I think Julio is right on in his analysis of the relationship of the US masses - at least that large part of it we would describe as progressive or liberal - to the Democratic party. It's largely the same relationship that politically interested trade unionists and social movement activists have to the NDP in Canada and social democratic parties abroad. Their leaderships and programs also resemble one another. The only difference is that the Democratic leaders have the responsibility of administering the American Empire. Replace the Clintons with the Blairs and Schroeders and you'd get the same result. There's nothing inherently different about the social and political character of these parties, and what distinguishes them from the conservative parties on their right. But, of course, we've had this running debate many times before.
I'm not as certain as Julio appears to be that Iraq will continue to be the wedge issue it is today within the Democratic party and the wider society by the time the mid-term elections roll round. The Bush administration will almost certainly announce a drawdown of US forces which may be sufficient to persuade the American people before the mid-term elections that it is intending to quit Iraq and bring the boys home. It will do so, of course, on the pretext that Iraqi forces, however unlikely, have become adequately trained and equipped to do their own fighting, and will have secured the verbal endorsement of European and Arab governments and the UN. This is the essence of the Democratic party position, clearly expressed by John Edwards in an op-ed piece in Sunday's Washington Post, and it is largely shared by many of his Republican colleagues. Doug Henwood copied it to the LBO list, and I've reproduced it below. I expect the administration to coopt it; it probably already has, and may only be considering the timing. Look for "victory" parades of returning National Guard and Reserve units from Iraq next July 4th in lieu of another carrier landing by Bush. Enough Americans may believe the war is winding down to give the administration the benefit of the doubt - not only troubled Republicans, but also Bush-haters within the antiwar movement and the DP. I think they'd tolerate the current level of US casualties so long as they believe the troops are starting to come home. And economic concerns are never very far from the forefront of their consciousness anyway. So I see a bigger challenge ahead for the US antiwar movement. I think the Edwards plan will divide it further, and it will be interesting to see whether and how these divisions are expressed in the Democratic party, where the antiwar movement has the largest number of its supporters. How will Cindy Sheehan, a good bellweather for this constituency, react to the Edwards plan, for example? Anyone know if she already has? Will she join the warm applause when Edwards gives his speech conceding he was "wrong on the war", that America needs a "clear plan" to withdraw both the troops and "the Halliburtons" in order to eradicate it's "imperialist image"? Or will she join with opponents of the party leadership in arguing that the DP needs to specify what constitutes a "clear plan" and "hard deadlines" and a "significant troop reduction" in order to distinguish the DP's still-vague position from Bush and the Republicans? And, of course, Julio's point is how does the left relate to these developments inside the Democratic party? How is it more likely to gain a hearing from the Cindy Sheehans - by encouraging her to join with the PDA against the DP leadership over its Iraq and other policies? Or by telling her she is wasting her time and exhorting her to join the Green party or abstain from electoral politics altogether? As Julio so forcefully makes clear, the answer primarily depends where Sheehan and others like her are at right now, of how far their experiences have taken them in transforming their consciousness. We can only speculate. My guess is she is now angry enough at Hilary and the party tops that she can be persuaded to join other rank-and-file Democrats in opposing them. But she won't do so unless there is a credible opposition forming and others encouraging her to move in that direction. In the absence of same, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Sheehans grudgingly making their peace with Edwards in the same way the deflated DP ranks accepted Kerry as a "lesser evil" to Bush last year. Of course, Carrol and others think this is just reformist nonsense. They think Cindy Sheehan and the mass of liberal Democrats don't have to go through the experience of trying to reform the Democrats and can be won directly to the Greens on the strength of Powerful Arguments, or that there are sizeable forces just waiting to be marshalled outside both parties that render this issue largely irrelevant. Maybe. I don't think so, but there is no way to know for sure one way or the other. MG --------------------------------------------------- The Right Way in Iraq By John Edwards Washington Post November 13, 2005 I was wrong. Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda. It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn't make a mistake -- the men and women of our armed forces and their families -- have performed heroically and paid a dear price. The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth. While we can't change the past, we need to accept responsibility, because a key part of restoring America's moral leadership is acknowledging when we've made mistakes or been proven wrong -- and showing that we have the creativity and guts to make it right. The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war. George Bush won't accept responsibility for his mistakes. Along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, he has made horrible mistakes at almost every step: failed diplomacy; not going in with enough troops; not giving our forces the equipment they need; not having a plan for peace. Because of these failures, Iraq is a mess and has become a far greater threat than it ever was. It is now a haven for terrorists, and our presence there is draining the goodwill our country once enjoyed, diminishing our global standing. It has made fighting the global war against terrorist organizations more difficult, not less. The urgent question isn't how we got here but what we do now. We have to give our troops a way to end their mission honorably. That means leaving behind a success, not a failure. What is success? I don't think it is Iraq as a Jeffersonian democracy. I think it is an Iraq that is relatively stable, largely self-sufficient, comparatively open and free, and in control of its own destiny. A plan for success needs to focus on three interlocking objectives: reducing the American presence, building Iraq's capacity and getting other countries to meet their responsibilities to help. First, we need to remove the image of an imperialist America from the landscape of Iraq. American contractors who have taken unfair advantage of the turmoil in Iraq need to leave Iraq. If that means Halliburton subsidiary KBR, then KBR should go. Such departures, and the return of the work to Iraqi businesses, would be a real statement about our hopes for the new nation. We also need to show Iraq and the world that we will not stay there forever. We've reached the point where the large number of our troops in Iraq hurts, not helps, our goals. Therefore, early next year, after the Iraqi elections, when a new government has been created, we should begin redeployment of a significant number of troops out of Iraq. This should be the beginning of a gradual process to reduce our presence and change the shape of our military's deployment in Iraq. Most of these troops should come from National Guard or Reserve forces. That will still leave us with enough military capability, combined with better-trained Iraqis, to fight terrorists and continue to help the Iraqis develop a stable country. Second, this redeployment should work in concert with a more effective training program for Iraqi forces. We should implement a clear plan for training and hard deadlines for certain benchmarks to be met. To increase incentives, we should implement a schedule showing that, as we certify Iraqi troops as trained and equipped, a proportional number of U.S. troops will be withdrawn. Third, we must launch a serious diplomatic process that brings the world into this effort. We should bring Iraq's neighbors and our key European allies into a diplomatic process to get Iraq on its feet. The president needs to create a unified international front. Too many mistakes have already been made for this to be easy. Yet we must take these steps to succeed. The American people, the Iraqi people and -- most important -- our troops who have died or been injured there, and those who are fighting there today, deserve nothing less. America's leaders -- all of us -- need to accept the responsibility we each carry for how we got to this place. More than 2,000 Americans have lost their lives in this war, and more than 150,000 are fighting there today. They and their families deserve honesty from our country's leaders. And they also deserve a clear plan for a way out.
