Truthout: The "Stab in the Back" Trap

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042707L.shtml

The "Stab in the Back" Trap
By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributors

Friday 27 April 2007

The Democrats and the peace movement are walking into a trap.

The Republicans are preparing with Rovian cunning to focus the mind of the public on the question: Who lost Iraq?

And they are already giving the answer: The Democrats and the peace movement.

snip//

What's necessary to evade this trap is to define the war itself - rather than just the fact that America is losing it - as wrong. It is wrong because we were lied into it by a rogue executive intent on launching an illegal war and occupation, in violation of national and international law, the US Constitution and the UN Charter. And it is wrong because it has imposed an illegal occupation that has systematically violated the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

The means to define Bush's war for the American people are at hand in the power of Congress to investigate executive branch actions. We are seeing that power being flexed in the use of subpoenas for documents and testimony by committees investigating the firings of US attorneys. But, so far, investigation of illegal war, occupation, torture and rendition has been pusillanimous at best.

What's become of the investigations of the origins and conduct of the war and occupation that Democrats promised when they took over Congress at the start of 2007? According to a Congressional aide quoted in the April 25 Washington Post, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have assigned staff members to monitor "what fights we're picking and how we're picking them." If so, they've assiduously avoided picking any fights that might implicate the Bush administration's "war on terror" in violations of US and international law. (The first break in this complicity of Congressional Democrats in the Bush administration's cover-up may be the 21-to-10 vote of Rep. Henry Waxman's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to authorize a subpoena requiring Condoleezza Rice to testify about the yellowcake uranium fraud.)

more...

[annabanana]

1. Words to use: INVASION and OCCUPATION

"wars" can be won &/or lost.. There is victory and defeat... some one prevails... somone surrenders..

NONE of those things are possible in this conflict.

[babylonsister]

8. INVASION and OCCUPATION due to being lied to. THAT needs to surface. nt

[blueworld]

2. Can't we create another Powerpoint presentation?

Something pithy that shows every abysmal failure over the last 5 years?

The cycle is generally: 1. promise something
2. presidential concert appearance to initiate
action
3. military ass-kissing concert to concur w/prez
4. fire/smoke/corpses (abysmal failure)
5. assure everyone that failure is really
progress
6. Appear on Meet the Press & Faux News to blame
damned ingrate Iraqis, Clinton & liberals

7. Repeat.

Pick a promise: capture bin Laden? Liberate Iraq? Secure Afghanistan? Iraqi oil revenues foot the bill? Mission Accomplished? Equip & fund US soldiers? Wipe out terrorism in Middle East? Bring democracy to Middle East? Rebuild Iraq? Care for our wounded vets?

They've failed at EVERYTHING. Every step of the way. With a GOP Congress or without.

Sticks & stones...we have FACTS.


:hippie:

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Tactical advice on ambushes: drive hard straight into them.

It is the last thing that your opponent expects or is prepared for. What they are prepared for is your attempt to retreat out of the ambush.

[Schema Thing]

4. we won. Let's go home.

there, that's your framing.

Yeah, it's a little distasteful in the mouth of us peace-mongers. Say it anyway.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

5. This exact meme...

Is being injected, as we speak, over at "LiveLeak", a video website where, I believe, they are stiff with astroturfers and neo-nazis.

[babylonsister]

7. Wow. So this article is correct. I thought so. nt

[HawkerHurricane]

6. Heck, I could have told you that in 2002.

Any failure is NOT the failure of the NeoCons or the Republican Party. They were stabbed in the back by the (fill in the blank). See Alfred Nofi and James Dunnigan's "Shooting Blanks: War Making that Doesn't Work". They've got a whole chapter of the excuses used for failures.

[Alcibiades]

9. America has not been defeated

In fact, US policies in Iraq are going as planned: we are setting up a neverending occupation of Iraq. If stability were ever to come, we would have to leave, and so this administration has done everything if could to forestall peace and stability.

If we leave, we get chaos. But we're there, and there already is chaos. We need to keep reminding folks what the alternative is, how badly wrong the neocons were about Iraq, about everything about Iraq. We need to remind everybody who gave us $3.00 a gallon gasoline.

Most of all, we must prevent the "stab in the back" theory from taking hold. we need to point out that this administration has had absolute carte blanche in pursuing the war in Iraq since it started. We need to use the buzzword "accountability" when questions of responsibility arise.

[bread_and_roses]

10. I wish someone would post this in GDP

It deserves more attention.

[babylonsister]

11. Thanks; I just did:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3241217