Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone. He can be reached through his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com.
During the Vietnam War, a favorite slogan of the antiwar movement was: Bring the War Home. It was, of course, a double entendre ; first, of course, it was a play on an earlier, more modest slogan (“Bring the boys home”). But it had a more threatening interpretation: that the Vietnam War had so divided the country that it was time to instigate a political war at home.
At this stage it might be too early to say so definitively, but it’s clear that the Iraq War finally seems to be coming home, too. At the very least, the victory of Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman puts the war in Iraq at the very front and center of political debate for the next 12 weeks—until the November elections—and beyond.
The defeat of Lieberman was not, of course, a surprise. It had been anticipated widely among political cognoscenti , who were reading the polls. One by one over the past several weeks, leading Democratic moderates began drifting, like embarrassed Johnny-come-lately’s, into—or at least into the vicinity of—the anti-war camp. Perhaps the clearest indication of that process came when, without much fanfare, the entire Democratic congressional leadership inked their names to a letter to President Bush demanding that a “redeployment” of U.S. forces out of Iraq begin immediately—that is, before the end of 2006. From the letter, which has not, by the way, been widely quoted in the mainstream media:
We believe that a phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq should begin before the end of 2006. U.S. forces in Iraq should transition to a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, training and logistical support of Iraqi security forces, and force protection of U.S. personnel. … Mr. President, simply staying the course in Iraq is not working. We need to take a new direction.
Signing the letter, besides those who’ve already staked out that position—Rep. John Murtha and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi—were some formerly pro-war centrists who must have gritted their teeth while autographing the epistle, such as Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, and Rep. Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip.
In any case, what was critically important about the Democrats’ letter, signed by a dozen House and Senate members in all, is that too late—arguably, years too late—the entire Democratic party leadership has opted to demand a withdrawal from Iraq. To be sure, it is a qualified demand, with lots of typical politician-type weasel words. But to criticize the Democrats for not taking an even more militant stance is a quibble. The fact remains that by signing the letter, the Democratic leadership has drawn a line in the sand. On one side are the Republicans, arguing: Stay the course. On the other side, there are the Democrats, saying: Get out. That is a difference that even the most obtuse voter can get a handle on. It sets the stage for a bitter, take-no-prisoners battle over Iraq over the next three months. It is going to get ugly.
The Democrats, led by Senator Ted Kennedy, upped the ante by demanding the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, create a formal National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq by October 1—in other words, in time for the election. Throughout the U.S. intelligence community, there is virtual unanimity that the situation in Iraq is pretty much an unmitigated catastrophe, lurching toward civil war. For that reason, Kennedy knows what they are likely to get: an unsparingly bleak assessment of Iraq that will garner huge headlines and kick the last props out from under President Bush’s strained optimism and relentless stay-the-course obsession.
That the intelligence estimate will be gloomy on Iraq is doubly true because the man charged by Negroponte with putting it together is none other than Tom Fingar, formerly a top official with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. It was this bureau that was the most vocal, in the two years before the invasion of Iraq, in arguing that the Pentagon’s assessment of the threat from Saddam Hussein was mostly hot air.
Over the next three months, the Democrats will be vastly aided in their attempts to draw a clear distinction between Bush’s policy and theirs by a key factor: reality. The crisis in Iraq is going to get worse, not better. Following congressional testimony by two U.S. generals that Iraq is perched on the brink of civil war, General George Casey was even more blunt, in an interview with ABC News , though he stumbled over the words while getting them out: “A countrywide, a threat of a countrywide civil war, I think that, I would say, that probably is the most significant threat right now.”
Indeed. The more the Democrats can argue that the war in Iraq is already a civil war, the stronger is the case for simply getting out: first, because U.S. troops do not want to be caught in the crossfire of a civil war; and second, because if civil war is already underway, it makes nonsense of the argument that the United States has to stay in Iraq to prevent civil war.
For U.S. forces in Iraq, it’s damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t. On one hand, the U.S. occupation army is battling the Sunni-led insurgency, which seems to include more and more of the Sunni establishment with each passing day. During a visit to Damascus, Syria, the Sunni speaker of the Iraqi parliament, Mahmoud Mashadani, lambasted the United States. As recorded by Juan Cole, in his Informed Comment blog, Mashadani called his country “Americastan,” and he added:
Who destroyed Iraq? Who plundered Iraq? Who stole from Iraq? Who humiliated Iraq? Who desecrated Iraq’s holy sites? Who damaged the honor of Iraqi women? It is none other than the … occupation.
The occupation is the first and last cause of the problem, it has overthrown the [former] regime without a plan, it has suppressed the state with no reason, it has led to the resistance and it has infiltrated it, it has brought al-Qaida to Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Shiites are becoming increasingly inflamed over the war in Lebanon, and they are incensed over U.S. actions to suppress uppity Shiite militias, too. Especially those associated with Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. When U.S. forces hit a Sadr-linked force earlier this week, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (whose Dawa cult party is closely allied to Sadr) said he was "very angered and pained" over the U.S. action. That, after Maliki has led Iraqi politicians in bitter condemnations of the Israeli jihad against Lebanon.
In other words, the United States has managed to anger and alienate both the Sunnis and the Shiites—who, it should be pointed out, are massacring each other at a steady pace.
So the Democrats seem to have the upper hand. A New York Times poll this week showed that Americans continue to oppose the war in large numbers: “56 percent said the United States should set a timetable for withdrawal; 33 percent said it should do so even if it means handing Iraq over to insurgents.”
Some Democrats were miffed by a Times editorial on Sunday that seemed to take them to task for not outlining a more detailed plan for exiting Iraq. The editorial said, in part:
Democrats are embracing the withdrawal option because it sounds good on the surface and allows them to avoid a more far-reaching discussion that might expose their party’s own foreign policy divisions. Most of all, they want an election-year position that maximizes the president’s weakness without exposing their candidates to criticism. But they are doing nothing to help the public understand the grim options we face.
In the strictest sense, the Times may be right. But it is an election season, and the GOP, Karl Rove-led counterattack is going to be a scorched earth one, fueled by tens of millions of dollars in attack ads portraying the Democrats as terrorist sympathizers. It will be war. Having drawn the line, the Democrats cannot flinch. It’s time to bring the war home. Ned Lamont, welcome to the front lines.
