Success in Iraq bad for the dems

[ecoli]

In terms of their political platform, the democrats have largely used the Iraq war as the big issue that separates them from the republicans. Largely, they are against the way, except for a group conservative democrats called the "blue dogs" that are waiting for General Petraeus report in september (I think) before throwing there weight one way or another. Without this group's support, the dems won't be able to push through anti-war legislation.

 

However, what if, Gen. Patraeus's report turns out positive? The gloom and doom-ists would have us believe success in Iraq is impossible, but why is it a lost cause? I heard a statistic today that the military has destroyed as many enemy weapon's caches in the last 6 months as they did in the entirety of last year. I heard some personal reports on the radio from people in Iraq, that the American intelligence in Iraq in particularly good, with informants and sources all over the place. So, accepting it's possible for the situation in Iraq to turn, how would the dems handle it?

 

Jim Clyburn had an interview with the the Washington post the other day and was quoted as saying a strongly positive report by Petraeus would be "a real big problem for us [democrats]."

 

This makes sense, for a party who's platform is built around failure in Iraq, possible successes would be bad for them, politically. Especially these days, when people seem to have more loyalty to their party and their political careers then to the public and the truth. If a positive report is issued in September, and the dems were to lose the support of the "blue dogs," it wouldn't surprise me to see the dems lose a lot of public support.

 

It'll be interesting to the dems flip flop around this one, worm their way around the issues trying to avoid admitting that they were wrong. Alternatively, I would want to be wary of what they say about the war, to see if they try to hide the truth about any successful military operations, by leaning on liberal media outlets. In general, I'd want to be wary of any and all democrat anti-war rhetoric.

 

As the situation continues to polarize, I feel the politicians will become increasingly untruthful, as they try to save their careers.

 

And I suppose you can make a similar argument about the republicans if the report is largely negative.

 

Thoughts?

[Pangloss]

I think it's been an interesting development to follow in the news this week, but I'm so cautious about it that I hesitated to even post a thread about it here, lest I jinx it somehow. The governmental situation in Iraq is unchanged and far below where it needs to be, and this good news is almost entirely focused on the results of the military surge. It's going to be some time before we really see if this is actually going to work.

 

Don't expect Democrats to flip-flop anytime soon. As abhorrent as the anti-war message is for them (because it makes them look like losers), they have no choice but to stick with it for a while, if for no other reason than the fact that it's going to take some time for the message to trickle down to the people in their districts who are screaming at them about Iraq.

 

It's certainly not the only progress that we've seen, and there's always been SOME good news buried amongst the bad. I had a friend write up a little summary of the electrical situation the other day that I thought was interesting. You hear a lot about how the citizens of Baghdad are always complaining about the fact that they had electricity before the war, right? But what they don't tell you is that most of the rest of the country did not. Saddam kept the lights on in Baghdad, but everyone else had very little juice; sometimes only 3 hours a day. Iraq's actual generating capacity before the war was something like 4500 megawatts, but demand today has grown to something like 8500 megawatts, so they would be in serious trouble today even under Saddam (which of course is impossible, because the reason for increased demand is increased trade, which wasn't allowed under Saddam due to the embargo).

 

All of this information is available, but the (as Rush Limbaugh likes to put it) "drive-by media" doesn't bother to pass it along. Much easier to just tell us how bad things are, and hit us with a few straw men to "prove" it. (I never knew how many single working moms were raising children in Iraq until the US invaded....)

 

Oh well, so it goes.

[lucaspa]

However, what if, Gen. Patraeus's report turns out positive? The gloom and doom-ists would have us believe success in Iraq is impossible, but why is it a lost cause?

 

1. Because we don't have enough troops to garrison the whole country like we need to in order to fight this type of insurrection. Nor do we have enough spec ops forces to deal with the insurgency that way.

 

2. Beause of the lack of troops, there apparently is still pretty much free movement within the country. So the insurgents simply move from where the US troops are to where they aren't.

 

3. Because the situation in Iraq is not simply us vs al-Qaeda. Instead, it is Sunni vs Shiite, Shiite vs Kurd, Kurd vs Sunni, and Sunni vs Kurd, Baathist vs republican, and lots of people against the USA. I heard a story this week on NPR where, in one Sunni town, the people had gotten fed up with al-Qaeda and turned against them. The local US commander had helped the Sunnis form and arm a militia to fight al-Qaeda. The local Iraqi commander -- a Shiite -- strongly opposed it. So we have good news on one hand, but bad news as now the Shiites want us gone.

 

I heard a statistic today that the military has destroyed as many enemy weapon's caches in the last 6 months as they did in the entirety of last year.

 

So what? Have you ever heard of a war that stopped because weapons were destroyed. Combatants always get new weapons.

 

I heard some personal reports on the radio from people in Iraq, that the American intelligence in Iraq in particularly good, with informants and sources all over the place.

 

And yet the attacks continue. By the data, the intelligence isn't that good, is it?

 

As you noted, the Democrats have tied themselves to getting out of Iraq. Ironically, if the situation improves, doesn't that argue for pulling troops OUT? After all, that is the reason the Brits used for decreasing their troop strength earlier this year: things were so quiet in the South that they didn't need the troops.

 

So, if Petraeus' report is positive and progress has been made, then that strengthens the argument for turning security over to the Iraqis and pulling the US troops out! What excuse would Bush and the Republicans have for continuing the high number of US troops?

 

Quite frankly, it looks like a win-win for the Democrats. If the report is negative, then the troops should come out because we can't "win". If the report is positive, then the troops come out because we did "win" and the troops aren't needed anymore. I think the Republicans have backed themselves into a no-win corner.

[ecoli]

So what? Have you ever heard of a war that stopped because weapons were destroyed. Combatants always get new weapons.

 

Which costs money, of course. So, I consider any insurgent weapons destroyed a good thing

 

And yet the attacks continue. By the data, the intelligence isn't that good, is it?

True, but how many attacks were prevented because of intellegence? I don't know if there are any statistics on this.

 

As you noted, the Democrats have tied themselves to getting out of Iraq. Ironically, if the situation improves, doesn't that argue for pulling troops OUT? After all, that is the reason the Brits used for decreasing their troop strength earlier this year: things were so quiet in the South that they didn't need the troops.

If the situation improves slightly, then the republicans can argue that there's merit in keeping the troops in for longer. Obviously if the situation improves to the point that we no longer need troops in Iraq, then they will be pulled out. Nobody, not even the republicans would want to keep a post-war occupying force in Iraq, at least until Iraqi forces can take over.

 

So, if Petraeus' report is positive and progress has been made, then that strengthens the argument for turning security over to the Iraqis and pulling the US troops out! What excuse would Bush and the Republicans have for continuing the high number of US troops?

 

As I described above, if the report is positive that just means we're on the way to victory.

I'm gogin to risk using a WWII analogy here... it's not like allied forces pulled out after a successful invasion of Normandy. It was the beginning of the end for the Germans, but if we had pulled out of France because things were starting to go our way, the Germans would have been able to regroup. It doesn't make sense to quit just when you start to get ahead. Not in war... or pretty much anything else for that matter.

 

 

Quite frankly, it looks like a win-win for the Democrats. If the report is negative, then the troops should come out because we can't "win". If the report is positive, then the troops come out because we did "win" and the troops aren't needed anymore. I think the Republicans have backed themselves into a no-win corner.

 

I disagree completely. The dems have put themselves out as against the Iraq war. People like Harry Reid claiming that the 'war is lost' and the 'surge isn't working,' even, perhaps, before the surge really had chance to get going.

 

If we are successful in Iraq, people will think... "hmm.. the democrats we're completely wrong about Iraq." That won't be good for them, considering it's the basis of there entire campaign right now.

 

I believe it will mess up their platform if we were successful in Iraq. Because, if the Iraq campaign is succesful, the troops will be coming home on the Republican's terms, not the democrat's. And, moderate democrats aside, I think you can make the argument that liberals don't even want victory in Iraq.

[iNow]

If we are successful in Iraq, people will think... "hmm.. the democrats we're completely wrong about Iraq." That won't be good for them, considering it's the basis of there entire campaign right now.

 

I believe it will mess up their platform if we were successful in Iraq. Because, if the Iraq campaign is succesful, the troops will be coming home on the Republican's terms, not the democrat's. And, moderate democrats aside, I think you can make the argument that liberals don't even want victory in Iraq.

 

It seems you're framing the issue way too narrowly. If we are successful in Iraq, people won't think "hmm... the democrats were completely wrong about Iraq." The entire freakin' planet, with the exception of a few in the current administration and a few in the US who refuse to give up their *faith* about the outcome, would think they were wrong! The perception that we are failing in Iraq is not just a talking point or an election issue used by the Democrats, it's a statement of fact by the vast majority of intelligent human beings on Earth.

 

Now... I concede that the Democrats have been able to advance more rapidly as a result of our consistent failures in Iraq, but it was more because congress and the administration were majority republican, so republicans took the brunt of the responsibility for said failure. It's not that Dems had any better plans, just that the people wanted change for change's sake (basically, people voted republicans OUT of office... not so much democrats INTO office).

 

Last, it's a bit of a strawman to suggest that, because the democrats have advanced as a result of the republicans poor execution in Iraq... that "liberals don't even want victory in Iraq." I'd challenge you to define "victory," and then support your claim that "liberals" don't want it.

 

 

There are only two things about which I'm never wrong. Those are politics and religion.

[ecoli]

What I mean by "liberals don't want victory" is that military success in Iraq is politically detrimental to liberal democrats, so there's really no incentive for them to desire success in Iraq. Yeah, it's a strawman and I can't prove it, but I still believe it.

[foodchain]

What I mean by "liberals don't want victory" is that military success in Iraq is politically detrimental to liberal democrats, so there's really no incentive for them to desire success in Iraq. Yeah, it's a strawman and I can't prove it, but I still believe it.

 

While its easy to say the democrats use the anti war slogan as a platform the democrats in total did not object to the war at its start.

 

I am going to break symmetry here and go on another angle all together, its called spin and image. This two things along with other elements such as the press have come about in such a form that image has become more and more important then even message half the time with politicians. If you ever sit and watch say an hour of C-SPAN and or read books written by such people you find so much information that is never visible in the fast food industry of product sales really.

 

So why the democrats have become the anti war crowd, yes, they are anti war, it has noting to do with being anti Iraq war for instance, which of all things does make a difference at some level I am sure you understand of course.

 

The democrats however don’t seem to be in large anti Afghanistan war, so they must no longer be the anti war crowd. Then of course with the talks about drafts and Pakistan, they surely are not the anti war crowd.

 

The point I am trying to get at is its all a delicate mesh of spin, so fine its hard to delegate what is what half the time, and more or less people really just seem to go with gut feelings curved towards sloganeering. Image sells, its probably genetic, but image does sell, and that’s what seems to be a highly reproductive debate topic in politics is clashing images with shallow barely half a paragraph long explanation on the image or the support, and always clearly lacks any objectivity.

 

For instance, Iraq is a bloody mess in a civil war, yet with a gleam of hope, regardless of how small comparatively the plan is surely to work in X time into a future that no one knows of course because if they did, then that would mean they also allowed for this to come about in the first place, but that would be two cents worth of critical thinking.

 

Then of course after that comes the image of being a pessimist or an optimist, I hate slogans, untold amounts of lives are being destroyed either permanently or for long periods not to mention overall trauma, shock and stress. I don’t care about images from people that have never carried a rifle for some government sending them off to war to basically kill or be killed. I do know that if every person of age was readily deployable, that politics would most likely be different, because it could be you or your loved ones having to go over there, and that’s not even giving any slight sliver of talks to the life of the Iraqis we supposedly are there to liberate from whatever anymore.

 

Of course if we leave, its because we left if we lost, and if we plan to leave in fifty years, well if we had just stayed a few more months we would have won.

 

You see, running slogans and adds is easy, actually talking about anything that goes on over there is a bit more difficult, but what person, or the voting populous actually spends any great deal of time day to day studying the reality of anything, be it Iraq or a politician with detailed study?