“Democratic leaders have been silent or evasive. They have not offered an alternative to the war in Iraq. At a time of a deepening and widening crisis in Iraq, and a widening gap between America and the world, that to me is a form of political desertion.”
– Zbigniew Brzezinski
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Washington – With that searing criticism from former President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser ringing in their ears, Democrats in Congress tried last week to tell the voters how their plans for ending the war in Iraq differ from those of President Bush.
The bottom line: Not much.
“We’ve set no timetables,” said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, when asked if his party would promise to have all U.S. troops home by the next presidential election. “I was against timetables in Bosnia. I am against timetables in Iraq.”
The most that Reid and his House counterparts could promise is a “responsible redeployment” of forces in which a united Iraqi government gradually supplies troops to replace our infantry on the frontlines – with continued American logistical and air support and a backup U.S. strike force in the region.
In other words: Pretty much where we seem headed anyway.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., argued that Democrats have already succeeded at molding U.S. policy. Last fall’s Senate vote signaling congressional impatience and naming 2006 as the year of decision for Iraq, he noted, was inspired by Democrats.
“We moved the president” away from an open-ended commitment, said Reed, a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army paratrooper. “We are now in the process of redeploying.”
But “we have to tell the Iraqis they have to quickly stand up,” said Reed. “That is in sharp contrast to the president’s comments that we’re going to stay there a long, long, long time … and turning over the responsibility to get the troops out to the next administration.”
To be fair, the Democrats didn’t botch the occupation of Iraq, Republicans did. And the tools that Democrats might use to help craft U.S. policy – the power to hold oversight hearings, probe mismanagement and malfeasance or cut off funds – have been denied them by Republican control of Congress.
“Congress does not run foreign policy; the president runs foreign policy,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. But at least “if you get a Democratic Congress we will hold the administration’s feet to the fire.”
The Democrats actually have plenty of plans to end the war; what they lack is a consensus.
Republicans can unite around Bush, but Democrats lack a leader. Their message subsequently lacks clarity.
On the left, the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party has published a detailed plan for a withdrawal that would start in August and end next February, with the U.S. assuming half the cost of a U.N. peacekeeping force; cooperating with a U.N. investigation into U.S. and Iraqi crimes and corruption; and footing as much as half the bill for a reconstruction effort.
“We must end this perfidious misadventure by bringing our troops home now,” their plan says.
The Center for American Progress, the leading Democratic think tank here, has published a detailed proposal for a U.S. “strategic redeployment” in which 80,000 soldiers – including all Reserve and National Guard units – leave Iraq this year, and almost all the remaining 60,000 Americans depart by the end of 2007.
The center’s plan would move two active-duty brigades – some 20,000 troops – to Afghanistan, and position 14,000 in Kuwait or as part of a Marine expeditionary force offshore in the Persian Gulf. It is similar, in that regard, to the proposal by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, who has called for such a redeployment “at the earliest practicable date.”
And Brzezinski, in his March 16 speech, called for a U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2006, to be accompanied by regional and international peace conferences.
“I think we should ask them to ask us to leave,” Brzezinski said. “We are teaching them democracy while at the same time arresting them, bombing them, humiliating them – and also helping them. It is an ambivalent course in democracy, and one not likely to foster it.”
“We need to make a cold judgment … about whether prolonged staying of the course is likely to be more or less damaging to overall U.S. interests,” he said.
“Would a civil war between the Shiites and the Kurds on one side and the Sunnis on the other be more destructive than the consequences of staying on course?” he asked. “How certain are we in the judgment that if we were to desist, the Shiites and the Kurds would not be capable of compelling an arrangement with the Sunnis?”
But “what troubles me the most is … that which hasn’t happened. That is to say: a serious and comprehensive Democratic challenge on this subject,” said Brzezinski. “We face difficult choices. But in a situation like this it is important not to let ourselves become prisoners of uncertainty.
“The judgments that we make will be based on uncertainty,” he said. “That is a task for leadership.”
John Aloysius Farrell’s column appears each Sunday in Perspective. Comment at the Washington and the West blog () or contact him at jfarrell@denverpost.com.
