The "anti war" candidates

Tom Oliphant:

Hidden in plain sight is the one issue still capable of blowing up the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It isn't Iran, outsider-insider, lobbyist relations or healthcare.

It's the war in Iraq.

The mass media illusion - and also delusion - is that the Democrats, generally, are "anti-war", especially in contrast to the Bush/Cheney-tethered Republicans. Vaguely, anti-war is meant to suggest favourable disposition to ending the madness.

But the suggestion is false. The truth that could yet destabilise the race and consign consultant Mark Penn's inevitability lectures about client Hillary Clinton to the trash can is that the major candidates are not as anti-war as they seem.

And in the two most important cases, they are arguably not anti-war at all, merely anti-Bush. With varying emphases Clinton and Barack Obama have yet to take a deep breath and propose a plausible end to either an American combat role in the conflict, the ongoing, de facto US occupation of the broken country or a quasi-colonial role in its alleged governance. They remain Bush-lite.

Two of the candidates - above all Bill Richardson but also John Edwards - have a quite different vision of their first year as potential presidents. What isn't clear is whether either is willing to make this crucial difference of opinion the issue down the stretch before the Iowa caucuses and the first primaries are held. If either or both do, the political equation could still change.

...

The false premise in Oliphants argument is that being anti war is a sign of wisdom and a retreat from "madness" when the opposite is the case. The war issue is turning against the Democrats big time right now demonstrated that their judment of a few months ago about the war was dead wrong. Oliphant has not gloomed onto to that reality yet nor have many of the candidates, but Hillary has been giving herself wiggle room on the issue which apparently troubles Oliphant and others who are committed to being critics of our half of the war but not the enemy's. By voting some 55 times in the senate to lose the war that we are now winning the Democrats have created a record for Republicans to run against that will embarrass Democrats throughout the 2008 race.