Iraq policy has become the poster child for the pathology that afflicts American politics.  Specifically, Iraq policy is the exclusive domain of extremists.  On the right, attempts to recognize any specific failures in Iraq policy are condemned as “undermining the troops” while all efforts to change strategy or put pressure our Iraqi allies are disdained as “cut and run” tactics.  The right’s approach is pinup patriotism — all flash, no substance.  The left is no better, smearing everyone that disagrees with them on any detail (no matter how small) as “Bush sycophants” or “neocons”, all the while responding to any new information about incremental U.S. successes or diplomatic initiatives with behavior akin to a child sticking his fingers in his ears and screaming “la la la la la” in an effort to avoid hearing the intolerable.

Where are the moderates? ~Jason Steck

It is my view that there are no moderates in the Iraq debate because it is not really possible to take a little from column A and a little from column B and craft a synthesis of the “best” from both sides of the debate.  You will be classed with one side or the other in the debate on the war to the extent that you emphasise the insights of one side or the other.  For instance, when Mr. Steck writes:

Regardless of whether it is true or not that the war itself was originally a misguided diversion from the post-9/11 war on al-Qaeda, the political right has a legitimate point in stating that Iraq is now a central front in that war.  Abandonment of that front in the face of any other practical alternatives would constitute the granting of not only a major propaganda victory to al-Qaeda and its affiliates, but would also carry a serious risk of granting them a new base in Iraq far better technologically and financially than their earlier base in Afghanistan. 

Speaking as someone on the political right and who has opposed the war from day one, I don’t accept this at all.  They don’t have a legitimate point.  It isn’t a central front in the “war on al Qaeda.”  Even now, it has almost nothing to do with Al Qaeda.  Conjuring the picture of Iraq serving as a major Al Qaeda base–supposedly much more substantially than it does right now–is straight out of the most tired of pro-war talking points.  Imagine if communist guerrillas accounted for approximately 5-10% of all enemy forces encountered in Vietnam–would anyone seriously claim that fighting in Vietnam was in any way a part of an anticommunist containment strategy?  No, you would acknowledge that this group was trying to exploit the situation and recognise that the rest of the conflict is basically unrelated to that group.  If you want to split the difference between “unreasonable” extremisms, you might start by not choosing one of the most poisonously deceptive pieces of government propaganda as the positive contribution of war supporters to the debate.