Democrats' Dilemma in Iraq
- From: jose <josefsoplar@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:06:41 -0700 (PDT)
Democrats' Dilemma in Iraq
By William Rusher
Washington Times | Friday, June 27, 2008
The Democrats now find themselves in a thoroughly uncomfortable
dilemma over Iraq.
Back in the early days of the American invasion, when things were
going relatively badly, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
announced the war was "lost" and America's only recourse was to pull
out. (This, of course, would have been an absolute political disaster
for the Bush administration, as Mr. Reid no doubt knew and hoped.) In
the subsequent months and years, when things there have gone
substantially better, Mr. Reid has never retracted his highly
premature conclusion but it is safe to say it is now "inoperative."
According to such sources as the New York Times, which can hardly be
described as having been a cheerleader for the attack, the al Qaeda
forces in Iraq are now thoroughly on the defensive, and Nouri al-
Maliki's government is strengthening its grip on the country. It seems
likely that George W. Bush will achieve his goal of stepping down as
president with the Iraq problem well on its way to a solution.
That leaves the Democrats in a bit of a pickle. What, exactly, is
their current policy on Iraq? It would be out of the question to
insist, in the teeth of the good news from Iraq, that the United
States should adopt the former Democratic policy and simply bug out.
And, in purely political terms, it would be equally difficult for the
Democrats to admit they were wrong, reverse their position and endorse
the administration policy.
Is there some middle road they could safely take? It's hard to
envision what it might be. Either the United States must insist on
prevailing, as it is currently doing, or substantially abandon the
region altogether. And it's hard to imagine any more disastrous policy
than the latter. The Middle East has for decades been both one of the
most critical areas on Earth, thanks to its indispensable reserves of
oil, and also one of the most volatile, by virtue of its ethnic and
religious quarrels. To abandon it would verge on economic suicide.
It is not surprising, then, that at the moment there is no settled
Democratic policy on Iraq. If the Democrats win in November, the
cooler heads in the party will presumably prevail and endorse a policy
not all that different from that of President Bush - i.e., sustaining
the current regimes in Iraq and elsewhere in the region that support
U.S. policy. But between now and Election Day the Democrats need a
Middle East policy different from Mr. Bush's yet not obviously
suicidal - and they just don't have one.
For the moment, the Democratic answer is silence. And it's hard not to
feel it is probably their best bet. After all, Election Day is just
four-and-a-half months away, and there are plenty of other issues the
Democrats can seize on to emphasize their sharp differences with the
Republicans.
But the American people are hardly unaware of the importance of the
Middle East, and of America's stake in that area. And they will credit
President Bush with the wisdom to recognize these and devise policies
that take them into account. Painful as American losses - any losses -
in the Middle East may be, they pale in comparison to those our
country would suffer if it lost the capacity to influence events
there.
We must never forget that there are individual despots, and whole
nations, in the Middle East who despise the United States and would
gladly drive it out of the region, and deprive us of its oil reserves,
if only they could. Keeping that from happening must be a cardinal aim
of U.S. foreign policy and ought to be a matter of bipartisan
agreement. That is why, despite the understandable distaste partisan
Democrats would feel at having to endorse a Republican policy, the
happiest result for the United States, and the soundest long-run
course for the Democratic Party, would be a Democratic decision to
endorse President Bush's policy in Iraq.
.
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