Matt:

Part of the problem is that we are siomply not geared up as a populace to end the war.  For out part, we say that we want to stop it in its tracks and bring everyone home.  However, another part of the population, and I suspect part of the population that even says they want to bring them home right now, feels as though this is part of a larger scale battle in the war against terror.  We never argue against the overall methods of our "war against terror".  We never argue that it would take ONLY $150 million to re-open all the business in Iraq that have been shut down because of the war.  

I guess the way I see it is that we are only arguing one side of it and at that we aren't even doing that very well.  We don't come up with a concise to plan to end this aspect of the greater war on terror and thus I suspect that consciouslyor not, people want the troops home, but don't want the war on terror to end.  We need to seperate both ideas.

Thank you Matt for writing about the other side of the coin on this. All of the Democratic nominees want to end the war and all of them have proposed plans (and/or are supporting some of the party plans) to do so in a responsible way. If a Democrat is elected in 2008 the final plan will likely be some compromise that includes some of the elements of all of the plans and that will be a tremendous improvement over where we are right now being stuck in the killing fields.

I can understand why people like Obey are frustrated.   So many people simply have unrealistic expectatations.

We are still in Bosnia, we are still in Korea.  We will be in Iraq for a long long time for many reasons - to fight the AlQaeda that have been drawn into Iraq due to our invasion, to counter balance Iran, and to protect the oil fields.  

The difference is we don't need 160,000 troops there.   We don't need Guard and Reserve forces there.  We don't have to have our troops getting killed and maimed.  We don't have to be acting as police.  We don't have to be kicking in doors.

The idea that we are going draw down all of our troops in 6 weeks, 6 months, or a year is simply unrealistic.  

This is an excellent post. It's really important to put the actions of our nominal and real allies in Congress into a proper perspective. Our nations militaristic stance to the world is a huge problem, and dealing with Iraq without acknowledging that greater problem is a recipe for ... well, maybe not disaster. But it's not good.

What we need to do as a party and as progressives is to support infrastructure as close to the "inside" as possible that is working toward the long-term goals we share. We have a very large opportunity here to begin to walk back our national psyche from the Cold War attitude of institutionalized perpetual war. But it's important that we see that that's the goal, not just ending Iraq. As Richardson said, "Iraq is not the disease. Iraq is a symptom." Now, he said that the disease was "arrogance," which is true enough but not the whole truth.

The old saying has a lot of relevance here: "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Only in this case, the American people know that the problem isn't a nail now. They just have no idea what it is and what the solution to that problem could be. Because we have no context from which to see any other solution.

That's what we as progressives need to build, the context of a world-view that has different tools with which to deal with problems. An invasion isn't the best solution to almost every problem, and a continued military occupation isn't any sort of solution to the current problem.

Stoller, you have been doing some seriously good blogging lately. This is outstanding analysis.

Except for Hayden, I would argure that his conduct lengthened the war by discrediting the opposition.

Pelosi's compromise is messy, but there's no clean solution here.

i'd feel better if the funding was for 3 months instead of 18 months.

18 months just takes the issue off the table...

Just wanted to say that's an excellent perspective on history, especially the importance of the takedown of the social democratic labor movement in the late 1940s, and how that has continued to hamstring us 60 years later from developing a broadbased and inclusive - and rooted - anti-imperialist movement.

Which war did Hayden end? Tom Hayden has always been about one thing - Tom Hayden.

Keep thinking the Democratic party is antiwar or anti-imperial. The war is the failure of six decades of bi-partisan American policy and until that's talked about, we will not be pulling out of Iraq.

You just had an election which for the first time in 12 years gave the Democrats control of the Congress because of the war and all they've done is back pedal. You have an anti-war movement marginalized by their trying to bring back the 60s. When is the anti-war movement going to talk to the old republicans, who were one of the biggest groups against going in and are the most anti-imperial? Maybe when it quits listening to people like Tom Hayden and begins to understand that the Democratic establishment is as responsible for this war as George W. Bush.

Even in the best case scenario, US troops are going to be needed, to make sure that neighboring countries don't take advantage, and attempt to annex border areas near Iraq.

The US is the only agent preventing that.

With the oil interests in the region, the only way the US will leave - barring Dennis Kucinich elected, and maybe not even then - is if disaster strikes, in the form of several hundred soldiers a month being killed, or nonstop attacks on supply routes.

What the experts see happening, is a much reduced US footprint in the range of 50K, at the borders, away from the cities, to stave off border incursions, and provide a quick strike capability, for Al-Queda/jihadist inspired activity.

If the US leaves completely, then the oil situation, the US, and the Mideast is screwed.  That would mean a regional war.

Has anyone got a map of the oil fields and where the military bases are?

Halfway through this blog I realized the author must be Matt Stoller.  He's the only regular blogger with the youthful arrogance to dismiss Noam Chomsky as someone who has succeeded at marginalizing himself for thirty years.  Matt, you really can be a tool at times.  Why not wait til you've developed more of a substantial record before dissing people who have accomplished oh, let's say, thirty times more than you have--sa a scholar, activist and incisive critic of the U.S. government and imperialism.

Thanks for the insightful post, Matt.  I wish some of the comments above appreciated what you mean.  The Clintonites are stuck in the CW.

The way to win this argument is to attack internationalist interventionism by stating simply, "We need to take care of America first." "We have problems at home. Protection and safety starts here. Economic development and basic services start here. We need to stop closing bases in the U.S, and start closing them down overseas." This kind of non-interventionist, non-imperialist nationalism will win. I reject the idea that mainstream America wants troops in Iraq forever. If you frame the question as "permanent" bases, progressives win every time. Besides, if Hillary wants to run on a policy continuing the occupation in the primaries...she's history.

...just in the real world applications of it. Because it always ends up biting the imperialist nation in the ass.

It's interesting how the leading Bloggers are now taking on the mantle as chief apologist for the failure of the Democrats to stop the war. They take impeachment and funding off the table and then cry about how there is nothing they can do and people just swallow it without any reflection at all.

I have some difficulty viewing things through the historical prism you're utilizing. Labor was undone more by union management greed than all those other factors, but I don't see how that relates to today. I also don't accept the notion that any anti-war folks shut down the Vietnam War. That's a rightwing claim. In reality, Nixon reached an impasse of options. It was either 'nuke 'em' or 'shut it down' at the end.

More recent history deserved your mention.

Clinton's proposal makes permanent her husband's northern No Fly Zone. It not only protects the Kurds, but contains their nationalism for Turkey's sake. It provides a DMZ zone to prevent the feared Shia crescent between Iraq and Iran. It provides Mossad a free-spy zone to keep tabs on Iran.

That it turns its back on the civil war in the rest of Iraq is the only surprise I found in her statements. The rest looks like a continuation of US imperialist strategy to back repressive hardliners in Israel and Saudi Arabia, and we can't be certain if that's tied to campaign donation ambitions.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter's been marginalized, because he has the unfortunate tendency to eschew clever politics in favor of frankness. Most of the country knows who he is; I'd be surprised if 20% know the name of Chomsky.

Being antiwar for ideological and moral reasons is not a strategy. It's a personal imperative that has no mass appeal without a charismatic leader.

I think the answer takes looking forward. The Net grants the possibility that anti-war groups on both sides of a war can link their efforts and provide subterfuge to undo the efforts of all governments involved.

If governments won't provide the peace that most people prefer, then maybe we need to bypass governments instead of lending continued aid and support to them.

This isn't meant to criticize nor to state that I have a better answer. It's just to say that persistence and thinking outside the box do leave some pathways open beyond despair.

There is no reason that all us TROOPS CANNOT BE OUT OF iraq in 18 months.

It is a fallacy to think their will be a refgional war and a blood bath.

I was in the vietnam war and many of the same things were said by the so called experts.

The oil will flow, their has to be buyers for this Oil and the US is a major buyer.

We still have US ships in the area, air bases and bases for ground troops in Kuwait.

Clinton is just plain naive in her proposal which will not work and will not prevent US casualities.

I think it's just obvious that there's going to be a sectarian bloodbath the minute we pull out.  That's the nettle that no one wants to grasp- Saddam's oppression was what was holding the lid down on it, and we've removed him.

-We're going to leave, as soon as the American people fully realize that our soldiers are dying and getting maimed for life to support Moqtada al-Sadr.  The Walter Reed scandal has only begun to pull away the wool that has been pulled over their eyes, obscuring the American human cost of this operation through rigid control of the media.

-There will be sectarian "ethnic cleansing" after we leave.  It's going on now, just at a reduced scale due to our standing in the middle of it.  There was massive killing in Bosnia and Kosovo before our interventions; when we finally showed up to stop the slaughters, the people were ready for peace.  We also had much better international cooperation, because the interventions were obviously humanitarian and not imperial.  The Iraq internvention was not at all humanitarian and was completely imperial.  Plus we went about it like the arrogant fratboys our leaders were (and are).

-There will be a regional war after we leave, because the Turks won't abide an independent Kurdistan, the Saudis won't abide ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Sunnis and Iran covets the Iraqi Shia area with its natural and human resources.

With all this clearly coming down the pike, it's no surprise to me that our Democratic frontrunners who are trying to show themselves as pragmatists when it comes to foreign policy are reluctant to say that we'll pack up and leave if they're elected.  It's truly a frightening prospect.

Great post and excellent discussion. I linked to both on my blog in a post titled Hillary's new Iraq plan has all the clarity, simplicity and political appeal of her old health insurance plan. The plan triangulates by half steps and half measures to perpetuate the morass we find ourselves in. It seems destined to fail. Like her ill-fated health insurance proposal of 1993, it offers bewildering complexity when bold initiatives are called for. If, by some miracle, the plan survives the Democratic primaries, it would most likely destroy any administration that tried to implement it.