Decius wrote:

Congressman Brian Baird (D-3 Vancouver, Washington) hosted a town hall tonight at Fort Vancouver High School. It was Baird’s first appearance in front of his constituents since reversing his position on the war. ALTHOUGH he’s been an adamant critic of the war—he voted against the war and the surge—he announced last week that he thinks the surge is working and he wants to give it time.

He spoke in a high school auditorium that was packed with at least 500 people who were overwhelmingly vocal in their opposition to Baird’s new stance. There were also protesters outside calling for Baird to resign.

I also talked to several people as they left the auditorium and asked them if they found Baird—who was there to explain his new position—to be persuasive. To a person, everyone shook their head “no way,” including Doris Holmes, active member of the 18th district Democrats, who said, “He lied. He’s toeing the Bush party line. I can’t believe he’s a Democrat.”

You can follow links through to Baird's editorial if you wish. The bottom line is that this sort of thinking simply isn't allowed in the Democratic party. "I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself."

Actually no, the bottom line is this sort of thing is par for the course among Democrats. It may make it damn hard to get elected or re-elected, but that is a different question.

As K puts it there are 5 issues the congressman's argument rest on, and I'll steal them for use here.

a) things are now changing for the better,
b) the soldiers want to finish the job; not letting them would be doing a disservice to their sacrifice,
c) we destroyed Iraq, so it's up to us to fix it,
d) leaving will, at least, embolden terrorists and at worst permit a complete fundamentalist takeover of the entire middle east,
e) we're substantially leaving anyway... all we're talking about is leaving some people there to help out.

So let's do some more breakdown on them. The issue that seems to have tipped the matter is A and is based on what Petreaus is saying and the recent NIE which seems to say things are getting better. Except it seems that Petreaus may have caused the NIE to come out better that originally written. That position is convoluted at best, and I am sure open to different interpretations by different people. The majority position is the war is a total botch, and a change in one area (the military position) won't make any difference at all, but on top of that, the comments that things on the ground are better are hard to balance with the morbidity and mortality numbers coming out of Iraq. Representative Baird may be seeing the sunnier side of the coming report, and while I disagree with that, I can see why he may be conflicted.

Item B is just plain wrong. The military, at least some parts of it want to be able to say, "This was the job, and we were successful." Again, that is a reasonable desire, however they were never given the material to do it, the manpower to do it or the direction to know what the hell it was they were actually supposed to do. The original job was take out Saddam. They did. There was ZERO planning for what to do after that, and attempts by people to do planning for that were blocked or thwarted (see Fiasco by Tom Ricks). This lands squarely on the White House steps, and I cannot think of any greater disservice that has ever been done to the American military than by this bunch of schmucks.

Item C is quite true, we did destroy Iraq, but the idea of leaving the same bunch of fools who caused its destruction in charge of the rebuilding, when they can't even rebuild a city in THIS country is breathtakingly stupid. If the options are get the hell out or let these guys screw things up even worse, I'll choose get the hell out. It's better for us, and oddly enough, it's probably better for the Iraqis and the region. Why?

Item D is dead wrong. Leaving will not "embolden the terrorists." How did bin Laden recruit for Al Qaeda? We were occupying the holy land (the troops we kept in Saudi after Gulf War I) and used that as a lever. I am not saying that pulling out will remove the threat, but the blatant occupying force we have in place is the best recruiting tool they could wish for, hundreds of thousands of infidels polluting their holy places. Further, it seems we're not just a motive, but we seem to be arming and funding them by the botched care we've taken in our rebuilding and security mission (see those 150,000 plus weapons missing and the billions of dollars unaccounted for, to say nothing of the Great Baghdad Bank Heist). But don't take my word for it, here's the Washinton Post on the subject.

Item E is not what we're talking about. The subject is "surge" vs doing let's say embassy security (which is going to be a hell of a job since the place is the size of the Vatican) and getting back to training and maybe direct border security, rather than dicking around block by block like Stalingrad in the sand. As horrible as this is, virtually no one is talking about 100% extraction, although that may be the best plan. What people are talking about is a gradual draw down in both numbers and mission, so the soldiers there are not working the streets.

Given that, my expectation is, the Maliki government is going to collapse. Internal pressure combined with pressure from Washington (caused by of all people interim PM Allawi lobbying that Maliki has his head up his ass, for fun analysis of this one, try Arianna here).
will bring down Maliki. That leaves us with an Iraqi government foundering on the rocks. The best situation may be partition (assuming the Turks and Kurds can find a way to coexist).

The real bottom line? Representative Baird can say anything he wants, but the people paying attention in his party are thinking somewhat along the lines of what I just laid out, and if he wants to get off that track, he better be ready to back it with credible (meaning non-White House) sources, which he hasn't done in his piece, or be ready to be looking for a new job.

RE: Rep. Baird Gets Blasted for Iraq war views