Motives

Currently the democratic party is having a fight. Unlike fights in hockey where the outcome is usually a minor injury to a single person, this fight has grave consequences for our soldiers currently in Iraq or in transition to Iraq.

On one side of this fight are the democratic legislators that think fighting means asking, "How high?" when the president says, "Jump!".

On the other side of this fight are the democratic legislators that wish to check the president's power and begin ending this war in Iraq sooner rather than later.

Conventional wisdom says the American people strongly support the second group of legislators because they are sick and tired of being mired in a Nixonian quagmire and being led by a "meatball mind".

Senator Russ Feingold falls squarely in the second camp and is trying to challenge the first camp to "cowboy up" as people of western persuasion like to say:

Russ's statment

I, myself, fall in the second camp. I believe that republican legislators want to game the war and postpone it enough, say to the fall of 2008, to make the reality of our failure there apparent only after the next election cycle.

I know that sounds cynical of me, but it's not like the very same thing hasn't been done before (specifically on the advice of Henry Kissenger to Richard Millhouse Nixon).

Here is an excerpt from Robert Dallek's new book, Nixon and Kissinger: Partner's in Power:

"Nixon wanted to plan the removal of all US troops by the end of 1971, but Henry cautioned that if North Vietnam then destabilized Saigon in 1972, it could have an adverse effect on the president's re-election. He recommended a pullout in the fall of 1972, "so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election." He had nothing to say about the American lives that would be lost in the service of Nixon's reelection."

Christopher Hitchens, that prince of politeness, that man of reserved manner, has this to say about Robert's new book:

Partners in
Crime

ADDENDUM: While Group 1 democratic legislators are busily trying to frame their timidity as a courageous moral victory, a Google news search of the words "democrats cave timetable" seems to provide an insurmountable counter-argument to that theme. Another blow to that marketing campaign would be to mention that the whitehouse is characterizing this new democratic approach as a "victory" that gives them "what we've wanted all along"

Does the democratic leadership feel the American people want to see more of the same?

Do they feel the best way to make a fool of a fool is to let him have his way? If so, the potential for education seems exhausted with respect to Mr. Bush.

I think democratic leadership underestimates the patience of the American people in the face of American blood spilling unjustly.