Win With Webb

I can't even remember where the original version of that slogan comes from (I'm with Sara Fisher; I too always thought "googling was something you did to yourself"). But it's sure as hell true. Webb's comments on the veto of the Iraq timetable bill were right on the mark:

"We won this war four years ago. The question is when we end the occupation."

I remember countless rooftop conversations with an old friend in the summer months before the '04 election, where I argued that the Dems best strategy (and Dean's only general election strategy) was to argue that the war was indeed won when Bush announced his Accomplished Mission; then, and now, the question was occupation, and how to end it with as few Iraqis dying as possible in the process.

But as anyone who remembers four years ago knows, there was a ferocious ideological attack on the very notion that 200,000 American military personnel under arms in a foreign nation constituted an 'occupation.' Besides the overt "liberation, not occupation" nonsense was the subtler, and more effective, series of thoughts like "Hussein was a tyrant, whatever else you say, Iraqis are better off now than they were then, really only the remnants of Baath party are fighting anyway." All these sentiments were illogical, as well as beside the point; but they served to pin down public debate (such as it was) on issues that obscured the glaring elephant occupying the room.

People like Juan Cole were wonderful, hammering away at this point; but the indignity of being forced to articulate the obvious only led him (and mecs like me) to sound shrill, like gleeful Cassandras.

Now, though, that the dikes have burst, and neither the public nor the ruling class has any patience with the administration, it's for the center-left to redeem themselves for refusing to call our presence in Iraq an occupation when the words would have counted. (Insert snotty lecture on George Orwell and 'Politics and English Language,' etc.) I remember how shocked I was, (!) seeing the International Action Center and International Socialist Organization (who along with the roving anarchist community basically provided the bulk of organizers in advance and during the massive protests in 2002/3) signs begging an end to the Occupation. It's an ugly word, and its absence from Democratic party talking points during the initial disasters of 2003-4 is now making it difficult, for many officials/candidates, to clearly articulate the most important reason why the nation should disentangle ourselves from Iraq.