Democratic Betrayal.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Comment - Viewpoint essay

The May surrender by the Democrats on Iraq was not easy to accept. Brought to power last November on an anti-war wave, the Democratic leaders in Congress crushed those who vested in them their hopes for peace. And so the horror continues.

The death toll of U.S. troops now hovers at 3,500, with 25,000 more wounded. On the Iraqi side, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded, and two million have become refugees.

And still the Democrats cannot summon the strength to cut the bloody purse strings.

The depressingly lopsided vote, 280-142 in the House, and 80-14 in the Senate, showed the Democrats at their most cynical and spineless.

Spineless because they wouldn't face down the inevitable attack ads to come--the spurious claim that Democrats who want to bring the troops home alive are somehow not supporting the troops.

Cynical because, when Bush came to shove, they let him get what he wanted. Democratic calculators like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Representative Rahm Emanuel probably figure that if the war keeps going on, it will drag Republicans down to defeat in 2008. Hence, the war is good for Democrats--even if it's killing 100 U.S. soldiers a month and wounding 700 or 800 more.

You cannot get lower than that.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was all too willing to give in to Bush.

"I'm a legislator, and I believe legislating is the art of compromise," he said a few weeks before the vote.

There may be issues to compromise on. A reckless war is not one of them. And there is no art in dissembling.

"For heaven's sake, look where we've come," Reid said. "It's a lot more than the President ever expected he'd have to agree to."

Really?

He agreed to no timetable. He agreed to no mandatory benchmarks. And he got all the money he needs to keep waging the war. No amount of extenuation can minimize the fact that the Democrats signed on to another $100 billion for Bush's war.

What an abdication!

What a capitulation!

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was little better. Though she denounced the compromise and voted against it, she shepherded it through and claimed it was the beginning of the end of the Iraq War.

With leadership like this, the war's end appears to be years and years away.

N ot all Democrats were so pusillanimous. Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin said, "I cannot support a bill that contains nothing more than toothless benchmarks and that allows the President to continue what may be the greatest foreign...