July 11, 2007 07:07 PM UTC

Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Republicans

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• by: Colorado Pols

The debate on how to end the Iraq war is heating up among Democrats, threatening to expose deep divisions between liberal and moderate wings of the party.

Liberal bloggers and commentators are outraged by what they see as a “capitulation” to the Bush adminstration by certain Democrats–led by Colorado Senator Ken Salazar–who are seeking to implement the goals of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan report submitted late last year that calls for increased emphasis on training Iraqi forces and the removal of American combat troops from Iraq in 2008.

Many liberals are demanding an immediate withdrawal of forces regardless of the consequences, or failing that a locked-in timetable for withdrawal that takes no account of the situation on the ground in Iraq. Their arguments from our experience typically devolve into an emotional appeal over the wrongness of the war to begin with, and generally conclude with an angry denunciation of any Democrat who doesn’t agree 100% with their “solution” of immediate withdrawl. The terms we’ve seen employed recently to describe some Democrats–national blogger Matt Stoller’s recent characterization of Rep. Mark Udall as an “immoral coward” comes to mind–are sweeping and breathtaking.

In the four and a half years since the invasion of Iraq, all sides of the debate have hardened their positions to the point where reasonable discussion of the situation is barely possible. But even prominent liberal politicians like Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, a longtime Iraq war opponent, are coming forward to explain, at the risk of themselves ending up on the anti-war shit list, that the situation isn’t as clear-cut as Cindy Sheehan (or David Sirota) would have you believe. As the Washington Post reports:

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin said today that despite growing Republican discontent with the Iraq war, convincing GOP members to support withdrawal legislation remains a daunting challenge that so far has netted few results.

Durbin said recent speeches by senior Senate Republicans signaling a sharp break with Bush’s Iraq war strategy might not necessarily translate into votes for Democratic measures setting target dates for withdrawing U.S. troops. Durbin also conceded that the Democrats, with a bare majority in the Senate, won’t be able to placate liberal Democratic calls for a specific end date, including a funding cut off.

“Obviously there are folks who want the war to end today, and all the troops to be home tomorrow. And even though I think that is a worthy goal, it is not a realistic goal,” said Durbin. A major redeployment of troops will have to be done gradually and in a responsible manner, he noted. “We also understand that just leaving cold turkey, with everything gone, could have the whole region descend into chaos,” Durbin said.

Durbin, an early booster of Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, singled out former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) for helping to fuel unrealistic anti-war expectations for congressional action. Edwards has chastized his fellow Democratic candidates who are currently serving in the Senate, for not pushing hard enough to end the war.

“I recall when John voted for this war. So it’s understandable that he feels badly about that decision and wants to see something done to undo the harm that has happened,” said Durbin. “But it has to be done in a sensible way.”

Which leads us directly to Sen. Salazar and his proposal to implement the ISG recommendations, and his hope to engage wavering GOP politicians belatedly looking for a solution to the worsening situation in Iraq. As the Rocky Mountain News reports this morning:

Support for his bill has gained momentum as prominent Republicans have begun to look to it as a way out of Iraq without appearing soft on defense. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., was one of those to recently sign on to the measure, saying Tuesday, “It is time to rethink our military policy in Iraq, and force the Iraqis to do more for themselves.”

The non-partisan Iraq Study Group in December recommended an orderly withdrawal from Iraq.

The amendment setting those recommendations into law would: establish a goal of removing most soldiers from Iraq by spring 2008; set benchmarks for the Iraqi government as conditions for continued U.S. military support; and engage Iraq’s neighboring countries in an “Iraq International Support Group.”

“If you look at it from a purely political standpoint, it’s smart,” Colorado State University political science professor John Straayer said of Salazar’s amendment.

Colorado is a divided state, Straayer said, with an electorate that leans Republican and a large military community countering a very vocal opposition to the war.

So, “shooting down the middle – from a political standpoint – is the place to be,” Straayer said.

However, Straayer said he doubts that politics alone explains the motivations of Salazar and the other centrist senators from either party.

“I think there are, in this mix, issues of significance where members are taking positions because of what’s right for the country and not for political pay dirt,” he said. “This whole Iraq thing has been tough, because it’s a mix of your political fortunes, your conscience and your sense of history.”

Our view: Salazar is doing the right thing. Unlike some pundits who seem to object terribly to the idea that a bipartisan effort could ever be a good thing, we think Salazar is putting such pettiness aside to find a solution that might actually pass Congress with a veto-proof majority. We believe despite the angst about it on the blog-left that the Iraq Study Group goals, derided for months by war hawks and the Bush administration, could move the nation towards a responsible end to the war in Iraq–which is what Americans say they want, not a headlong withdrawal that creates an even bigger crisis in the Middle East.

We believe that these anti-war bloggers are making a terrible, arrogant mistake by attacking fellow Democrats who are trying like hell to do the right thing. We reject the often-bandied assertion that Congress is empowered do something it doesn’t have the votes to accomplish just because “only 30% of Americans support the war” as purposefully ignorant of how our government works, to the point of calling it duplicitous–they know it’s not that simple. And we believe, above all, that the need to find a solution to the debacle of the Iraq War is far too important to reject potential solutions simply because they might not involve a wholesale condemnation of the Republican Party.

Discuss.