John's Blog

The buzzwords are flying fast and furious; "stay the course", "cut & run", "phased withdrawal" seem to be peppered into what passes as political debate these days. Republican have adopted the questionable strategy of getting behind an unpopular war, with no apparent plan to move forward other than more of the same. Painting the opposition as weak, portraying any discussion and discourse on the subject as disloyal or enabling the enemy are all things that have worked pretty well in the past for the GOP, so why change now?

Given the absence of any real ideas on how to fix this mess, the politics of fear seem to be on display once again. Democrats are almost enabling this, since there isn't a coherent message that is coming from the opposition, despite the fact that they have the majority of public opinion on their side. In these days of "talking points" and short attention spans, any real debate or exchange of ideas is something we aren't accustomed to seeing. Ironic since we claim to be bringing Democracy to the Middle East, yet it has been strangely absent 'round these parts.

Let's hope that we can have some actual political discourse on this, and not the name calling that has been a major component of most discussions recently. The absence of a unified anti-war stance on the part of the Democrats isn't necessarily a sign of weakness...yet. If we allow the process to play out, hopefully a plan to extract US troops from Iraq can emerge. Leaders like Nancy Pelosi have provided glimpses of what an effective opposition can look like: "It's time to face the facts, This war is a failed policy of the Bush Administration.... We need a new direction in Iraq."