The Democrats never once responded, letting the Republican smear stand as the framework for the Iraq debate. It is now firmly established that Democrats are weak as well as weak-kneed, Republicans have successfully equated supporting the troops with giving President Bush everything he wanted, without real benchmarks with teeth, without any fundamental change in policy. This is a phony frame, but no one pointed that out.
The Dangerfield Democrats have apparently learned nothing from the disastrous Swiftboating of John Kerry, i.e., answer negatives and smears instantly and mercilessly. Did the Congressional Democrats perhaps secretly agree with Bush, that they are indeed advocating surrender by demanding accountability and a change in policy? No wonder they get no respect, like Rodney Dangerfield. This record will follow them into the fall elections and on into 2008. Americans voted for Democrats last year in order to force a change in Bush's war, and the Democrats did not deliver. When attacked as being agents of surrender did they respond vigorously, presenting their strong case? No, never a peep from any of them. Respect for Democrats is eroding, and I can guarantee that Republicans can and will chip away with impunity over the next year.
The excuse offered for this lack of Democratic response is that the party does not have a sitting President to lead them, using the fabled bully pulpit. If they do not pull up their socks and start imposing the Democratic frame on the Iraq debate (and every other topic on the radar) it is dead certain that they never will have a sitting president to lead them. Another excuse for failure to make the Democratic case is that, when either Pelosi or Reid have spoken up they have been mercilessly pilloried by both the Republicans and the media pundits. So? Damned if you do, damned if you don't, so go and ahead and do, if for no other reason than to keep your self respect- and earn the respect of the public as well. Make the Republicans play defense for a change.
The damage the Republicans have inflicted on Democrats is already observable in a painful article in the Washington Post on Sunday, 27 May, written by Andrew J. Bacevich, writing about the death of his 27-year old son in Iraq: "To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party," said Mr. Bacevich. Some Democratic Congress persons try to claim that the Republicans still own Bush's war, but increasingly the American voters will not see it that way. While the political reality is that Democrats do not have a veto-proof majority, and so must compromise with Republicans to get anything done, they have not stepped up to the plate and countered the Republicans' shameless smears with some aggressive framing of their own.
What could Reid and Pelosi, the top-ranking Democrats at the moment, have said? What could at least some of the numerous Democratic presidential candidates have said to offset the "surrender" theme emphasized by Republicans so relentlessly? Why not refer repeatedly to the Iraq mess as "Bush's war?" Why not dismantle the Republican-sponsored myth that de-funding the war means not supporting the troops? The two are not necessarily linked, as Glenn Greenwald points out on 26 May in Salon.com (http://salon.com/opi...) Cutting off the funding "doesn't mean soldiers will have their guns and bullets taken away in the middle of a battle," even though Republicans have so far convinced Americans that it does. Congress has used de-funding many, many times in the past to "compel a President to cease military action, and to invoke it, Congress simply consults with the military, determines how much time is needed to effectuate a safe withdrawal, and then de-funds the war accordingly." This idiotic glueing together of support-funding-in-order-to-support-the-troops has never been challenged by the Democrats. It should be, since it is Bush who threatened to deny supplies to the troops if he himself had to face benchmarks or the money would stop. Bush, the Great Denier, the Great Liar, the Great De-Funder is the one not supporting the troops.
Another theme is the ugly "blood for oil" truth about Bush's war. Antonia Juhasz in the New York Times on 8 December 2006 revealed the Iraqi oil distribution formula demanded by the United States: 63 out of the 80 Iraqi oil wells must be opened to foreign investors on a lease agreement; any new wells are also to be given to "foreign investors" (read Big Oil), with little compensation to Iraq, and with no guarantees that Big Oil will invest any of their profits in Iraq. One of the benchmarks set up for Iraqis is to approve the oil distribution formula- no wonder they drag their feet. American forces may have found and released civilian Iraqis from an Al Qaeda prison, but this is small compensation for the plundering of Iraq's main national resource. Nor does it offset the 2 million Iraqis (16% of the population) who have fled the country to avoid the violence, including one third of the doctors, or the many thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, or the increasingly desperate condition of women, or the collapse of Iraqi education (only 30% of Iraqi children attend school, compared to nearly 100% pre-war).
The exponentially ballooning cost of Bush's war is burning money at the incredible rate of $6 billion a month, which does not include the cost of the "surge," but does include the $12 billion airlifted in 2003 to the Iraqi government in stacks of $100 bills- that immediately disappeared and cannot be accounted for. What could America have done at home with that kind of money? David Leonhardt, an economic analyst with the New York Times, suggested that we could have provided 10 years of universal health care for every American who is currently uninsured; accomplished the reconstruction of New Orleans; provided universal pre-school for every 3- and 4-year old child in America... things like this have been de-funded by Bush's war so Bush could provide no-bid contracts for favored campaign contributors like Halliburton. If the Congress de-funded Bush's war, we could do them instead.
It may be argued that Democrats wish to avoid aggressive confrontation in order to accomplish the rest of their domestic agenda. Well and good, but do not expect the Republicans to be polite in return, or to cooperate in any way. Remember how the Virginia Republicans stone-walled every initiative Tim Kaine endeavored to accomplish, and even repudiated his appointment of Mr. Bland, a union man, to his cabinet? National Republicans cannot afford to help the Democrats accomplish anything, either, and they will not do so. Timidity and failure to respond, obnoxiously if need be, to Republican smears and attacks is a sure road to losing the next election.