Democrats show life on Iraq

Don’t hold your breath, but Democrats may be showing signs of life in the national debate over Iraq. For most of three years, including Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign, party leaders have appeared fearful of challenging George W. Bush’s belligerent bungling. They haven’t wanted voters to mistake them for George McGovern, the WWII bomber pilot and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate who made the mistake of being right about Vietnam too soon.

Now that may be changing. As recently as July, the party establishment worried that Americans couldn’t be trusted to make elementary distinctions. Writing in the Democratic Leadership Council’s “Blueprint Magazine,” Will Marshall opined that while “intellectually, of course, it’s possible to separate Iraq and the war on terror,” Democrats needed to be wary lest voters mistake them for anti-American hippie pacifists.

Marshall urged the party to heed the example of Sens. Joe Biden, John Kerry, Evan Bayh and Hillary Rodham Clinton, “who have set an example for responsible, progressive patriotism.”

Rooting for America to succeed in Iraq? As in rooting for the Chicago Cubs to win the National League Central? The bitter truth is that we’re far beyond that. Moreover, the cultural climate is very different. Try as they may, right-wing talk radio savants can’t turn grieving mother turned antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan into another “Hanoi Jane” Fonda. Partly because there’s no military draft, there are no mobs of “Flower Children” chanting slogans in support of Saddam Hussein or barbaric Iraqi insurgents.

Recent surveys show the majority of Americans understand that invading Iraq on a false pretext has made the nation not less, but more vulnerable to Al Qaeda, weakening the U.S. military, draining the Treasury, alienating America’s natural allies among the world’s democracies, and sowing Arab fanaticism like dragon’s teeth.

There’s at least one name-brand Democrat who wasn’t obliged to vote in 2002, and whose patriotism is hard to question: Gen. Wesley Clark. Maybe that’s why the former NATO supreme commander and neophyte 2004 presidential candidate has taken the lead. Beginning with a trenchant column in the Washington Post and a subsequent appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Clark has begun a calculated assault on the Bush administration’s Iraq policy from the right and left simultaneously.

“More than half the American people now believe that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake,” Clark writes. “They’re right. But it would also be a mistake to pull out now, or to start pulling out or to set a date certain for pulling out. Instead we need a strategy to create a stable, democratizing and peaceful state in Iraq — a strategy the administration has failed to develop and articulate.”

Asked in an online forum about the consequences of retreat, Clark concedes that “(a)n exit that leaves behind violence, chaos and civil war will be viewed as a clear American defeat. And, it will supercharge terrorists recruiting, increase problems for American diplomacy … and increase the danger closer to home.”

What Clark only implies is that tactical retreat may end up being the least bad option.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner. You can e-mail Lyons at [email protected].