ROGER SIMON COLUMN
NOVEMBER 16, 2005
WASHINGTON - - While in 2004, America did not have a single mainstream peace party, by 2008 we could have two.
That is how unpopular the war in Iraq now is and how isolated President Bush is becoming even from his own party.
The reason for the isolation is simple: Bush does not have to face re-election and congressional Republicans do.
Which is why the Republican-dominated Senate delivered a clear rebuke to Bush's Iraq policy on Tuesday by approving a measure that calls for the Bush administration to "explain to Congress and the American people its strategy for the successful completion of the mission in Iraq."
In other words, the Senate is saying to Bush that his "stay-the-course" policy on Iraq is not enough.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called the Senate's action a "vote of no confidence" in the administration not just by Democrats but by Republicans.
And while this is an exaggeration, any warning bells that have not been clanging in the White House already, should be clanging now.
While a series of U.S. presidents have snatched away Congress's ability to declare war, it should be remembered that U.S. involvement in Vietnam came to an end only when Congress refused to vote any further funds for it.
In 2004, there was no major candidate running for president who advocated withdrawal from Iraq. I doubt this will be true in 2008.
Some of those Democrats who voted to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq in the first place were simply afraid they would look weak and unpatriotic if they did not.
And while Howard Dean vocally denounced the war, in the end all the leading Democratic contenders for president - - Dean, John Kerry and John Edwards - - supported staying the course in Iraq.
But that was then. Now, there is something of a scramble within the Democratic party to bring the boys and girls home.
Senators Edward Kennedy, Russ Feingold, and Kerry all support withdrawing troops from Iraq, and Edwards says flatly that he was wrong in supporting the war in the first place.
As Ron Brownstein points out in the National Journal this week, a number of 2006 Senate Democratic primaries - - in Ohio, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Maryland - - may feature the withdrawal of troops as a major issue and are tugging the candidates toward "more-confrontational positions than most sitting Democratic senators have embraced" regarding Iraq.
Republicans, too, are growing disenchanted with what could become a war without end. As Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, put it this week, the Senate "needs to send the strongest possible message to the Iraqi people and the government formed there" that "we mean business, we have done our share, now the challenge is up to you."
The reason for setting some kind of timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq is that an open-ended, never-ending U.S. commitment gives Iraqi citizens little reason to fight for their own country.
Why should they fight and die for Iraq, they wonder, when Americans are willing to fight and die for them?