The Democrats have no spines.  The sum total of all their efforts to end the Iraq War since the election was supposed to give them a mandate for change has been a few toothless resolutions. 

It’s not even that it should take enormous courage — the public overwhelming polls in favor of ending the war. 

What happened?  What are the Democrats afraid of?  Why are they so useless? 

Here’s a theory.  They have once again allowed Bush’s rhetoric to define the argument.  They haven’t developed a strong answer to the ‘After the Pullout, Chaos’ theory that Bush et al have put forward so successfully.

Are any Democrats old enough to remember that the same argument was put forward during Vietnam?  It was called the domino theory, and it didn’t turn out to be the case.

It was an example then, and it is an example once again, of what we logicians call the ‘either/or fallacy’.  In this case, "either we keep the troops in forever, or chaos results’. 

In fact, there are lots of other possibilities.  Would chaos result over a gradual ‘draw-down’ of the troops?  What if US troops pulled back to define the borders of three sectarian areas of Iraq?  What if US troops re-deployed to defend the borders against belligerents like Iran?  And so on.  The point is that there are lots of possible options short of chaos. 

It’s time for the Democrats to find their spines and start putting forward real options instead of sounding so helpless in the face of Bushean rhetoric.  It really doesn’t have to be ‘apres moi, le deluge’.