Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

For better than eighteen months, the Republican line on Iraq has been almost word for word the same

"As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down," the president told reporters.

Bush has used that same line from last summer through this fall as a means of encapsulating two ideas:
1)    we're training the Iraqi military to take over.
2)    When they're ready, we can reduce US forces.

It's a simple plan -- dead stupid -- but simple.  In positing a response, Democrats often fall into attacking the simplicity of the plan, darting down paths that point out the unreliability of Iraqi forces, or picking at the Pentagon's ever shifting numbers for trained Iraqi forces.  

That's not the problem.  Yes, Bush's plan is pointless.  In fact, it's not a plan at all, it's just a recipe for seeing how long we're willing to keep pounding our head against the wall.  Yes, Iraqi forces are unreliable, prone to squabbling with other of our "allies" about as often as they are the insurgents, and not really very effective even when they're pointed in the right direction.

The answer is not to say "fine, let's just get out of there."  That only feeds the problem.

The answer, believe it or not, is to steal a phrase from Bush

This is a phrase that Bush used back in those heady days of 2004, when the White House could still believe that flowers, celebrations, and caches of hidden WMDs were all just waiting over the next sand dune.  Back then, a confident Bush said that Iraqi leaders were ready to "take the training wheels off."  Bush warned that there might be another one of those "bumps in the violence" during the "transition."  Trouble was, we got the violence, but other than some paper tiger devolution of responsibilities, we never got the transition.  However, in explaining his 2004 plan to legislators, he paired it down to a simple metaphor.

"He talked about 'time to take the training wheels off,'" said Rep. Deborah Pryce. "The Iraqi people have been in training, and now it's time for them to take the bike and go forward."

That, folks, is the Democratic strategy for Iraq in a nutshell.  We will do, what Bush said he would do back in 2004.  We will recognize that so long as American forces keep doing the work, the Iraqi forces will never "stand up."  Why should they?  If you were an Iraqi soldier, with mediocre training and equipment, would you want to charge into a fight when there was a better trained, better equipped force standing by?  Even more importantly, if you were an Iraqi politician, would you be anxious to assume more responsibility for security when you have the world's best scapegoat always at your side, ready to absorb the bulk of the blame for any disaster?

So long as we are holding onto the back of the seat and pushing, the Iraqis will keep the training wheels on and take the ride.  Polls may show that the Iraqi public wants us out, but there's no real win there for more of the people "in charge."

We have to let go.  We have to step out of the way.  Pull any metaphor you want from your favorite movie of the week in which the father realizes that his son will only grow up if he forces him to live with his own decisions.  Yes, it's patronizing (literally).  Yes, it's treating the Iraqis as children.  But American policy has already forced them into the role of children.  Now it's time for them to "grow up."

Democrats are not suggesting that we cut and run.  We're not being weak.  We're showing the "tough love" that Republicans are supposed to stand behind.  We're doing just what Bush promised to do more than two years -- and several thousand lives -- ago.  

Americans have to step back so the Iraqi's can step up.  Bush promised to take off the training wheels, but he was too scared to let his precious little baby country make any decisions on its own.  He can't stop belittling the Iraqis.  He can't stop putting them in a position where they'll always be weak, always be beholden to him, always be a place where his contractor pals can go to play with people who aren't much more than toys.  He talks a good game.  He likes to point at all those purple fingers.  But his actions show that Bush doesn't trust the elected leaders in Iraq.

What Bush is doing is a perfect formula to create a puny, pathetic state.  A weak, gutless, powerless state that will always have to run to mommy Bush when the bullies come round.

Screw that.

It's time to take off the training wheels.  Maybe Iraq will skin it's knees in the process, but right now, it's getting its teeth knocked in and its lunch money stolen every single day.  Mommy Bush is only make Iraq weaker and weaker, but he's too scared to let go.

Democrats will have the guts to step back, and the moral courage to trust the Iraqis to do what's right for Iraq.