On the State of US Politics> Fancy Pants, Guest Columnist

Larry,

I completely agree with your State of Union response. Pandering to the swing voters is like trying to sell more Coke by saying that it really tastes a lot like Pepsi. Bold concrete objectives like your 5 big ideas (well at least the first 4) seem like a completely obvious thing for the Democrats to do. And that is why I have become so very skeptical of the Democrats. Maybe they don’t clearly state such progressive ideas because they have no real intentions of delivering on such initiatives. Their hands are tied up in the pork barrel just as much as the Republicans. The very same lobbyists that guide the conservative agenda will simply saddle up next to the liberals as soon as they sense a shift in political power. It is naive to think that corporate interests won’t do what ever they can, on either side of the political divide, to influence federal legislation. The real question the media should be asking of people like senators Obama and Clinton is, “Which lobbyists pay for your dinners?” Much better than any stump speech, the answer to that question will give the public an idea of what kinds of policies any potential candidate might actually enact.

I also agree that the Democrats definitely need some sort of positive agenda on foreign policy. But again I think they have no real intention of altering any of the long term goals of the defense department. It might seem as if the Democrats have their hands tied on an Iraq policy as a result of Bush having sunk us into an impossible situation by starting The War Against Terror (TWAT). Under present circumstances we can’t get out of Iraq without a civil war directly following our withdrawal. But that doesn’t matter because the US military is never going to leave Iraq. No American military or political representative has indicated that Iraqis can look forward to a day when there will be no American military presence in Iraq. This is the reason for the continuing growth of the insurgency. A reasonable exit strategy that the Democrats could propose is as soon as any authority asserts control over the new Iraqi government and can use an Iraqi security force to defend the oil pipelines and refineries, electricity, water, and health services from rival authorities all American troops will be removed from Iraq despite the level of insurgent activities. There doesn’t need to be a withdrawal date but we could propose some Iraqi troop numbers that must exist under a central command before US forces are withdrawn. If our military command focused on the defense of the aforementioned resources rather than mounting offensives against insurgence, perhaps we could get those services back to pre-invasion levels before reaching the Iraqi army size quota. If we made a public agreement with the Iraqi government stating we will remove ALL troops at such a time a quota is met the insurgency might loose focus. Armed gangs of angry youths would doubtlessly continue to roam the streets of Iraqi cities but Americans seem willing to deal with that in their own cities so lets just forget about beating the insurgency. Fuck, we could just say that we won for the sake of all the patriots back home and rename the remaining violence street crime and that the Iraqis will deal with that once they organize a police force. The fact is that no Democrat is going to stand up to the Pentagon and say, “I know you guys were really planning on having a long term middle east presence based in Iraq but we are going to take ALL our troops out of Iraq over the next four years.” And so the Democrats only tactic is to complain about the way in which TWAT is handled by Republicans without offering any meaningful change in strategy.

Fancypants