ROGER SIMON COLUMN
OCTOBER 19, 20005
WASHINGTON - - As the war grinds on in Iraq and more and more Americans are looking for a way out, they are not finding much leadership from their leaders.
As Democrats learned in 2004, the rank and file of the party may have been against the war, but they had no real peace candidate in the presidential race.
In the primaries (and he didn't last long), Howard Dean attacked other Democrats (John Kerry, John Edwards, and especially Dick Gephardt) for voting for the Iraq war resolution in Congress. It was easy for Dean to do this since, as a governor, he was never in the position of having to vote for or against the war.
We can assume that those who did vote for it were either genuinely in favor of armed intervention in Iraq or were scared to death of being smeared as weak and unpatriotic by the White House.
In reality, however, none of the major Democratic candidates really differed on the war, nor, in fact, did they differ very much from Bush.
All were for continuing the war, including Howard Dean. On that issue, voters were offered very little choice.
But what about 2008? Will we see real peace candidates for president in that race?
It might depend on state of the war, of course, though it takes a real optimist to imagine the United State will be out of Iraq by the start of the race.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., keeps flirting with being a peace candidate - - he favors a non-binding, adjustable deadline of getting out of Iraq by Dec. 31, 20006 - - but he is still hedging.
Both Kerry and Edwards will probably run again; they may be joined by Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, and Hillary Clinton is a sure bet to run. All voted for the war resolution.
Dick Gephardt, now in private life, will not be running again. Which may be why he is speaking so candidly about his vote in favor of the war.
"It was a mistake….I was wrong," Gephardt was quoted as saying recently in Seattle.
According to the blog The Next Hurrah, Gephardt also said: "We never comprehended the complexity of the undertaking. I didn't. None of us did….The President has never been honest about the sacrifices required ... the lives lost, the eyes blown out. Bush fails the first test of leadership: 'Can you be honest with the people you lead?' "
Asked if he thought the United States would withdraw its troops, Gephardt said:
"Until very recently, I thought we [Bush] would pull out in time for the 2006 elections. Now it doesn't look like we will."
According to the Gallup Tuesday Briefing analysis released yesterday, 54 percent of Americans do not believe the United States will win the war in Iraq.
And if we are not going to win it, what on earth are we doing there?
But Democrats are not the only hope for those who seek a peace candidate in 2008.
Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said recently of Iraq: "We should start figuring out how we get out of there."
Speaking on ABC's "This Week", he said that "stay the course" is not a policy and "we're not winning."
Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran who is thinking about running for president in 2008, said "we are locked into a bogged-down problem not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam. The longer we stay, the more problems we're going to have."
In order to avoid the confusion of 2004, we should keep in mind that the issue is not whether the war was wrong or right when we invaded.
Nor is the issue whether it was good or bad to vote for going to war.
Today, the issue is simply this: How do we get out? How fast? And which candidate is willing to speak the truth about it.
Posted by rsimon at October 19, 2005 12:26 AM