The Iraq war, conventional wisdom goes, has been eclipsed as the No. 1 issue of the presidential campaign. The housing crisis, credit crunch and overall economic woes top the list of voters' concerns, recent polls show.
But as the war nears two grim milestones - five years since the invasion and nearly 4,000 Americans killed - the question of what to do in Iraq is never far below the surface. In California, where polls show 42 percent of Republicans and 91 percent of Democrats oppose U.S. policy in Iraq, strong anti-war sentiment gives the issue staying power.
When both parties held debates this week in California, the candidates' differing positions on the war were aired much more prominently than they have been in primaries and caucuses elsewhere. (my emphasis)
And Davies reminds us that there is a clear difference between the two parties on this issue:
Both Democrats pledge to begin a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces after taking office, and to launch a new diplomatic initiative in the Middle East to help stabilize Iraq. They acknowledge the threat of Al-Qaida terrorists in Iraq, but warn that U.S. troops should not be drawn into Iraq's civil strife.
The two leading Republicans support the surge of additional soldiers into Iraq and emphasize the need for victory before a pullout. McCain calls for a long-term military presence in Iraq.
But it will still be up to the Democratic base and the public more generally to make sure that the US gets out of the war if a Democratic President is elected. Because as unpopular as the war is, there are still powerful forces who will try to prevent a withdrawal from taking place.
During the Vietnam War, one of the Lyndon Johnson's main considerations in escalating the war and in stubbornly sticking with it was the fear that a pullout from Vietnam would result in a rightwing backlash even worse than the McCarthyist period after the "loss of China" in the Communist victory of 1949. In retrospect, it seems more likely that if he had continued John Kennedy's policy which began a cautious and quiet withdrawal in 1963, we might well have avoided the spiral downward in our democracy that took us from COINTELPRO, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew back then to Dick Cheney and George W. Bush today, the latter being two of the most destructive political leaders in American history.
But the Republicans will try to hang a stab-in-the-back stigma onto the Democrats over the Iraq War. In fact, they've been trying to do it since 2003! Without pressure from the base, either Obama or Clinton could be intimidated into halfway measures that leave the US stuck in Iraq indefinitely. With McCain as President, though, committed as he is to endless war in Iraq and to the Chenyist theory of the Unilateral Executive, it will be a much tougher political fight to get the US out of the war.
Davies notes that our Savior-General Petraeus will be presenting another report in a couple of months and that the Cheney-Bush administration is trying to lock the next President into a long-term military presence in Iraq:
The war will be a fluid issue between now and November. Decisions made by the Bush administration this year will affect the presidential race. Gen. David Petraeus is due to report to Congress in April, and officials in the administration have signaled that troop reductions may slow or stop this summer. ...
The administration also seeks a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could commit U.S. forces to defend Iraq's security beyond 2008, and that could develop as an issue. Democrats say that would tie the hands of the next president, and Obama has agreed to back a legislative effort by Clinton to require that any such agreement needs the approval of Congress.
On top of everything else, the war is an economic issue. Candidates point out that the cost of the war, at $8 billion to $10 billion a month, is taking resources away from domestic needs.
