OUT THERE

THE PARAMETERS are set.  Withdrawal is on the table.  The option is presented and out there to be derided or defended. John Murtha, leading House Democrat today called for the immediate withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq. [statement][story]

"U.S. and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq," the senior lawmaker said. "It's time for a change in direction."

COVER IS NOW GIVEN for the less strong to fly under.  Some sanity may come to the sky over Iraq.  Question for the hawks:  if the Iraqis were to ask us to leave, would that be okay with you?  Or is a sovereign country only as sovereign as the likes of Cheney would allow? Murtha was immediately attacked. [AP]

House Republicans assailed Murtha's position as one of abandonment and surrender, and accused Democrats of playing politics with the war. "They want us to retreat. They want us to wave the white flag of surrender to the terrorists of the world," Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois said.

THE KERRY QUESTION awaits.  How do you ask someone to be the  last soldier to die for a mistake?  The question is now out there.  Murtha seems particularly angry with the tone that Bush and Cheney have adopted,

Murtha, a Marine intelligence officer in Vietnam, angrily shot back at Cheney: "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."
Referring to Bush, Murtha added: "I resent the fact, on Veterans Day, he criticized Democrats for criticizing them."

BUSH AND CHENEY will have to answer how they have squandered so much money and how much the war now looks so different from the way it was sold.  The bottom line is the bottom line sinks deeper into the red, in cost of capital moral and financial, and in blood crimson sinking further in the sand.  Murtha suggests our money and our blood are best saved for elsewhere and has the moral capital to back it up.  Good luck attacking him, chickenhawk bitches.

UNDERSTATEMENT ON THE RIGHT This story is only hours old and Bush is already taking a cold blast from the right. [Ron Dreher/The Corner]

If tough, non-effete guys like Murtha are willing to go this far, and can make the case in ways that Red America can relate to -- and listening to him talk was like listening to my dad, who's about the same age, and his hunting buddies -- then the president is in big trouble.

WHAT BUSH WILL have to deal with is the passion and the conviction of honest disgreement.  If it is this bad today, what do you think it will be like tomorrow?  How many people are thinking Walter Cronkite moment?  Those old enugh will remember when Cronkite simply stated where things were in Vietnam, he took off his glasses, and Johnson and his war were done.

RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READING
[The Stakeholder] Unofficial transcriptions...

"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised..."
"The American and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq..."
"It is evident that continued military presence in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States, Iraq, or the MIddle East..."
"The main reason given for war has been discredited..."
"Let me personalize this for you. I go to the hospitals every week... two women... they wanted to say they were happy to be alive... I had a kid in my district, was blinded and lost his foot... getting bills from a collection agency..."
"These soldiers are marvelous people..."
"It was a US intelligence failure, and it was a failure in how the intelligence was used..."
"What demoralizes [our troops] is not the criticism" but the lack of a plan to win the peace.
"We must be prepared, the war in Iraq has caused huge shortfalls in our bases at home..."

THE HERETIK SEES Murtha makes the case both moral and economic against the war. Perhaps a CEO president like Bush can understand while there may be no hope for Cheney.  Simply put, the war makes us weaker not stronger. 

DISSENTING FROM MURTHA’S DISSENT
The Astute Blogger: This is Vietnam War Redux: the Democrats are pleading that we must abandon an ally in a war we are winning! I am sad to say it, but the Democrat Party - which I have belonged to since 1974 - is once again under the thrall of McGovernism.

THE HERETIK NOTES AGAIN The Astute Blogger writes from “The No Nuance Zone" and lives up to the billing!  We! Are! Winning!  The!  War!
Jesus!  Christ!  What this country needs is not McGovernism.  We need Nixonism, a "secret plan" to win the war presented during a Presidential election, then we should escalate the war and its death toll.  Six years later we should pull out.  Critics of the critics of the Vietnam War seem to have forgotten that pullout which snatched "victory" away happened in Republican rule of the White House.

The California Yankee: It doesn't matter if no one else seconds Murtha's call for immediate withdrawal. The damage has been done. Bin Laden and Zarqawi and their followers can only be encouraged now that some of America's so-called leaders want to call it quits. From the evil doers' perspective, all they have to do is fight on a little longer, kill more Americans, and we will leave.

THE HERETIK SEES the whole argument about staying in Iraq is framed around “terror” and the idea of a new Muslim caliphate strung across the waist of the world, a girdle of terror.  The presumption that the peoples of the region would go along with this is a foregone conclusion.  No nuance is given to how an Indonesian Muslim might be different from a Sunni in Morrocco.  The Other will rise up and swallow us if we don’t make this stand against the forces of darkness.  Anybody remember the Domino Theory?  Where is that now?  In our desire to impose our will upon the region, we see a competing will we must overcome.   Our destiny must be entwined with a competing serpent to the death.

Comments

[Mikevotes]

I know next to nothing about Rep Murtha prior to today, but the man just oozed credibility.

His section about "those that did not serve" really gripped me, and regardless of whether anyone else backs his call for an immediate pullout, that section of the statemnet will be played over and over probably juxtaposed with some Bush counter position.

And, I don't know who they throw up against him, but each time that clip is played, the Bush administration's credibility will take another hit.

http://bornatthecrestoftheempire.blogspot.com/

[Mikevotes]

I know next to nothing about Rep Murtha prior to today, but the man just oozed credibility.

His section about "those that did not serve" really gripped me, and regardless of whether anyone else backs his call for an immediate pullout, that section of the statemnet will be played over and over probably juxtaposed with some Bush counter position.

And, I don't know who they throw up against him, but each time that clip is played, the Bush administration's credibility will take another hit.

http://bornatthecrestoftheempire.blogspot.com/

[Shakespeare's Sister]

WHAT BUSH WILL have to deal with is the passion and the conviction of honest disgreement.

He's managed to dodge it for five years. It was bound to catch up with him sooner or later.

[comandante agi t. prop]

Maybe they'll Swift Boat him...

[libby]

You can already hear the oars on the Swift Boats rattling in their locks. They'll have to work pretty hard to take him down though. Like Shakes says, it's tough to take down honesty with lies. And he just came back from Anbar. My favorite line is "80% of them want us out of there."

[Neil Shakespeare]

Yeah, wow. I had never of this guy Murtha either. Lovely that he slammed Cheney and his five deferments. Meanwhile Cheney was standing in front of five American flags calling anyone who questioned the war 'unpatriotic'. Quite the juxtaposition.

[blogenfreude]

All that crap they spew about the Baathist turrists comin' to our shores next ... The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!

[comandante agi t. prop]

My favorite line is "80% of them want us out of there."

Wingnut response: Oh yeah, but what about the 20% that want us there? We can't leave them hanging! We must bring democracy to that 20%!!!