Freshmen for Peace
Currie, Duncan
Freshmen for Peace The newest House Democrats are as antiwar as the rest. by Duncan Currie The Democratic freshmen in the House are said to be a moderate bunch—by some lights even conservative. It...
...Democratic complaints take several forms...
...The only solution is political, not military...
...It's worth noting that, in the 2004 election, George W. Bush carried Ellsworth's district by 24 points (6238) and won Shuler's district by 14 points (57-43...
...For every Iraqi battalion we train, we need to bring an American battalion home...
...The first was free trade...
...Instead of sending more American troops overseas, we should be training Iraqis to handle the jobs themselves...
...The freshmen Democrats in the House are particularly curious...
...We've heard time and time again that as the Iraqis stand up, the U.S...
...Clearly it was bad judgment to have invaded Iraq, and it will be even worse judgment if we stay...
...Kagen, though, offered an acerbic denunciation of the surge strategy: "This administration's policies make no sense...
...Doesn't he realize his latest plan will only strain our armed forces further, and make them less capable of responding to contingencies elsewhere in the Middle East and East Asia...
...Past troop surges have not curtailed violence in Baghdad...
...They're against that, too...
...They're against it...
...Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, a former three-star Navy admiral, insisted that "the way forward is not to add more troops, but to set a deliberate timetable for redeployment from Iraq—at least by the end of this year—to serve as a catalyst for the Iraqis to accept responsibility for their country...
...Iraq is in the throes of a civil war, they say...
...He failed to convince me that sending more troops fits into a new, successful strategy," Ellsworth said of the Bush speech...
...will stand down...
...The second was the Iraq war...
...A third Pennsylvania freshman, Navy reservist Chris Carney, approaches Iraq from a unique vantage point: He served as a senior counterterrorism official at the Pentagon from 2002 to 2004, where he worked for Rumsfeld undersecretary Douglas Feith (a bete noire of the antiwar left) and collected intelligence on the relationship between al Qaeda and Baathist Iraq...
...withdrawal...
...They ran on explicit pledges to investigate or question the administration's conduct in Iraq...
...If the White House thought someone with Carney's background and avowed commitment to forging a nonpartisan Iraq strategy would give guidance sympathetic to the president's position, they were wrong...
...Shouldn't Bush listen to his senior military advisers...
...As such, they might have been expected to support a new policy —but not this new policy...
...Has Bush completely ignored them...
...While this may be true on taxes, immigration, and some cultural issues, the war in Iraq is another matter...
...But we have yet to see the Iraqis take responsibility for their future...
...The president has asked us to send more of our brave young men and women into harm's away, against the advice of his generals and the Iraq Study Group," he said...
...And whatever happened to the Iraq Study Group recommendations...
...Beyond basic partisanship and amorphous cries for "ethics" reform, there were two issues that united these Democrats during the 2006 campaign...
...Adding over 20,000 U.S...
...Indeed, it's striking how far left the party has shifted on globalization since Bill Clinton championed NAFTA in the early 1990s...
...According to a Democratic source, Donnelly left a meeting at the White House shortly before Bush's speech believing that even some administration officials had lost confidence in our Iraq policy...
...This is a Yogi Berra strategy: deja vu all over again," Carney said last week of the new Bush plan...
...troops will make Iraqis more dependent on American forces, not less...
...In fact, among those House Democrats who took over Republican seats, there is almost uniform opposition to the counterinsurgency plan and troop reinforcements that Bush announced last week...
...deployment to Iraq, citing the wisdom of such generals as former Army chief of staff Eric Shinseki...
...These are the typical gripes...
...Almost to a man the Democratic House freshmen tore into President Bush's handling of the war...
...I spoke with Carney last Friday...
...We heard a call for escalation and continuation—an escalation of the number of our troops fighting in Iraq and a continuation of the same failed policies and reckless optimism...
...Now is the time for them to fulfill their commitment as we fulfill ours...
...He carried Democrat Steve Kagen's Wisconsin district by 11 points (55-44...
...Every freshman I've spoken with is just disgusted with this," says a Democratic House aide, who claims one of his party's freshmen mocked the Bush speech as "blabbering buffoonery...
...The leadership of the party," he says, "is looking to me to give some guidance on this issue...
...Now they've changed their tune...
...That's just one more sign of how difficult it will be for the White House to find even grudging supporters of the troop surge among Democrats on Capitol Hill...
...Even Joe Donnelly of IndiDuncan Currie is a reporter at The Weekly Standard...
...ana, who has publicly hedged on the troop surge, is reportedly more critical in private...
...Either way, top U.S...
...Shuler, the former NFL quarterback, was even more disparaging...
...Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania, a former Army captain and Iraq veteran, sided with "military experts like General Colin Powell and General Abizaid who say we need a political solution, not a military escalation...
...We should be changing our focus in Iraq...
...This offers further evidence that even traditional GOP voters are souring on Iraq and itching for a U.S...
...Tim Walz of Minnesota, a retired Army national guardsman who was stationed in Italy during part of the Iraq war, called the Bush speech "showmanship at its worst...
...Most of them knocked off GOP incumbents or won previously Republican seats, but show little fear of alienating their constituents by attacking Bush on the war...
...Some Republicans have comforted themselves with the thought that Democrats who won "red" districts would want to keep their distance from liberal leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and soft-pedal their criticism of Bush, should they desire a second term...
...Simply put, we do not belong in Iraq, and we're still heading in the wrong direction...
...Even the two most conservative Democratic freshmen, Brad Ellsworth of Indiana and Heath Shuler of North Carolina, are following the party line...
...The irony is that Democrats were once the folks advocating a bigger U.S...
...generals oppose the surge...
...This should be our focus...
...It is probably safer to call them economic populists, with a few border hawks, pro-lifers, and gun owners sprinkled here and there...
...Another significant group of Democratic critics includes those House freshmen who served in Iraq or otherwise boast a military background...
Vol. 12 • January 2007 • No. 18
