Fred Kaplan: Remember Iraq? Why the Democrats Aren't Ending the War

[flpoljunkie]

Remember Iraq? Why the Democrats aren't ending the war.
By Fred Kaplan

Posted Thursday, Dec. 20, 2007, at 6:16 PM ET

On Tuesday, the Senate voted down two motions that would have put some conditions on the $70 billion in emergency funds that President Bush requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One motion would have required that most U.S. troops be redeployed within nine months. The other would have required that most combat troops "transition" to more limited missions—support, logistics, training, and counterterrorism—by the end of next year. Both motions lost.

The Democrats recaptured the House and Senate in the 2006 election in large part because of the growing opposition to the war in Iraq. Yet here they are, continuing to write Bush huge checks to conduct the war as he pleases, absolutely no strings attached. Have the Democrats betrayed their electoral mandate? It's not so simple. Two big factors are at play here.

First, in the era of the tacit filibuster, no contentious legislation can pass the Senate without attracting 60 votes. (The measure calling for a limited combat mission in Iraq won a 50-45 plurality, but since 50 votes wouldn't block a filibuster, it was, in practical terms, a defeat.) The Democrats emerged from the midterms with a bare majority; and they would lose that if Sen. Joseph Lieberman, now an Independent, switched to the Republican caucus—a threat he silently dangles at every opportunity. In a sense, then, the Democrats have failed to take action not because they're craven but because they don't have the numbers. And it will probably take at least two more landslide elections before they do.

But there is a more substantive reason for Democratic inaction—the sheer paralysis of perplexity. Most Democrats (and the smattering of Republicans who have joined their assaults on Bush's policies) simply don't know what they want done about Iraq.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2180470/