Most non-Republican Americans realize the Iraq war from its inception served as a political club with which to bash opponents domestically, done with media complicity and democratic acquiescence.
Though not Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) (and a minority of his congressional colleagues).
As Ronald Brownstein and Emma Vaughn wrote in the LA Times in 2005:
Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, remembers the exchange vividly.
The time was September 2002. The place was the White House, at a meeting in which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressed congressional leaders for a quick vote on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.
But Daschle, who as Senate majority leader controlled the chamber's schedule, recalled recently that he asked Bush to delay the vote until after the impending midterm election.
"I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: 'Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?' He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: 'We just have to do this now.' "
Thus, continued the "war paradigm," begun after 9/11 in which the president, as Sidney Blumenthal wrote last June (2006), "in his wartime capacity as commander in chief makes and enforces laws as he sees fit, in effect as a sovereign, overriding the constitutional system of checks and balances," and bashes opponents who dare criticize the war president.
As the various moral failings of the Iraq war have now made continuation of the war politically untenable domestically (though not all democrats realize this even today), the political attacks from Republicans have changed.
As Senator Kit Bond (R-MO), writes in the NY Times:
It is clear that if we abandon Iraq as some want us to do right now, Al Qaeda will establish a safe haven there. This would give terrorists the resources of the petroleum-rich country to finance their operations, significantly increasing the threat of future attacks on the United States.
While I agree that we had the wrong plan for three years, we now have the right one, and the right man to lead it. The proper conclusion to be drawn from the N.I.E. findings is that Congress and the American people must remain vigilant and committed to the war on terror and its central front in Iraq.
Of course, lying about Al Qaeda and Iraq is typical, but now republicans are so desperate that Bond is forced to float the idea of admitting that the "plan" in Iraq was wrong for three years, but now the plan is spot-on perfect.
The question is: Will the credulity and cowardice shown by Tom Daschle (he knows better now) and Herb Kohl (knows nothing but will follow the junior Wisconsin Senator) and company in 2002 continue in 2007? Will democrats today say: "Well, I guess you just have to continue this war now to stop Al Qaeda."
I'm betting that the domestic political environment is so obviously anti-war that it lends itself unmistakeably well to democrats halting the war, and calling the republicans to account for their lies and political attacks, and actually bashing republicans over the head for the war they have inflicted onto the world.
By admitting that they have had it wrong for three years, the republicans are sacrificing what is left of the perceived wisdom of their war president. You won't see Bush make such a public mea culpa; the surrogate Bond has to make the silly and self-effacing case that finally all is well and right with how we wage war in Iraq.
As Glenn Greenwald writes (read his entire piece, very fun):
At its core, the history of the Iraq War has been authored by an indescribably deceitful and very intellectually limited political and media elite, perfectly symbolized by Kit Bond. These are people who spent four years hailing the Great Progress the Leader was making in Iraq, claiming we were "clearing and holding" neighborhoods of all the Terrorists, that Freedom was on the March, that anyone who questioned any of this was either brainwashed by the war-hating media or a Friend of The Terrorists.
But things have changed; no more war president.
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