The decision by Democratic congressional leaders to abandon their demand that Bush set a date for the withdrawal from Iraq is a grave error. The only good argument against setting a deadline is that it would give the insurgents a date to aim for and might indeed cause them to redouble their attacks on US troops while they had the chance. But such a consideration never outweighed the now stark truth that US soldiers are no longer — if indeed they have ever been — part of the solution. They are now completely and squarely part of the problem.
They have become the magnet drawing the forces of evil. So long as they remain, so long will the flow of malevolence that is devastating the land and people of Iraq. The Democrats have abandoned the timeline demand in the face of obdurate White House insistence that the president will veto the second attempt to get the American military out of Iraq. The sop that appears to have been flung the Democrats is extra funding for domestic causes dear to their hearts. But that is going to do nothing to help Iraqis.
It had seemed briefly that Bush was prepared to compromise. But the tone of his administration has not changed. This is a know-nothing, learn-nothing presidency as was once again made clear by the startling pronouncement of Homeland Security Adviser Frances Townsend. Ms. Townsend said that Iraq “remained a terrorist sanctuary” from which Al-Qaeda could plan attacks on the United States. The implication is that under Saddam’s rule, Bin Laden’s thugs were active throughout Iraq. Yet the whole world, with the exception of the Bush White House, now knows that the absolute opposite was true. Washington brought Al-Qaeda to Iraq and it is the Iraqis who are paying the price for this blunder.
Townsend also produced “declassified documents” that supposedly prove Bin Laden was urging the now-slain Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq to set up a terror cell in the United States. We can only be amazed at how Bin Laden imagined Zarqawi could find the time to organize such a thing in the midst of his activities in Iraq. The documents are either as inaccurate or phony as much of the so-called intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
The Bush White House continues to exist in a make-believe world. The hope here in the Middle East has been that the Democrats, seeing the error of their own original chauvinistic support for the invasion, would finally force an end to Bush’s folly. To have caved in because the president would not himself back down is tragic.
It does not matter that the Democrats do not have the numbers to overturn the veto. They owe it to US voters — who are heartily sick of the war — to keep hammering home the need for withdrawal. They also — though they probably do not consider this — owe it to the Iraqis to draw a line in the sand.
