I assume there will be endless spleen about this post online:
Frankly, I don't believe that more troops is the answer for Iraq. It's a civil war and America should not be policing a Sunni-Shia conflict. In addition, we don't have the additional forces to put in there. We obviously want to support what commanders in the field say they need, but apparently even the Joint Chiefs do not support increased combat forces for Baghdad. My position on Iraq is simple:
- 1. I believe we should start redeploying troops in 4 to 6 months (The Levin-Reed Plan) and complete the withdrawal of combat forces by the first quarter of 2008. (As laid out by the Iraq Study Group)
- 2. The President must understand that there can only be a political solution in Iraq, and he must end our nation's open-ended military commitment to that country.
- 3. These priorities need to be coupled with a renewed diplomatic effort and regional strategy.
I do not support an escalation of the conflict. I support finding a way to bring our troops home and would look at any plan that gave a roadmap to this goal.
OMG! Reid said that he doesn't support the surge! Now, I assume that in response to this, all of the bloggers who vented uncounted amounts of plasma into the atmosphere over one poorly phrased sentence on a Sunday morning talk show will apologize for jumping the gun. I am sure that hundreds of people will write posts admitting that focusing on one sentence from the majority leader in response to a "gotcha" question on a Sunday morning talk show was a little premature and frankly unfair to Harry Reid. I mean, we aren't in the position of declaring that because someone, once, made a bad comment about the "surge" in Iraq, that the only thing that matters when it comes to that person's view on the "surge" in Iraq is that one sentence. Surely, we are willing to take a broader view of that person's statements into account before declaring that someone, much less the incoming Senate Majority leader, is in favor of troop escalation in Iraq.
Or, maybe, there are elements in the blogosphere who are exactly like the establishment media that we so decry, and are not willing to cut any Democratic leaders any slack on any statements they ever make. Maybe there are some people, even in the progressive blogosphere, who drool at even the slimmest opportunity to attack Democratic leaders. Maybe the people attacking Reid online were acting exactly like the media pundits who couldn't trip over themselves fast enough to pounce on Kerry's one-word misstatement of a pre-written speech everyone in the media had a copy of beforehand--thereby knowing it was simply a mistake--in order to find any way possible to make Democratic leaders look bad, no matter how utterly unjustified and unfair. Maybe there are some people desperate for any proof that Democratic leaders are not progressive enough to deserve their support, thereby validating their personal identities as purely moral, progressive martyrs who are permanently un-represented by anyone with any actual power in American politics.
I would imply that there were people like this online, but then I would be engaging in the strawmen tactics I often decry. Even if I wasn't doing that, and I named names among bloggers who were unfair to Reid because he made one unfortunate comment, then I would be abusing my podium to make less powerful members of the netroots and blogosphere look bad. And I suppose, if it were not for the outcry, Reid would not have made such a clear statement on his opposition to escalation in Iraq. Or, maybe there was a way to encourage him to do that without acting an an utterly hysterical manner that only fueled the MSM buzz on the subject.
Since I am not going to talk about any of that,
my original statement on this entire episode stands: now that we are in the majority, we need to move past endless parsing of the words our leaders say, and focus instead on the policies they intend to pursue. It was ridiculous in the first place to think that Reid supported troop escalation in Iraq,
considering that he voted for a timeline thirteen months ago. Even if it wasn't ridiculous, we shouldn't have been parsing his words. Rather,we should have been focusing on his proposed oversight measures and legislative policy proposals, and critiquing those. We are not in the minority anymore, and we are not Republicans. In both cases, this means that our politics is more than our message. It is time we started acting that way. We have to make the transition to power online, too.
Update:
What Atrios said.
