Juan Cole has some advice for Democrats

As more and more Americans turn against Bush's Iraq war, Democratic politicians remain silent. Their play-it-safe strategy isn't just cowardly, it also won't work.

While Bush's "stay the course" in Iraq is not a plan Juan Cole tells Democratic politicians that silence is not a plan either.

The "American Street" Speaks: Will the Democratic Party Listen?

On Saturday, well over 100,000 demonstrators, including Ms. Sheehan and the "Gold Star" families of US soldiers killed in Iraq, had rallied in Washington against the ongoing Iraq war. Such numbers are difficult to verify, but this minimum was admitted by the Washington police, and supporters of the event claimed at least twice that. This large and impressive demonstration was accompanied by other protests, in London, San Francisco and other cities, though on a smaller scale. Critics of the event derided it as a carnival, but what popular movement in history has not been Rabelaisian? Crowds and their performers clown and mug, ridicule the sacred and celebrate the deity all at once. Carnivals of protest create their own bubble of consciousness, in which the unspeakable can finally be shouted, the powerful parodied, and the status quo turned upside down.

Brian Bender of the Boston Globe described the scene: "Many wore T-shirts calling for President Bush's impeachment, including 'regime change begins at home,' while others held photos of fallen American soldiers and shouted 'Bush lied, people died.' Demonstrators held signs reading 'College not Combat,' as relatives of soldiers who died in Iraq held one another and wept for their loved ones."

Since Sept. 11, large demonstrations have been rare. A huge antiwar crowd turned out in January 2003 in San Francisco. In spring of 2003, just before the Iraq war, some 100,000 protested in Washington against it. The protest in New York during the Republican National Convention in 2004 was even larger. So Saturday's rally was among the largest in the past four years. But it was hardly covered by the corporate mass media, which favored instead running endless loops of the same tape of hurricane damage in the Gulf of Mexico.

And it's Republicans too.

Indeed, members of the Republican Party provided some of the protesters in Washington. The St. Petersburg Times reported on Sept. 25 that among the attendees was Paul Rutherford, 60, of Vandalia, Mich., a Republican who said, "President Bush needs to admit he made a mistake in the war and bring the troops home, and let's move on." Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford support Bush on other policies, and both termed the removal of Saddam Hussein "a noble mission." But they said that when no weapons of mass destruction were discovered, the US troops should have left. Opinion polls suggest that a significant percentage of Republicans have come to agree with the Rutherfords.

So where were the Democrats?

As her supporters chanted, "Not one more," Ms. Sheehan thundered, "We're going to Congress, and we're going to ask them, 'How many more of other people's children are you going to sacrifice?' We're going to say, 'Shame on you.'" The necessity of going to Congress was underlined by the virtual absence of sitting legislators at the protest. Only Rep. Cynthia McKinney among Democratic representatives addressed the rally, though Rep. John Conyers of Michigan attended.

Although freelance journalist and former National Security Council staffer Wayne Madsen alleged that the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, pressured senators and representatives to stay away from the demonstrations (which included speeches critical of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians), the more likely explanation for the absence of leading Democrats lies elsewhere. John Judis and others have reported that behind the scenes, the Democratic Party leadership has decided that it should simply avoid saying much about Iraq.

Silence on the war will cost the Democrats because it will make it impossible to take advantage of Republican weakness on the issue.

The frankly pusillanimous tactic of declining to speak out on the war will ill serve the Democratic Party, which has managed to lose both houses of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court. The American public is not generally antiwar, it is simply impatient with any long-term, highly expensive governmental endeavor that does not appear likely to succeed. Especially in the wake of the natural disasters in the Gulf of Mexico in August and September, the idea of spending over $1 billion a week in Iraq is increasingly distasteful to them. Even Bush's Republican base is beginning to have second thoughts about the Iraq misadventure. It is increasingly clear that Islam and Muslim clerics will have an unprecedentedly powerful role in the new Iraq, that Assyrian and Chaldean Christians are under much worse pressure than before the war, that the position of women is being undermined, and that the country is simply not going to be the missionary field of which the evangelical Christians had dreamed. None of this news strikes Bush's Christian supporters as good.

The potential of a strong antiwar stance striking a chord with the public has already been demonstrated by Paul Hackett. A Marine who recently served in Iraq, Hackett became a civilian and ran in August as a Democrat for Congress in Ohio's 2nd District, traditionally heavily Republican. He lambasted George W. Bush as a chicken hawk and said he should never have begun the Iraq war. Yet Hackett is no peacenik. He says, "I love the Marine Corps. I happen to think it's being misused in Iraq." He only narrowly lost the election, and the Democratic leadership is seriously thinking of putting him up for an Ohio Senate seat, according to the Hill.

Even Democrats who are not veterans of Iraq need to find the courage to speak out on the war if they are effectively to challenge the Republicans. Simply waiting around for things to get worse in Baghdad is a dangerous strategy, not so much because the situation is likely to improve any time soon but because the American people want real leadership on this issue and they know they are not getting it from Bush.

Until the Democrats is the House and Senate are able to admit they were deceived and/or wrong about the invasion of Iraq and continue to be intimidated by the radical Zionist lobby in Washington they will be unable to take advantage of the growing Republican weakness.