Who Will Define the Debate on Escalation in Iraq?

Posted on January 13, 2007
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Once again Democrats are in the position of not only having to defend their own position but also of having to prevent those who oppose them from redefining the debate. This has long been the strategy of the Rove Republicans: when your arguments are weak change the rules of discourse.

Today in Bush’s radio address he once again uttered the tired phrase,

“But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success.”

First of all, before you push my child off a precipice, I do not have the obligation to tell you what your alternatives are and prove that those alternatives are superior. It is enough for me to say “STOP!” Of course if you are a madman bent on committing the act anyway, it may serve me to be prepared to negotiate for a better outcome. Given such a situation, I have no obligation to you or to the crowd that desires to see the spectacle of your misdeeds. My obligation and goal is to prevent the harm you do, especially if it is to something I hold dear.

Secondly, Alternatives have been offered. Whether or not the hawks agree with or take seriously the alternatives that have been offered is not the question. The alternatives offered have included immediate withdrawal, phased withdrawal, partition, pulling back to protect non-warring factions — there’s the whole Baker / Hamilton study group report that while suggested should be taken as a whole could indeed be taken as whole or in part, including diplomatic engagement with Iran and Syria.

Finally, Bush and his handlers say the alternative has to have a better chance for “success.” They leave entirely open what is success. If pressed they’ll tell you. But success has been redefined so constantly in the course of this neocon adventure, we’re clear we can not allow the hawks to define success for us any more than they should be allowed to define the larger debate. At this point success will have to be defined by those left to clean up the mess in Bush’s Pottery Barn of mistakes.

Success will have to include a cease of doing harm in the region; repairing in Iraq what infrastructures and livelihoods we’ve destroyed to the extent Iraqis will allow us; repairing our reputation both among allies and around the world; mending and caring for our veterans; and a long dialog at home and with allies to determine what the U.S. role should be in the world’s conflicts.

Democrats and our new moderate Republican allies must define the terms of the debate for ourselves. When the Bush’s people start tossing around redefined and undefined terms like “surge,” we have to be vigilant and ready to call a thing what it is. Orwell’s 1984 was a fiction and a warning. We can not allow Bush-Rove-Snow-Cheney-Rice to make it our reality.