The Silenced Majority

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/09/AR2007100901733.html?nav=hcmodule

The Silenced Majority

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, October 10, 2007; Page A17

We are condemned, the smart guys tell us, to stay in Iraq. None of the three leading Democratic presidential candidates will pledge to remove all U.S. forces by 2013. In the think-tankocracy of Washington, defense intellectuals of both parties argue that pulling up stakes is not an option.

"Some of the people mentioned as possible defense secretaries under a Democratic White House," The Post's Thomas E. Ricks reported last month, "offer a vision of a U.S. presence in Iraq that does not differ markedly from that of the Bush administration." Even the fantastical idea floated by Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- that U.S. forces should settle into a permanent presence in Iraq as they have in South Korea -- seems to have won at least tacit acceptance among many defense deep thinkers.


Everyone's on board except the American people, but what do they matter?

When the Pew Research Center polled Americans in September, it found 54 percent support for bringing U.S. forces home immediately or over the next two years. Thirteen percent said we should keep troops in Iraq but set a timetable for withdrawal, while 25 percent favored keeping troops there and not setting a timetable. Pew didn't ask if we should station forces there for half a century, as we have in Korea. Maybe the pollsters' lawyers told them they might be held liable if they asked a question that induced cardiac arrest. .............