The Democratic Party's Iraq Dilemma - Why is There One?

Why is there such a dilemma in the Democratic Party over what to do about the war in Iraq? Let us start off by looking at say the past 30 years and what the Democratic Party has proclaimed in virtually every foreign policy challenge, “Another Vietnam. “ Since our first involvement with Iraq back in 1991, the democrats have insisted that Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam. They have claimed that Afghanistan was Pushtun for Vietnam, Kosovo was Serbo-Croatian for Vietnam, and Nicaragua, EL Salvador, Grenada, were each feared to be Spanish for Vietnam.

What the democrats don’t understand or haven’t up to this point, is that the Vietnam War wasn’t their finest hour. In the last election the Democrats ran as an antiwar party and promised to bring the war to a close. However, now that they’ve gained a majority in both houses, they’re at a loss as to what to do now. The Democrats have insisted that they want to make sure that this is still President Bush’s war, and not theirs. Therefore they have pretty much had a hands off policy of the war, but the only way to end the war is to take possession of it. A point in which most of the democratic base thinks that would be fine, however someone in the Democratic leadership understands that this might be a problem.

The Democratic Party is incapable of escaping the myths of the Vietnam War that they have nurtured for decades. All that seems to matter is proving that the Iraq War not only has been lost, but that must be lost; or their Vietnam worldview would be invalidated. The Democratic Party wants us out of Iraq, yet the same time they have failed to acknowledge what kind of an impact our withdrawal would have on the country and in that region. Senator Edward Kennedy ridiculed the notion that a withdrawal from Iraq would have great humanitarian costs.

“I heard the same kind of suggestions at the time of the end of the Vietnam war,” Kennedy told NBC’s Tim Russert, mocking the notion that we’d have a “great blood bath” with more than 100,000 dead. “And for those of us that were strongly opposed to that war, we heard those same kinds of arguments.” The problem is those arguments were right, over half a million Vietnamese died trying to flee the grand peace Kennedy and his colleagues had orchestrated. More than 1.2 million Cambodians died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, thanks to the power vacuum created by our humanitarian withdrawal.

Senator Chris Dodd, a presidential candidate, insists that our withdrawal from Iraq would not make anything worse than it is right now. However, in 1975 he took the same stance by stating “The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now.”

The cost of defeat in Vietnam was more than just humanitarian. America’s loss to a comparatively weaker nation arguably prolonged the cold war; and has long served as an emboldening example to our enemies to believe Uncle Sam has a glass jaw. Our enemies have cried out: “American people, your government is leading you to a new losing war; your government was defeated in Vietnam and fled scared from Lebanon, and Somalia.” Their line of thought is that if they stay the course long enough, we will tuck our tails and leave.

If President Bush’s surge is successful, chances are Americans will think that it was all worthwhile. On the other hand if the Democrats are successful at ending the war in defeat, it’s not at all clear that Americans will see the triumph Kennedy remembers in Vietnam. Nor is it clear that they will congratulate the Democratic Party for securing sure defeat rather than chancing victory.

Is there a way out of Iraq? What is that way? Can victory really be declared in Iraq? That really depends upon what this Congress will do in the coming months. Will they choke our military by cutting off funds? Will they set a deadline to have all of our troops withdrawn from Iraq? If they do, how will our Allies be able to trust us in future conflicts, as we have established ourselves as not wanting to finish what we start? Yes, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered or thought about before the Democrats decide to do whatever they are going to do. One thing is certain though, to save face and have a shot at retaining both houses of the Coongress and maybe the Presidency, they will need to claim the war as their own (in part or as a whole). For it took their votes in 2002 to make it happen.