Tom Edsall gives good advice, I think. This is president Bush’s war in Iraq. No leading Republican candidate for the presidency can defend his handling of it. That in itself is remarkable. Here’s McCain:
"We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement — that’s the kindest word I can give you of Donald Rumsfeld — of this war. The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously. I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history."
Here’s Giuliani:
"You’ve got to change the whole strategy … The whole strategy has to be a strategy of not just pacifying places, but holding them, and holding them for some period of time. … Here’s what I would change. Do it with more troops, maybe 100,000, 150,000 more. I would do it in a way in which we didn’t disband the army, which we’ve learned. I would have us not disband the army. You wouldn’t de-Baathify. See, de-Baathify sounds like the right thing to do because you’re getting rid of all the old Saddam guys. But that meant getting rid of the entire civil service. The country had no infrastructure."
Here’s Romney at CPAC:
"We were under-prepared, under-managed, under-manned and under-planned."
I’ll note that this blog has consistently made these criticisms for the past four years, only to be told by the right-wing blogs that the only reason I turned against the conduct of this war was the Federal Marriage Amendment. Heh. This war has been managed disastrously, according to all the major GOP candidates. Only the partisan saps in the conservative blogosphere are still defending it.
It seems to me that the smartest thing for the Democrats to do is simply to echo the Republican candidates. On every occasion possible, the Democrats should cite these Republicans, quote them and agree with them. Micro-managing a war from the Congress is a fool’s game. Trying to cut off funds actually helps Bush: it relieves him of the responsibility for the nightmare his incompetence and arrogance have created. The cold truth is: There will be no resolution to this war before the next election, and instead of trying to create one, the Democrats should simply give the president what he wants, expand the broad defense budget to protect the military from being totally broken before the next election, and simply hold Bush accountable for the results. It’s his war. Make him own it. If by some miracle, the surge succeeds, then it’s good for Iraq and America. And if the Democrats have funded it, they can also take some credit. If it fails, it will be Bush’s final, miserable failure.
The current mess merely confuses Bush’s responsibility. The Democrats should clarify it, and fund the war fully – entirely as a way to express support for the troops. Then Obama or Clinton or Edwards or Gore can run on a simple program to end it in 2008. And they can argue that any vote for a Republican in Congress will risk a continuation of failure.
The Dish 