The crisis in Iraq may be changing rapidly, due largely to pressures on the Bush Administration to lower the profile of the American role during this election year and the coming presidential campaign of 2008. As in Vietnam and the Central American wars, the secret war has expanded through the use of death squads largely protected by the US-trained Iraqi interior ministry and armed forces. Ethnic cleansing is the result in mixed areas of central Iraq , including Baghdad . The shift has resulted in the reduction of US casualties , an election-year imperative.

Also borrowing from the Nixon era, the Pentagon and White House playbook calls for the phased withdrawal of tens of thousands of American troops beginning this year. If launched, the withdrawals would help Republican and pro-war candidates enormously in the fall election and beyond. Of course, the withdrawals from largely pacified swaths of Iraq would allow American forces to concentrate on the Sunni Triangle where the insurgency is most concentrated.

If it unfolds, this strategic retreat will be ballyhooed as evidence of success by the Administration.

These plans could go wrong, however. The Iraqi resistance may be too formidable to permit the withdrawal of US troops this year. And the presence of Iranian influence among the American-backed Shiite parties and militias presents a potential nightmare for the Administration too. Deep discontent among US troops – 31 percent of whom favor immediate withdrawal – could complicate the Adminstration’s game plan as well. Finally, the conflict with Iran could evolve into an aerial attack and military conflict, injecting the politics of fear into the election cycle.

However, the national Democratic Party has sidelined itself as these scenarios play out, leaving the anti-war movement with few political allies willing to speak for the 70 percent of Democratic voters who support withdrawal. How this default has occurred, and what the anti-war movement can do about it, are questions that need to be addressed.

Anti-war sentiment among Democratic Congressmembers and insiders grew rapidly in the second half of 2005, exemplified by Rep. Maxine Water’s formation of an Out of Iraq Caucus [now seventy members strong], Sen. Russell Feingold’s 18-months withdrawal initiative, Rep. Lynn Woolsey’s exit strategy hearing, the presence of 300,000 protestors on the Capitol steps in September, and ultimately in the mid-December decision of Rep. John Murtha to call for rapid withdrawal. During the same period, the Clinton-oriented Center for American Progress issued a strategy paper calling for “redeployment” over a two-year period. The stage was set for the Democrats to finally go beyond criticizing Bush’s handling of the war and call for ending it.

Instead they left Murtha high and dry . A December 2005 retreat among Democratic Congress members failed to reach consensus on an anti-war plan. While most personally favored something like a one-year withdrawal, they declined to take a stand. Opposition was led by hawks like Reps. Steny Hoyer, Ike Skelton, and Tom Lantos, representing unknown outside interests. While lacking any morality, the Democrats’ plan had was based on a ruthless, perhaps fanciful, electoral logic. The model was how they defeated Bush’s proposal to privatize Social Security, by uniting to say “no” instead of offering a compromise plan of their own. With respect to Iraq , they believed that Democrats should simply criticize Bush while avoiding any Democratic peace proposal which would be attacked as “cut-and-run” by the Republican spin machine. Meanwhile, the Democrats were recruiting at least fifty veterans as candidates for Congress, which would automatically focus public attention on Bush’s Iraq debacle while giving Democrats an image makeover as “strong on defense.”

The goal is to win back the House of Representatives this year, allowing Democrats in that chamber to take the initiative in 2007. If this occurs, the analogy would be with the Reagan years, when Democratic control of the House made possible the exposures of the Iran-Contra scandals and opposition to the Central American wars. Henry Waxman would have subpoena power in chairing House investigations, and John Conyers could introduce an impeachment resolution in the Judiciary Committee he would chair. Tempting fantasies in bleak times, to be sure.

In pursuing this alternative, however, the Democrats have brushed off the anti-war majority of Party activists and voters. That has led already to a brutal primary fight in Chicago where the Party establishment was forced to spend $1 million [and all of its moral credibility] to defeat a progressive Democrat by the narrow margin of 44-40. In June, large numbers of Democratic primary voters will support Marcy Winograd against Democratic hawk Jane Harman. The realignment already forces former trend-setters like Barbara Boxer and Barbara Lee to become awkward defenders the established status quo [Harman] against an effective and charismatic candidate [Winograd] who stands for everything the Democratic liberals once believed.

The Party machine will need anti-war Democratic activists and voters soon enough, however, as it struggles in competitive November elections against Republicans who are perceived today as vulnerable over Iraq and other issues. These include Republican incumbents in blue states like New York , California and Connecticut , for example, where even one or two percent of anti-war voters could make a major difference. Since the Democratic contenders are likely to be frustrating and muddled on the war, the question is whether anti-war voters will feel strongly enough about taking back the House to turn out in large numbers. At this point, they might. But the 2004 Kerry campaign’s inability to express an anti-war voice remains a sore memory among those Democrats nearly two years later.

If 2006 is uncertain, the emerging presidential campaign is not much better at this point. The front-running Hillary Clinton shows no wavering from her hawkish and wrong-headed stance on Iraq , although she is capable of “re-positioning” herself again if the anti-war vote becomes a major factor. Other potential candidates with stronger anti-war views are Feingold, John Kerry, John Edwards and, according to insider rumors, Al Gore. Kerry has recently distinguished himself by calling for US withdrawal by the end of this year, the strongest position from a Democratic senator thus far. None of them seems a match for Hillary at this point, but they might mass anti-war sentiment into a political force once again. The best hope for the anti-war movement is in building a strong network now in Iowa and New Hampshire , the early primary states where Democratic voters wait in large numbers.