I'm in.

DEMOCRACY!!!!(cross-posted at Blanton's and Ashton's)

Senator John Warner (Va.) has been pushing his ammendment to the Defense Authorization bill very persistently over the last week or two, and I am pleased to join Senator Carl Levin (Michigan) in supporting it. Senator Levin just announced that he would like his name to be added as a co-sponsor of the amendment today on the Senate Floor.

I am very happy to see so much bipartisanship in this nation's Senate. While I do favor the intended effects of the similar Biden-Hagel amendment, I do not like the tone of this amendment. If the Democrats are going to oppose the president and his war, they shouldn't cower behind a weak non-binding resolution, they should come out about their opposition and take appropriate action. But, if there is going to be a non-binding resolution, which there is, then it should be about building alliances and breaking down entrenched ideology.

I can't say that I am thrilled with either one of these amendments, but I am pleased nonetheless. It is a victory for realism and cooperativeness over mass delusion and it is a good day.

Just for the record, I was a big supporter of the Feingold and Murtha bills (or amendments) of last year, which called for redeployment, and ,in the case of Feingold, for eventual withdrawal with a timeline, but now I feel that would not be sufficient.

Everyone knows, or should know by now, that the Maliki government in Iraq is a puppet government. We should do what Joe Biden says and divide Iraq into three states with a weak federal government.

But, I will go a step further: We need to takover the Iraqi government because it is not currently serving the Iraqi people. We need to encourage Kurds to play a part in the police and military services and civil society. The oil revenue in Iraq should not be quartered off to multinational corporations; instead, it should be nationalized with an equitable distribution of the wealth coming from it. Furthermore, we need to get our Middle Eastern allies and non-allies to take an active role in the development of Iraq as well as NATO (I would say the UN too, but it is a little too democratic, and therefore ineffective).

The middle-class is the lifeblood of any democracy. If we do all of these things we may be able to bring back the Iraqi middle-class, many of whom have fled because of the violence and instability and eventually bring a thriving Democracy to Iraq. We tried democracy but failed to bolster it with diplomacy and development, the two main tools in the toolbox for building Peace.


We should announce our plan to hand over Iraq to the International Community and eventually the Iraqis, and should set a timetable for doing so.

After a running democracy is established, (or beforehand) we should consider withdrawing our troops.

This is the path to Victory.