[Iowa-dx] Fwd: Clintonist Dems want it both ways on Iraq (John MacArthur, Providence Journal)

[hhart@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu]

=91Centrist=92 Democrats Want It Both Ways

Posted [at Harpers.org] on Tuesday, December 12,
2006. Originally from The Providence Journal,
Wednesday, December 6, 2006. By John R.
MacArthur.
http://www.harpers.org/jrm-centrist-democrats-3402838.html


SourcesSometimes it's great to be wrong. When the
Democrats took the House and the Senate=97contrary
to my published expectations=97I breathed a sigh of
relief. So what if James Webb is a
pulp-fiction-writing former Reaganite. The
senator-elect from Virginia and his Democratic
colleagues have pledged renewed scrutiny of the
Iraq catastrophe, and that's reason enough to
celebrate.

Then again, was my pessimism so misguided? I
wanted the Democrats to win so they might get us
out of Iraq, but I thought that they would fall
short because of their steadfast refusal to
condemn the war with a unified voice. Too often
during the campaign, I couldn't tell the
difference between the Democratic and the
Republican positions on Iraq.

Take the race in Indiana's 2nd District, where
Joe Donnelly, the Democrat, unseated the
incumbent Republican, Chris Chocola. During one
of their debates, Donnelly explained his position
on Iraq as follows: =93What we need is leadership
in Washington that is as good as our troops. We
can't walk out of Iraq. We have to stabilize that
country, and we have to win.=94 Sounds like =93stay
the course=94 to me.

Now, a month into the new Democratic majority,
it's possible to conclude that Americans voted
for oversight=97and the more distant hope of
withdrawal from Iraq=97without fully understanding
how pro-war (or if you prefer, anti-anti-war) the
opposition party really is.

To analyze this paradox it's necessary to
consider the work of Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D.-Ill.),
the hatchetman for Bill and Hillary Clinton and
boss of the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee. Emanuel labored hard to keep strongly
anti-war candidates off the Democratic line and
slate Iraq equivocators instead.

Emanuel's most publicized recruit was Tammy
Duckworth, the former Army helicopter pilot who
lost both her legs in Iraq. With national-party
backing, Duckworth defeated the more anti-war
Christine Cegelis in the primary in Illinois's
6th District (Senator Clinton's native grounds).
But despite her martyrdom, Duckworth's cautiously
critical position on Iraq (=93we can't just pull up
stakes and create a security vacuum=94) wasn't
enough to defeat the Republican Peter Roskam in
the general election.

Of the 22 Democratic candidates initially backed
by Emanuel and his sponsors in the Clinton
machine, only one, Peter Welch in Vermont,
favored speedy withdrawal from Iraq. Welch won
easily. Of the other 21, only 8 were victorious
last month. And one of Emanuel's original picks,
Steve Filson, didn't make it past his anti-war
primary opponent, Jerry McNerney, who prevailed
decisively over the incumbent Republican in
California's 11th District.

Before the election, Emanuel and his Senate
counterpart, Charles Schumer, pleaded
=93pragmatism=94=97that the Democrats couldn't be seen
as the party of =93cut and run=94 if they wanted to
attract =93moderate=94 voters. After the election,
Emanuel made a quick costume change, and brazenly
retailed a story to The New York Times that
portrayed him as the architect of a =93brilliant=94
strategy that exploited the mounting anti-war
sentiment in the country.

Under the headline, =93Democrats Turned War into an
Ally=94 the Times's credulous political reporters
parroted Emanuel, saying that =93the Democratic
strategy of running against the war, which would
have seemed impossibly risky three months
earlier, when the White House had urged its
candidates to embrace the war, was encouraged by
poll after poll, not to mention regular reports
of American casualties.=94

Impossibly risky? What nonsense. Polls showed
majority support for withdrawal in early August,
and anger over Iraq dates back much further.
That's what encouraged long-shot candidates like
Webb to challenge entrenched, pro-war incumbents.


Besides, if Emanuel and the Democratic caucus
have recognized the merits of opposing the
suicidal American occupation of Iraq, then why
did they smash John Murtha's bid to become
majority leader? Last year, Murtha courageously
broke ranks with his party's establishment by
calling for a rapid pullout of U.S. troops from
Iraq (he cleverly calls it =93redeployment=94), but
his initiative attracted little congressional
support. Even so, as a Pentagon insider and
Marine Corps veteran, Murtha cut a high profile
in the war debate, so voters aiming to protest
Iraq may well have mistaken the Pennsylvania
Democrat's position with his party's position.

Following Murtha's defeat, the next House
speaker, the increasingly anti-war Nancy Pelosi,
was pilloried in the press for backing Murtha
against Steny Hoyer, an early supporter of Bush's
Iraq folly. Evidently taking its cue from
Emanuel, The New York Times's editorial page
declared that because of his near-indictment in
the Abscam scandal, =93Mr. Murtha would have been a
farcical presence in a leadership promising the
cleanest Congress in history=94 and tut-tutted that
Pelosi =93has managed to severely scar her
leadership.=94

Received wisdom is a bipartisan taste, and
right-wing columnist John Podhoretz was also
happy to take the Emanuel feed, calling Murtha in
The New York Post Pelosi's =93sleazy
born-again-peacenik buddy=94 and arguing that the
Democrats won Congress =93in spite=94 of Pelosi and
her anti-war allies. =93Rather, [the Democratic
victory] was the handiwork of Rahm Emanuel, the
Chicago Democrat who recruited the right
candidates, raised money for them and made sure
they knew what themes were working, according to
Democratic polls.=94

I think that Murtha would have weathered the
Abscam video tape (after all he did turn down the
proffered bribe), especially if it was contrasted
with the corrupt awarding of vast amounts of
money to Halliburton and the other sleazy defense
contractors currently looting Iraq. And Podhoretz
is simply wrong on the politics: Emanuel's
batting average, 9 for 22, doesn't justify his
crowning as the mastermind of victory. You could
just as easily say the Democrats won in spite of
Emanuel.

Of course, House Democrats haven't suddenly
become Puritans. A bigger reason for the
hostility to Murtha is that he meant what he said
about leaving Iraq and would have quickly forced
the issue come January when the 110th Congress
convenes. For now, the =93centrist=94 Clinton wing
controls the party's agenda and wants to have it
both ways=97responsible critics who support the
president's alleged mission of democracy building
in Baghdad.

Things are worse in the Senate. The brightest
hope for the anti-war Democrats was Ned Lamont's
insurgent candidacy, which nearly knocked out
Bush's loyal war ally, Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
Here I was wrong again, and this time I am sorry.
I thought Lamont would carry not only anti-war
Democrats, but also fiscally conservative
Republicans appalled by the sheer cost of Iraq.

Unfortunately, collusion between the national
Republican Party and a significant minority of
the Democratic Party in Connecticut rescued
Lieberman and, for the time being, Bush's war
policy. In a 51-49 Senate, Lieberman holds the
balance of power on Iraq, since he can always
threaten to switch to the Republicans and throw
control to Dick Cheney, who as vice president can
vote to break ties.

The New York/Washington power elite, dominated by
Bush and the Clintons, doesn't have the guts or
the honesty to admit that Iraq is hopeless and
that U.S. soldiers are being killed and mutilated
for nothing more than Bush's vainglory. The power
elite's spokesman, the champion equivocator and
ace sloganeer Thomas Friedman, provides the
purest distillation of the current conventional
thinking on Iraq. The other day, The New York
Times's star columnist was still clinging to the
fantasy that America could have =93properly
occupied=94 Mesopotamia and even now could send
more troops and =93crush the dark forces in Iraq
and properly rebuild it.=94

Friedman and many Democrats haven't figured out
that lots of Iraqis view America as a dark force
of colonialism and don't want our version of
=93progressive politics.=94

Friedman apparently doesn't even remember that
Iraq was once a British colony, since he blames
the present chaos on =931,000 years of Arab-Muslim
authoritarianism, three brutal decades of Sunni
Ba'athist rule, and a crippling decade of U.N.
sanctions.=94 Nothing about the Sykes-Picot (1916)
carving up of Syria and Iraq by the British and
French; nothing about the destabilizing British
practice of divide and rule that pitted Sunnis
against Shi'ites, Arabs against Kurds; and
nothing about Washington's support for Saddam
Hussein in the 1970s and '80s.

As a senior Democratic senator told me last week
in Washington, with the Democrats divided the
only politician who can end the American role in
the war is the executive, George Bush. That means
we're a long way from leaving Iraq, no matter
what the voters want, no matter how loudly the
Democrats celebrate their victory.


About the Author
John R. MacArthur is the publisher of Harper's
Magazine.