of reason on this whole iraq issue still say there's more to lose by getting out immediately than by changing the course and trying to stabilise the situation. And that's good enough for me.

Wesley Clark (as Kat points out elsewhere on this thread, he's been right with Iraq predictions all along and he's got the career qualifications to judge) says the price of early withdrawal would be regional conflagration and so does Juan Cole who follow Iraq for Iraq's sake, not Iraq for US elections sake.

Sometimes I think Democrat supporters in the US are more interested in winning an election out of this war than minimising the very serious damage that's being done on a global level from the iraq blunder. Well, sorry, the election you should've won on this war was the last one but you couldn't even stand a candidate who was against it. Grrrr.

Invading Iraq was always wrong. It was morally wrong because it was based on a lie. It was strategically wrong because of the potential for destabilising a part of the world so many of us depend on. 

Morally, it can't be salvaged, but strategically the damage can be minimised. And many, many countries have a stake in keeping the lid on regional conflict. a real leader, as mexdem says, could leverage this.

Of course I doubt Bush will. But don't say that those, like Clark and Cole, who believe more can be done, are being politically naive. They're trying to think further ahead than the next US election and some of us out in the wider world appreciate that. The fact that they won't publicly define what "time to get out looks like" is not enough to undermine their credibility for me. Sorry if you can't make an election bumper sticker out of it.

Biden, well, I'm sick of hearing what US Senators have to say about these things. They had their chance to do something about it.

You call it "seat of the pants."  I suspect the Administration would cal it "keeping our options open."  And from the military's standpoint, establishing bases -- who knows whether, ultimately, we may have to give them up -- isn't a real problem.

N.B.  Bases built for the purpose of supporting Iraqi counter-insurgency efforts can be seamlessly converted into bases supporting Iraqi national defense, that is, supporting Iraq's interest in protecting its sovereignty in an unstable neighborhood.  Afterall, we've got to find something to replace our client Saddam (too bad he went off the reservation, n'est-ce pas?).

Whether we should stay in Iraq or leave Iraq has nothing to do with whether we have succeeded or failed to accomplish some particular goal that some of our leaders might have set for themselves in the past.  We have to deal with the world as it currently exists.  The only questions should be questions such as: What are the various possible outcomes in Iraq that are still open?  Which combinations of US actions have the greatest expected value? etc.

In my own opinion, the main issue before us is what needs to be done to bring stability of some kind to what is left of Iraq, and to prevent this particular two and a half-year war from turning into decades of worse war - both in Iraq and the broader Middle East region.