Democrat Divide on the Iraq War grows

As the Democrats try to appease(there’s that word again) both sides of their party they could be driving a wedge between themselves and the anti-war faction of the party.Moveon.org is threatening the Democrat leadership if they give in at all on the Iraq war surrender bill the president vetoed last week:

On Thursday, leaders of the liberal group moveon.org including Tom Matzzie, the group’s Washington director who also serves as the campaign manager for the coalition, sent a harshly worded warning to the Democratic leadership.

“In the past few days, we have seen what appear to be trial balloons signaling a significant weakening of the Democratic position,” the letter read. “On this, we want to be perfectly clear: if Democrats appear to capitulate to Bush — passing a bill without measures to end the war — the unity Democrats have enjoyed and Democratic leadership has so expertly built, will immediately disappear.”

The letter went on to say that if Democrats passed a bill “without a timeline and with all five months of funding,” they would essentially be endorsing a “war without end.” MoveOn, it said, “will move to a position of opposition.”

The Democrats can ill afford to lose the support of moveon.org, they are going to have to appear to remain tough on this bill, but they know the American people do not support surrender and this could possibly cost them the general election.

The alliance, including MoveOn, chose to stick with Ms. Pelosi as she ushered through a war financing bill that included a timeline for withdrawal, but many peace advocates called the measure too timid. Some critics accused the alliance of becoming too cozy with the Democratic leadership and selling out the cause.

They are already upset at the Democrat leadership for not cutting off the funding, but stayed with Nancy Pelosi anyway, figuring it would be a somewhat acceptable start. But if they cave in and send a bill that doesn’t even have a time-line for defeat they may lose all support from moveon.org. Although I don’t know what alternative moveon.org would have. Perhaps they would have to go out and endorse even further left Democrats in the ’08 election, but they don’t want to wait that long.

“There’s a dividing line between those groups who feel the most important thing is to be clear on bringing the troops home as soon as possible, and the groups that feel that unity within the Democratic Party is most important and the most important thing is for the Democrats to win the White House,” said Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of Code Pink, an antiwar group that is not part of the alliance. “So the groups who feel the most important thing is to win the White House would naturally be more inclined to listening to Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she says the only way we can get a vote through is if we water it down.”

What’s missing in that last quote? None of them are talking about victory in Iraq, only victory in the presidential election. Winning the white-house is the biggest goal of the Democrats, second is surrendering to the terrorists. They are just afraid surrendering will also lose them the white-house.

“This is act one of a three-act play,” he said. “Act two will be the summer. During the summer, our job is to create a firestorm of opposition.”

Does that statement sound like someone trying to bring the country together? No, they are admitting that they are going to try to further divide the country. I find this absolutely reprehensible. But at least they are telling us where they are coming from.Our country is at war whether you want to admit it or not, and saying you are going to create dissent against a president fighting in our national defense is unforgivable.

The Democrats are going to try to straddle the fence between the hardcore anti-war left and the more reasonable moderate Democrats who believe victory is necessary.

It appears as though the Monday morning quarterbacks of the last six years have finally gotten into the game. Now that they are in the game they can’t decide whether to go deep for the touchdown to the anti war left or to keep going short to the moderate possession receivers. The endzone is the white-house and they can’t decide on the best game plan to get there.