The Democratic Party's choice of timing to demand a retreat from Iraq was poor, the third and final ballot to inaugurate an Iraqi constitutional democracy having now been met with supporters' optimism and skeptics' grudging acknowledgment. This was the second breach of Washington etiquette for modern warfare, the first committed in late 2003 when Democrats extended the reach of hard politics from the edge of American coasts to that of propriety. Three weeks ago a Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, identified by the press as a "hawk," gave up the ghost on the floor of the House of Representatives. Democrats hesitated, then moved to support the congressman and harness what seemed like public momentum to flatten President Bush and his party. They were instead thrown into a bizarre position, akimbo and untenable.
The congressman from Pennsylvania, a turbid old warrior, has trouble deciding whether he thinks Iraqis either are or are not in a civil war (they are not, he has said both) or whether Iraqis by and large either tolerate or detest the American presence (they tolerate it, he has suggested both). The man has also shown why veteran status does not necessarily confer strategic acumen, as he proposed our troops defeat the enemy by leaving the chosen battlefield and settling five thousand miles away. The day after his speech, House Republicans turned around and put to vote a non-binding resolution on immediate withdrawal that was defeated, 403-3.
Democrats protested, their bluff called. They could well have been shrewd at that point, arguing that an emerging picture of success justified progressive American departure — appearing loyal and practical while getting their way. But then they would a) accredit Bush, which b) runs counter to every utterance from every prominent Democrat for months, save c) Senator Joe Lieberman, who d) does not answer to, and is contemned by, the left proper, which e) appears ready to be remembered as having stood in the way of freedom abroad.
So, since Thanksgiving, leading Democrats have declared Iraq a failure and say they want out now — but not quite out, or now. Howard Dean, Doctor of Parisology, was last heard trying to explain why he didn't believe Iraq was unwinnable when he said on a radio broadcast that the idea of winning was "Plain wrong." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi embraced retreat a fortnight after repudiating it, and following her announcement that the balance of her caucus supported retreat she would not call the question because "A vote on the war is an individual vote." Senator John Kerry, accused of circulating apocrypha on national television, had his office release a statement that, more or less, impugned anyone with the temerity to question the authority of a serviceman (and former Senator Bob Dole, of the 10th Mountain Division, turned in his political grave).
What cause have backbenchers to pull troops from the front? There is room to complain, if you want — but to surrender Iraq? Hardly any. Casualties are low for the million soldiers rotated in and out of theater over three years, and if repeated polls recording strong morale were insufficient, high reenlistment and recruitment rates show confidence among those who have and who will serve.
The Iraqis fight our common enemy, defending a way of life with which they have just been acquainted. But opposition Democrats generally refer to Iraqis in a third person reserved for inanimate objects. And for the disavowal of Operation Iraqi Freedom to be politically successful — I will be charitable here, Democrats may not have guessed this — no Iraqi must live to tell the tale. If that is Democratic Party policy, it is something of an indifference to liberty itself. Were they to regain federal power, what would Democrats do about Syria and Iran; or democratic progress in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and elsewhere? What happens five years from now, when Iraqi democracy and civility has been asseverated?
Casting off a certain people as savages is all well and good until you actually run into one of them. How might members of a Democratic administration or congressional delegation greet elected representatives of Iraq, whose country, their party argued, should have been left in the hands of Saddam Hussein — or campaigned to abandon to the enemy, which converged, lymphocytic, on a foreign body politic? What does a Democratic envoy say to someone whose liberation and societal revolution culminated a military campaign he publicly consigned to dysphemisms? Oh, hello! I really didn't expect to see the likes of you outside of a documentary, as part of some crazy escape like we saw attempted by the Boat People — in your case, I guess, Camel People. Well, no need to think about such things. When I talked about a "mistake" I didn't mean you, but, you know, the circumstances. Things turned out, though I'd have done them differently. So there we are! Does one say something like that, or does one simply say nothing at all and, when pressed, forswear any impertinent statement?
And to whom will that appeal stateside? There is the adage that what makes Americans magnanimous also imbues ambivalence, so that every two or four years the electorate will concern itself with trifles and vote, with respect to party, towards equilibrium. History shows otherwise, particularly from this country's last great moral disambiguation, that of which men had certains rights inviolable: The crumbling of the Whigs, the inception of the Republicans, the split of the Democrats; Republican victories in nine of eleven presidential contests and Republican Houses won in 14 of 23 midterms, from Confederate surrender until the party's 1912 Conservative-Progressive split.
Today comes moral clarity again. Iraq's parliamentary elections will be held tomorrow, but diasporic voting in fifteen countries has gone on all week. Security is tight at polling locations yet lines are long because Iraqis will finally popularly rule their country — they have been seen smiling, laughing, cheering, crying, right index fingers colored purple. Yesterday a television news crew from — surprise — Fox News filed a report on Iraqi exiles in Michigan. Towards the end of the brief an old expatriate, curly grey hair and thick glasses, holding her inkstained finger aloft to huzzahs from onlookers, cried "For Iraq!" Facing a news camera, the woman continued in an accent embossed with trills.
"Without America, we couldn't accomplish this, we couldn't come to this. Anybody who does not appreciate what America has done," she said, eyes wide, stepping back and raising her voice, "and President Bush..." She looked down. "Let them go to hell." The Democratic Party is halfway there.