The Silenced Majority
By Harold Meyerson
Washginton Post
We are condemned, the smart guys tell us, to stay in Iraq. None of the three leading Democratic presidential candidates will pledge to remove all U.S. forces by 2013. In the think-tankocracy of Washington, defense intellectuals of both parties argue that pulling up stakes is not an option.
"Some of the people mentioned as possible defense secretaries under a Democratic White House," The Post's Thomas E. Ricks reported last month, "offer a vision of a U.S. presence in Iraq that does not differ markedly from that of the Bush administration." Even the fantastical idea floated by Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- that U.S. forces should settle into a permanent presence in Iraq as they have in South Korea -- seems to have won at least tacit acceptance among many defense deep thinkers.
Everyone's on board except the American people, but what do they matter?
When the Pew Research Center polled Americans in September, it found 54 percent support for bringing U.S. forces home immediately or over the next two years. Thirteen percent said we should keep troops in Iraq but set a timetable for withdrawal, while 25 percent favored keeping troops there and not setting a timetable. Pew didn't ask if we should station forces there for half a century, as we have in Korea. Maybe the pollsters' lawyers told them they might be held liable if they asked a question that induced cardiac arrest.
In the past several years there's been great concern about the erosion of individual rights as a consequence of the Bush administration's "war on terror" and war in Iraq. I share this concern. But the administration's critics, myself included, have been remiss in noting a development even more corrosive to American democracy -- the erosion of majority rule.
A fundamental premise of democracy is that elections matter. That belief is being tested today as it seldom has before. In 2006, the Republicans were swept from power in Congress because the American electorate had had it with the war and with Congress's unquestioning acquiescence to President Bush's blind and obdurate faith in the eventual success of the American mission. In responding to the election by sending more troops to Iraq and keeping these troops there until the limits of our manpower compel their return next year, Bush merely doubled down on his unwinnable bet on his unwinnable war.
(Continued here.)
Washginton Post
We are condemned, the smart guys tell us, to stay in Iraq. None of the three leading Democratic presidential candidates will pledge to remove all U.S. forces by 2013. In the think-tankocracy of Washington, defense intellectuals of both parties argue that pulling up stakes is not an option.
"Some of the people mentioned as possible defense secretaries under a Democratic White House," The Post's Thomas E. Ricks reported last month, "offer a vision of a U.S. presence in Iraq that does not differ markedly from that of the Bush administration." Even the fantastical idea floated by Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- that U.S. forces should settle into a permanent presence in Iraq as they have in South Korea -- seems to have won at least tacit acceptance among many defense deep thinkers.
Everyone's on board except the American people, but what do they matter?
When the Pew Research Center polled Americans in September, it found 54 percent support for bringing U.S. forces home immediately or over the next two years. Thirteen percent said we should keep troops in Iraq but set a timetable for withdrawal, while 25 percent favored keeping troops there and not setting a timetable. Pew didn't ask if we should station forces there for half a century, as we have in Korea. Maybe the pollsters' lawyers told them they might be held liable if they asked a question that induced cardiac arrest.
In the past several years there's been great concern about the erosion of individual rights as a consequence of the Bush administration's "war on terror" and war in Iraq. I share this concern. But the administration's critics, myself included, have been remiss in noting a development even more corrosive to American democracy -- the erosion of majority rule.
A fundamental premise of democracy is that elections matter. That belief is being tested today as it seldom has before. In 2006, the Republicans were swept from power in Congress because the American electorate had had it with the war and with Congress's unquestioning acquiescence to President Bush's blind and obdurate faith in the eventual success of the American mission. In responding to the election by sending more troops to Iraq and keeping these troops there until the limits of our manpower compel their return next year, Bush merely doubled down on his unwinnable bet on his unwinnable war.
(Continued here.)
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