Dems Divided on Iraq

From today's Post.

This is a dangerous time for the Democrats. Much of their base--which, IMHO, is only marginally more rational that the Republican base--is clamoring for immediate withdrawal. I hope Democratic leaders realize that the one thing they absolutely cannot do in this situation is allow their base to influence their decision. That's not to say that the base might not be right in this case, just that it's not a question laypeople are capable of answering.

Two of the people I'm most likely to listen to on foreign policy matters, Wes Clark and Z-Big Brzezinsky, disagree on this one, with the latter making a case that's been slowly coalescing in the back of what I sometimes dignify by calling my "mind" over the last few weeks; it goes a little something like this: the current troop levels are just high enough to cause trouble but not high enough to really get the job done. The administration will not/cannot put in enough troops to do the job. The conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.

People often get paralyzed in situations like this--that is, situations in which the available evidence underdetermines rational theory/action choice. However my line on such cases is that you might as well choose whichever course of action you prefer. So suppose, in the case at hand, that the arguments for staying really are just as strong as the arguments for going. In that case, we might as well flip a coin. Some might say "well, in that case we should opt for the more peaceful option and withdraw," but that would be to miss the point. If the case is as we've imagined it to be, then all considerations, including that one, have already been taken into account and the choice is still rationally underdetermined by the evidence.

So call it in the air, folks: (turn) tails (and run), or (keep our) heads (up our butts).

but in actual fact, nobody seems to agree that the evidence is perfectly equivocal; everybody seems to think that there's a little bit better reason for doing one thing rather than another.

At this point, I have to admit that I simply don't know.

Which brings us to a sort of footnote. I went into the Post article fearing that it was going to say that the Dems were split on the political strategy, and I was already preparing my a pox on both your houses sermon. At least the Dems are keeping some kind of lid on the--gotta be almost irresistable--urge to politicize this thing. And, once again, that's basically my reason for being a quasi-Democrat: they just don't suck quite as bad as the Republicans, who would have an electronic command post outside the White House by now directing syntho-throngs with professionally-printed anti-Gore/Kerry/(insert Democratic name here) signs by now. They'd be on every channel, red in the face and screaming about Democratic foreign policy incompetence, and about how the Dems aren't grown-ups, aren't tough enough to run a superpower, etc., etc. And imagine if a Democratic president got us into a mess like this allegedly in order to attain a humanitarian goal? He'd have been assassinated by now.

Finally, the Post article seems to suggest that there's a problem for the Democrats because they hold both of the following positions: (a) Bush screwed up by getting us into this mess, but (b) no, we don't know what to do about it. Maybe this is confusing enough to baffle the American electorate, but there's really no tension there at all. Bush screwed up really, really bad; and, because it was such a bad screw up nobody knows what to do now.

See, that's frequently what happens when you screw up really, really bad.