President Bush's low opinion poll numbers, much celebrated by our Democratic friends in the blogosphere, are surely something for Republicans to worry about. But to capitalize on Bush's problems, Democrats have to do more than heap scorn and criticism on Bush; they have to offer alternative policies. This is what Peter Charles Choharis "the executive director of the 2004 Democratic Platform Committee" says in the Los Angeles Times:
To regain voters' trust on national security, Democrats must adopt a different strategy: winning the war. To prevail in the 2006 congressional elections and beyond, Democrats must establish a clear and realistic definition of success in Iraq — and a strategy to achieve it. . . .
In 2004, Democrats agreed that, even if the war was a mistake, the U.S. must do what it takes to win. Today, the party shows signs of a split. Fifty House members recently formed the Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus, calling for a troop withdrawal, as has Democratic Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin. If Democrats divide over Iraq the way they did over Vietnam in 1968, with some favoring pulling out and others opposing it as dangerous to national security, a more united Republican base will again prevail in elections.
Politically, a Republican strategy of declaring victory and withdrawing troops could be popular. But a Democratic strategy of declaring defeat and removing troops will never be, as the 1972 election showed. And fairly or not, the 2004 race demonstrated that American voters will choose wrong but strong over right but unclear.
That, I think, is a pretty good analysis of why John Kerry lost the race in 2004, in spite of public misgivings about Bush's Iraq policy. But the problem is deeper than Coharis lets on. Since Bill Clinton lost interest in Iraq early in his first term, the Democratic party has never had a coherent policy. Those who are now advocating withdrawal, like Gary Hart, almost completely ignore the question of what happens if the U.S. does pull out, handing the insurgents a victory. They just aren't interested.
The most effective criticism of Bush's policy I have seen comes from a Foreign Affairs article by Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. (tip to RealClearPolitics). David Brooks sums up the argument nicely in the New York Times.
Krepinevich has now published an essay in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, "How to Win in Iraq," in which he proposes a strategy. . . .
Krepinevich calls the approach the oil-spot strategy. The core insight is that you can't win a war like this by going off on search and destroy missions trying to kill insurgents. There are always more enemy fighters waiting. You end up going back to the same towns again and again, because the insurgents just pop up after you've left and kill anybody who helped you. You alienate civilians, who are the key to success, with your heavy-handed raids.
Instead of trying to kill insurgents, Krepinevich argues, it's more important to protect civilians. You set up safe havens where you can establish good security. Because you don't have enough manpower to do this everywhere at once, you select a few key cities and take control. Then you slowly expand the size of your safe havens, like an oil spot spreading across the pavement.
Once you've secured a town or city, you throw in all the economic and political resources you have to make that place grow. The locals see the benefits of working with you. Your own troops and the folks back home watching on TV can see concrete signs of progress in these newly regenerated neighborhoods. You mix your troops in with indigenous security forces, and through intimate contact with the locals you begin to even out the intelligence advantage that otherwise goes to the insurgents.
If you ask U.S. officials why they haven't adopted this strategy, they say they have. But if that were true the road to the airport in Baghdad wouldn't be a death trap. It would be within the primary oil spot.
Now that is both a hopeful suggestion and a devastating criticism of Bush's policy. Why is it that Krepinevich can come up with something like this but the Democrats cannot? The answer is that he takes the alternative outcomes seriously, and is really interested in winning. He says in his last paragraph:
Even if successful, this strategy will require at least a decade of commitment and hundreds of billions of dollars and will result in longer U.S. casualty rolls. But this is the price that the United States must pay if it is to achieve its worthy goals in Iraq. Are the American people and American soldiers willing to pay that price? Only by presenting them with a clear strategy for victory and a full understanding of the sacrifices required can the administration find out. And if Americans are not up to the task, Washington should accept that it must settle for a much more modest goal: leveraging its waning influence to outmaneuver the Iranians and the Syrians in creating an ally out of Iraq's next despot.
For better or worse this kind of think points the way or ways out of Iraq. But you will look in vain for it among the pundits and politicos of the left.
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