I genuinely hope Joe Klein is right and Iraq's improvements are durable. And contrary to Joe's implication, I don't think, politically, this is something for Democrats to fear. The better Iraq is doing, the less of an issue it will be in the election. The less of an issue it is in the election, the more issues like the health care crisis, the mortgage meltdown, inequality, and global warming will come to the fore. Indeed, the less Iraq dominates the agenda, the more alternative foreign policy visions can emerge, and be tested, and become the new context for the discussion All that is good for the Left.
Indeed, I occasionally believe that Republicans know that onceAmerican troops leave Iraq, the country's need for the RepublicanParty, at least temporarily, will cease. The Iraq War has increasingly come to define the Republicanparty. They've sacrificed almot everything else for it, from fiscal discipline to social conservatism (see the Giuliani campaign). So long as troops remain inIraq, the Republicans can at least argue that they need to finish thejob they've begun, and that the Democrats lack sufficient commitment tovictory. End it, and you end their relevance, at least until they canreinvent themselves as the party of closed borders. My sense is that,consciously or unconsciously, some of the GOP knows this, and itunderpins their unwillingness to even begin drawing the conflict to aclose. At this point, the end of the war would be existentiallyunmooring for the Party.
