Wasting Time With Alex

Well DUH!

I had to laugh when I read the reporting on the donkey debate last night - I simply do not have the time or desire to suffer that much stupidity live - and the fact that all of them did a massive dance around questions about our involvements in Iraq and the future of Iran. It now looks like the donkeys find themselves in a serious bind, and it is one of their own making. The democrats had banked on using anger and opposition to the war in Iraq - something they worked terribly hard to foment and for which they manufactured an entire set of circumstances to delegitimize - to boost their political power. They fabricated and manipulated the realities in order to convince as many as possible that the war first off was illegitimate, illegal, immoral, and most important of all unnecessary. Then they escalated the rhetoric by lying about how the war was lost and could never be won. It worked well for them, energizing the nutroot base and even convincing many that got their news from sound bites and not solid research that what they said was the truth. An entire movement came to be demanding our defeat and withdrawal. A movement that served to give them more power.

But the reality on the ground is now getting in the way. All the claims about how the war was unnecessary & immoral, a lost cause that was bleeding us dry, and that we needed to do the exact opposite of whatever the evil Bush Administration wanted was just talk. These candidates know damn well that Iraq was a dangerous place and that Saddam had to be death with because he would have been an unthinkable risk after 9-11 showed him the way to hit at us or the flow of oil that all the Western economies depend on. They also are well aware that al Qaeda and every other terror organization, including the nation of Iran, the biggest terror sponsor in the world, had now made Iraq the front line battlefield in their war against the West and the campaign to Islamify the world. In short, they know that our military is in the right spot and doing the right thing to keep these bastards from coming after us closer to home, or even at home. And the most important thing: they know they need the troops close to Iran because it now appears that unless regime changes happen and the non-Islamofascists forces take over we will be faced with the choice of military action to prevent Iran from getting the nuclear bomb, or military action to deal with the aftermath of the Iranian bomb being used.

In short, there is going to be more fighting and not less if we want security. And whether it is a republican administration or a democratic one in the White House, the option to cut & run that they have been using to rile up the anti-American rabble rousers that form the dedicated base, is not really a viable one they would pursue. So it is not an accident that we got the massive song & dance from them when asked if they could guarantee a full withdrawal by the end of 2013 or on how they would deal with the Iranian nuclear issue. They have seen how the lack of following up on the promises to cut & run made by them in the 2006 election cycle have smashed the Congress’ approval rating, and are starting to realize that they can not continue to simply lie about how they would pull the troops - none of them would make that move and risk the follow up damage once another massive attack killed Americans again and they know that if we lose in Iraq that is a guaranteed future event - without consequences down the road. The empty and meaningless gestures that they know will not result in any kind of troop withdrawal but keep the base energized are just that: for show.

So now these candidates are faced with having to play this game, forced upon them by their own tangled web of lies, with their voters. They can not come out and say to them that they had been lying and that Bush was right about the need to fight in Iraq. That’s political suicide and it would completely demoralize their nutroots. The strategy they have adopted is one of riding the bandwagon to a hopeful victory in 2009, at which point they will of course blame Bush for why they now suddenly can not leave and actually might have to escalate things. None of them will want to be the President that pulled the troops and caused the next attack, and while blaming Bush for that would buy them time with the nutroots, the majority of people in this country would know better. The democratic party would be done for. But there will also be consequences when they can not pull out troops if they win. Lose-lose effectively.

There is an important lesson here. You reap what you sow. In their campaign to return to power at all costs, they have employed a slash & burn tactic that might well win them the next election, but doom them permanently after they get the prize. Bitter indeed.