Quote of the day: On SOTU day, David Sirota is led to wonder if there isn't more than gutlessness behind Dem leaders' "go slow" opposition on Iraq

"At what point do [progressives] take off our partisan blinders and start wondering whether a very powerful faction of Democrats actually continues to SUPPORT President Bush and the War in Iraq?"
--David Sirota, in his blog entry today, "Top Dems Still Counsel 'Go Slow' Approach to Opposing the Iraq War"

Howie has been pretty unrelenting in recent DWT posts attacking the "gradualist" approach of Beltway Dems in opposing Chimpy the Prez's Iraq "policy" (for want of a better word) in Iraq, and in particular the Chimpster's new escalation of the war. Inevitably, the names that come up in connection with a "go slow" approach to opposing the war are current House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and (especially) House Majority Master of Evil Rahm Emanuel.

For those who weren't reading DWT back in the primary season of the 2006 congressional campaign, one of the things that drove Howie craziest as he looked at Democratic candidates around the country was the clear evidence that those sanctioned by Master Rahm, then still at the helm of the DCCC, were under an absolute injunction against saying anything about the war, apparently under pain of abandoning any hope of DCCC support.

In many congressional districts no threat was necessary, as Master Rahm had already hand-picked his own Republican Lite candidates, folks who wouldn't be caught dead saying anything the tiniest bit controversial. Howie discovered quickly that from the merest glance at a candidate's website he could see who was and who wasn't Rahm-blessed. The Rahmite candidates' sites contained nothing but bland, mindlessly patriotic platitudes, with no positions of substance--and certainly nothing at all about the war.

And yet everyone knows these two incontrovertible facts about the election:

(1) It was the war that caused the Republican debacle.

(2) Master Rahm was the architect of the Democratic triumph.

If it strikes you that (1) and (2) not only don't go together but are, logically speaking, flat-out contradictory, you've forgotten that a different kind of logic applies inside the Beltway and in the media fog that spins off it.

Which should put you in exactly the right frame of mind to read David Sirota's invalulable blog entry, surveying the past, present and all too likely future of the Democratic "go slow" approach to opposing the war. He points out, for example, that back in November 2005 Master Rahm was saying about the war, "At the right time, we will have a position." Apparently that time hasn't come yet, or else the master considers doing not much of anything "a position."

You owe it to yourself to read the whole Sirota piece, but I want to be sure you have at least the points it leads up to:

In the year since top Democrats started demanding their own party leadership not work to stop the war, 907 U.S. soldiers have been killed. Of course, that's never reported by the Washington press corps when they hear the same Democrats preach a "go slow" approach. But that doesn't mean those troops didn't die, and that the people still telling us to "go slow" should be regarded as even mildly credible when it comes to national security. The fact that the people who get things wrong over and over and over again are granted financial and political rewards on the Beltway cocktail party circuit doesn't mean these people are doing anything other than running the country into the ground.

I asked this before, and so I'll ask it again: How many troops have to die for insulated Washington politicians like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer to stop counseling the "go slow" approach? How many more limbs have to be blown off before these people stop running to reporters offering up the "we'll have a position at the right time" strategy? How much more damage has to be done to U.S. national security and international credibility before these politicians stop puffing out their chests and repeating the "withdrawal could lead to disaster" mantra? How worse does this situation have to be in Iraq and how against the war does the American public have to be for Democrats to actually use their power to stop it?

And here is, perhaps, the hardest question of all for progressives: At what point do we take off our partisan blinders and start wondering whether a very powerful faction of Democrats actually continues to SUPPORT President Bush and the War in Iraq?