More of the Same

Josh Marshall wrote a must-read post last week that
really gets to the heart of Bush’s incoherent Iraq policy.

The president wants to stay in Iraq for at least
three more years. It's not that he won't set a
date to withdraw. He doesn't even have a plan
that gets to the point where the US could end
the occupation. In practice he wants to stay in
Iraq forever. What Republicans are voting for
is More of the Same, More of the Same failed
policy.

A failed policy that is just as unpopular within the Iraqi
government as it is among the American people.

Erza Klein adds in today’s Tapped:

The Bush administration is actively working
against the wishes of the elected Iraqi
government and the expressed preferences of
the American public to pursue an indefinite
occupation of Iraq. This is a perpetual
deployment on behalf of no stated goals, no
wish-list of accomplishments, and no obvious
purpose. I can't say whether we want the
military bases, the oil, the regional foothold, or
anything else; but invading a country,
overthrowing their government, and then
remaining against the wishes of the elected
successors is the very definition of an
occupying power, and in any international
context, the neocons would be quick to define
it as a hostile occupying power. Folks
sometimes wonder why we don't have an exit
strategy. The answer, now obvious, is because
we don't want one.

So, Americans will continue to die in Iraq until President
Bush finally leaves the Oval Office and lets someone else
end the violent nightmare he started.


More from Josh:

He's like an owner of a business that's slowly
going under. He doesn't know how to save the
situation. So he won't get more money or
resources to fix the business. That's throwing
good money after bad. And he won't just
liquidate and save what he can, because then
he'd have to come to grips with the fact that
he's failed. So his policy is denial and slow
failure. Here of course the analogy to
President Bush is rather precise since he only
has to hold out until 2009 when he can give
the problem to someone else, just as he did in
his past life with other businesses he drove
into the ground.

But for the country that's not acceptable. We
don't have a policy except for slow burn and
denial. And the president's ego isn't enough to
ask men and women to die for. We need an
actual plan. And the president doesn't have
one.

But will Democrats (besides Murtha) ever get the
message -- and the guts -- to start hammering away at
the Republicans’ More of the Same strategy?

Senator Feingold showed everyone how it's done on
yesterday’s Meet the Press.

It appears to me that the American people
understand that it's time for a timeline to
withdraw the troops from Iraq. The Iraqi
people and the Iraqi government understand
it. It seems like it's only here in Washington
that people don't understand that it's time to
end this mistake. To end our military
involvement there and the votes in
Washington don't show it but the people of
this country and the people of Iraq want us to
stop it.