A Political Shift of Major Proportion

12/10/2005

Paul Munnis

In just five days the Iraqi election will take place and when it does a major change in the Iraq War and American politics will happen. The U.S. will no longer be in Iraq as the aggressor nation who invaded and occupied the country. The U.S. will no longer be responsible for the Administration of Iraq. The U.S. will no longer run the country of Iraq.

The new Iraqi government will become responsible for all of those things and one of the first tasks they will have is to decide what to do about the U.S. military and our presence in their country. If they ask us to stay then our mission there will be defined by them when we ask “Stay - to do what?” If they ask us to leave then we must leave under international law. The future of Iraq is about to be determined by Iraqi’s and not by U.S. politicians or U.S. field commanders. A major change in American politics will begin on December 16th.

A lot of the current political talk about the war in Iraq rings hollow when viewed in the above context. Will we bring home troops? How many? When? These matters are yet to be determined in talks with the new Iraqi government. Stay tuned. Political chatter concerning them now is a useless exercise.

We will bring home some 20,000 troops in time for Christmas and we are thankful for that. We know that against the 160,000 who are in Iraq this is just a token force, yet more are going to leave as they are replaced by the Iraqi forces and as the mission is defined more clearly for future U.S. participation. Frankly, I don’t think the U.S. can do much now except to prepare a series of plans to cover various scenarios. I hope that we are doing that in the Pentagon and the State Department right now.

U.S. commanders will no longer be responsible for winning the War in Iraq or policing the countryside. Those responsibilities will shift to the new military and police units of the Iraqi government. Whether Civil War will blossom further or become reconciled is yet to be fully determined. 

We seem to be bracing for a new request that we expect to come our way - a training mission request. We fully expect that the Iraqi’s will want America to train and equip their military.

There is much talk about how to work with the Iraqi military after the Iraqi elections end and the model that America used in Vietnam wherein we embedded troops as “advisors” into the host country’s military seemed to work well and is being suggested once again.

For Democrats and Republicans to be ripping at each other right now is just plain dumb in our opinion. We are debating things that will be determined by the Iraqi government and we are moving into a response mode where we will respond to talks held with the new Iraqi government. We don’t yet know what it is that we are debating.

Credit and blame go the Republicans. Credit for allowing the election of a new government and blame for mismanaging the occupation of Iraq; blame for allowing a church-state to arise in Iraq; blame for poor equipment and deployment of the U.S. military; and blame overall for making life more miserable for the Iraqi citizen than it was under Saddam. We know the Bush propaganda machine is trying to make it seem like we had a beneficial effect on Iraq in areas of water and electricty and for creating Democracy in Iraq but in fact we are responsible for many not so beneficial things too. “Troops give kids candy,” is not news while “human bomb explodes in marketplace,” is news. We made much of this news through our actions. The lights are on only two hours a day and the water in many areas is putrid. It’s hard to call what is happening in Iraq “Democracy” when in fact half of the citizens are not given their human rights and a civil-war over religious preference is threatening to explode. Minority rights for Iraqi’s are are a sham too. As the Iraqi war ends then these failures will surface in depth with some of them will demand justice and restitution from the U.S. Yet there are pragmatists in Iraq and some of these problems can be headed off.

I think that we Democrats also deserve both credit and blame. We should take credit for acting as the loyal opposition and providing a counter-weight to an Administration run amok in their planning for Iraq. We should get credit for demanding justification for exposing many of the efforts and failures in Iraq such as POW torture and abuse. Democrats may get blame for giving the Administration too much authority at the outset of the war and failing to force the Administration to provide better education of the public all during the period of war. Three years after invading Iraq there are still no reasons given as to why we invaded. We all know that WMD was a sham. Many of us suspect that oil was the hidden reason for invasion. If oil was the reason for invading then the Bush lead War in Iraq was a huge failure.

Now that this sea-change is about to happen there is clean-up needed. The American people still deserve the truth concerning why we invaded Iraq. The issues of responsible war behavior needs to be sorted out. Some war crimes will have to be prosecuted and some of the guilty are at the highest levels of our government and military. Determination and prosecution of war profiteering and war crimes must continue in depth. American military forces must be rebuilt and staffed and new missions consistent with foreign policy objectives must be assigned. For example, the future of Afghanistan is about to be discussed in much more depth than has been done publically up until now.

As for Bush himself, his status is changing. He will no longer be a wartime president. He will no longer call the shots in Iraq. In a few weeks the 109th Congress will end and Mr. Bush will become a lame-duck president. He will have declining sway and influence as his role becomes one of helping raise money for the 2006 elections for GOP candidates while kissing babies and performing the more ceremonial duties of his office even as Aviary Flu and other such threats, including terrorism, confront our American planners. In those efforts the private sector will be more dominant in the planning role than the government itself will be. The government will provide macro level planning while corporations plus local and state planners will do the micro planning.

By all that is logical the 110th Congress when it convenes will have a different agenda on its plate, one that is fashioned on one side by the coming 2006 election and constrained on the other side by the fiscal mess made by the shameful, irresponsible, and spend-thrift, 109th Congress.

Once again Democrats will continue as the loyal opposition and demand accountability and repair even while blowing the whistle on poor GOP governance. Democrats need to force the GOP to succeed even though they have a tendency to self-destruct through ideology run amok. America relies on Democrats to move us forward as a nation. One good example is in the Drug Pharmacy area of Medicare, it will take Democrats to straighten that mess out. The GOP is unable to do so they are constrained by the weight of the baggage that they created when passing the legislation.

This 110th Congress will have the job of saying: “No,” to deep pocket demands of the new Iraqi government as well as to the Bush Administration and its cronies, and “Yes,” to requests when they seems to be proper to fund American recovery and growth. The biggest issues of 2006 will be trade, jobs, national healthcare, pensions, and taxation. All issues that Democrats are really good at dealing with. From that will flow fiscal budgeting and appropriations. In many ways the 110th Congress will debate and the produt will be to create a new vision for America. As that vision emerges there will be a Democrat and a Republican version of it and the 2008 Presidential Election will then determine how the vision actually plays out and who gets to implements the vision.

As a nation we would be wise to cool-it on war rhetoric right now. The war effort is changing and a sea change is about to happen in Iraq. We don’t yet know exactly how it’s going to shape up. The GOP still owns the U.S. government and must govern better than they have been doing and Democrats still have an important role to play as the loyal opposition and as the vision crafters for America’s future. The vision for our future belongs to Democrats and as we choose to define that vision then the political debate will be shaped accordingly.

In this context the recent meeting on ‘Climate and Change’ that occurred in Montreal this week is an opening round for crafting a future vision for America. Bush was stand-offish on the talks; our talks were non-bindig, we did not fully participate in the talks; and as a result, over 150 nations went away determined to work without the U.S. as a part of the solution to climate change and global warming. In other words, Bush chose American isolationism as his vision for America for GOP governance concerning international matters that effect world economies.

The Democrats went to the conference in the form of former President Bill Clinton. Clinton spoke for Democrats and he made it clear to those nations that when Democrats are elected we will cooperate with the rest of the world and a future of joint trade and increased trade and commerce will flow from the combined efforts. He received a standing ovation.

The meeting was a study in contrast and this is a picture of the days and debates yet to come in our Congress. Just minutes ago the GOP issued a press release that they would try to repair the damage done by them at that conference in MOntreal by entering into non-binding talks and as usual they are too late stepping up to the challenges. The world is moving on without Bush.

Welcome to the future.