It appears that finally, after much haranging and bellicose behavior, Democrats are at last on the same page with the Administration. Or at least columnist David Broder thinks so
It has taken a long time, but the Democrats finally have come close to defining a sensible common ground on the issue of Iraq....
After noting that Democrats have been all over the map on the war
They were badly divided from the opening debate on the decision to go to war, when House Democrats opposed President Bush's request, 126 to 81, while Senate Democrats supported it, 29 to 21. In last year's campaign, the incoherence of the opposition party was capsulized in Sen. John Kerry's notorious comment that "I actually voted for the $87 billion" to fund ongoing military operations "before I voted against it." Lacking any consensus and without any mechanism for resolving their internal debate, individual Democrats have been offering a jumble of views, even as the public displayed increasing doubts about administration policy.
Yes, a jumble of views that most recently was voiced by Congressman Mutha's announcement that we should withdraw now and completely.
His was an emotional protest delivered on behalf of the wounded men and women he visits regularly at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, not a carefully reasoned analysis of the strategic consequences of leaving Iraq to a factional struggle of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. It was not a position his party could -- or would -- embrace.
Indeed it was not. So what is the new consensus position that Democrats have embraced?
the outlines of such a position emerged last week in speeches by two respected Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden of Delaware and Barack Obama of Illinois. That they reached almost the same conclusion from opposite sides of the intraparty debate -- Biden an early and consistent supporter of the U.S. intervention against Saddam Hussein, and Obama an equally confirmed skeptic about the invasion -- adds to the significance of their statements.
Biden, the committee's senior Democrat, said in New York that it is time to scale back U.S. ambitions in Iraq and reduce troop commitment while shifting security responsibilities to the Iraqis. The next day, Obama, a freshman member of the committee, made many of the same points in Chicago.
Which is, of course the very same strategy that the President has been working towards since the beginning. A strategy the President has enunciated since at least August 2003, which would have been shorthly after major combat operations ended in Iraq.
Our goal is to turn over authority to Iraqis as quickly as possible. Coalition authorities are training Iraqi police forces to help patrol Iraqi cities and villages. Ambassador Bremer and General Abizaid are working to establish as quickly as possible a new Iraqi civilian defense force to help protect supply convoys and power plants and ammunition depots. Offices have been established in major Iraqi cities to recruit soldiers for a new Iraqi army that will defend the people of Iraq, instead of terrorizing them.
Bush reiterated this in September 2003 and May of 2004
There are five steps in our plan to help Iraq achieve democracy and freedom. We will hand over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government, help establish security, continue rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, encourage more international support, and move toward a national election that will bring forward new leaders empowered by the Iraqi people.....
Iraq's military, police, and border forces have begun to take on broader responsibilities. Eventually, they must be the primary defenders of Iraqi security, as American and coalition forces are withdrawn. And we're helping them to prepare for this role. In some cases, the early performance of Iraqi forces fell short. Some refused orders to engage the enemy. We've learned from these failures, and we've taken steps to correct them. Successful fighting units need a sense of cohesion, so we've lengthened and intensified their training. Successful units need to know they are fighting for the future of their own country, not for any occupying power, so we are ensuring that Iraqi forces serve under an Iraqi chain of command. Successful fighting units need the best possible leadership, so we improved the vetting and training of Iraqi officers and senior enlisted men.
At my direction, and with the support of Iraqi authorities, we are accelerating our program to help train Iraqis to defend their country. A new team of senior military officers is now assessing every unit in Iraq's security forces. I've asked this team to oversee the training of a force of 260,000 Iraqi soldiers, police, and other security personnel. Five Iraqi army battalions are in the field now, with another eight battalions to join them by July the 1st. The eventual goal is an Iraqi army of 35,000 soldiers in 27 battalions, fully prepared to defend their country.
This was futher amplified in the "Transition to Iraqi Soverignty" Fact sheet issed in May 2004. This new plan the Democrats are now embracing was most recently detailed by the President in June of this year.
Our military strategy is clear: We will train Iraqi security forces so they can defend their freedom and protect their people, and then our troops will return home with the honor they have earned.
The political track of our strategy is to continue helping Iraqis build the institutions of a stable democracy. The Iraqi people have taken landmark steps by voting in free elections and forming a representative government. Prime Minister Jaafari has assured me that his government is committed to meeting its deadline to draft a new constitution for a free Iraq. Then the constitution will be submitted to the Iraqi people for approval, and new elections will be held to choose a fully constitutional government.
That this strategy is bearing fruit is becoming more clear even to the press.
A growing number of Iraqi troop battalions -- nearly four dozen as of this week -- are playing lead roles in the fight against the insurgency, and American commanders have turned over more than two dozen U.S.-established bases to government control, officials said yesterday.
Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, a spokesman in Baghdad for the U.S. command that is responsible for the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces, said approximately 130 Iraqi army and special police battalions are fighting the insurgency, of which about 45 are rated as "in the lead," with varying degrees of reliance on U.S. support.
Sentaor Joe Lieberman saw the same thing
I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.
Since the Democrats are now claiming that this is their own plan which they have forced the Administration to accept (which I predicted they would do, by the way),
Not only have Democrats found their voice, they may well have pointed the administration and the country toward a realistic and modestly hopeful course on Iraq
how do they explain the fact that the Iraqi police and Army are performing at such high levels in the short span of time since their "consensus" was finally reached?
They can't and simply hope that people will forget that the President has been true and steady on this matter for the long length of time it took us to get to this place while for the most part, Democrats have simply been adrift and maliciously critical.
But I suspect none of this matters since it appears we are finally all on the same page, Democrats and Republicans, Congress and Administration.
And that's how it should have been all along.
As Senator Lieberman said
Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.
The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them.
A clear plan. And now, even the Democrats are on board.