The War & The Day After the Day After

I will leave it to others (you know who you are) to address the myriad ramifications of Ned Lamont's upset primary win over Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut.

But one thing is certain -- with President Bush's most syncophantic Democratic supporter now scrambling to salvage the wreckage of his political career, another nail has been driven into the coffin that the war in Iraq has become.

And yet another nail with the public opinion blowback over the collapse of any pretense that Secretary of State Rice and the White House can leverage a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, lending further credence that the U.S. has lost its foreign policy mojo and doesn't have a clue about how to get it back.

The Iraq war always was about scratching the neoconservative itch, not defending the homeland against the Islamic jihad or making the Middle East a warmer and more cuddly place.

So it was only a matter of time before the Bush administration had painted itself into a corner so tight that the Decider in Chief would find himself balancing on one toe.

Here are the president's military options, which are inextricably intertwined with political realities:

(Option A.) Maintain current troop levels through the November elections in order to make a last-gasp effort to secure Baghdad despite growing antiwar sentiment even within his own party.

(Option B.) Increase troop levels to increase the chances of a last-gasp effort to secure Baghdad succeeding despite growing antiwar sentiment even within his own party.

(Option C.) Begin a phased withdrawal of troops to coincide with the November elections despite the last-gasp effort to secure Baghdad and infuriate the shrinking pro-war base within his own party.

The smart money (that would be me) says that the president's handlers will tell him to pursue Option A while appearing to leave open the possibility of going to Option B and Option C.

The trick, of course, will be for the them to try to paint the Democrats as the antiwar party -- and therefore unpatriotic and weak on terrorism and defense -- while pushing aside that very sentiment within their own party.

The GOP noise machine already is ratcheting up to full howl with an assist from their knuckle-dragging allies in the news media, including the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which with numbing predictability is comparing the anti-Iraq war Dems with the anti-Vietnam war Dems of the 1970s, notably the McGovern for President crowd that underwrote Richard Nixon's historic landslide.

The comparison is silly if for no other reason that the Democratic screaming me-mes of the 1970s did not have the historical context of Vietnam to reflect on. They were living Vietnam.

The comparison also obscures a larger point: Americans -- Democrats, independents and Republicans -- feel disconnected from their government.

This has less to do with the Iraq war itself than everything that stinks inside the beltway. The view out on the hustings -- in red states and blue states -- is that the Washington status quo sucks. Candidates, especially incumbents, ignore that at their own risk.

Photo courtesy of Joe Gandlesman's The Moderate Voice