The Left's "Plan B"

From The Politico:

After a series of legislative defeats in 2007 that saw the year end with more U.S. troops in Iraq than when it began, a coalition of anti-war groups is backing away from its multimillion-dollar drive to cut funding for the war and force Congress to pass timelines for bringing U.S. troops home.

In recognition of hard political reality, the groups instead will lower their sights and push for legislation to prevent President Bush from entering into a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could keep significant numbers of troops in Iraq for years to come.

The groups believe this switch in strategy can draw contrasts with Republicans that will help Democrats gain ground in November and bring the votes to pass more dramatic measures. But it is a long way from the early months of 2007, when Democrats were freshly in power and momentum for a dramatic shift in Iraq policy seemed overpowering.

“There was a consensus that last year was not productive,” John Isaacs, executive director of Council for a Livable World, said of a meeting attended by a coalition of anti-war groups last week. “Our expectations were dashed.”

The meeting, held at an office on K Street, was attended by around 20 representatives of influential anti-war groups, including MoveOn.org and Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, which spent $12 million last year opposing the war.

Isaacs said he thought the meeting would be a difficult one, with an adamant faction pressing for continued focus on timelines and funding. It wasn’t to be.

“We got our heads together and decided to go a different way,” Isaacs said. “The consensus was not to keep beating our heads against the wall trying to block every funding bill — not because we don’t agree with it, but because we don’t have the votes.”

Moira Mack, a spokeswoman for AAEI, was also at the meeting. “There was a lot of agreement that this is really the way that we can best get our message across about endless war versus end-the-war and draw clear distinctions between anti-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans. They really don’t want to end the war. This is the perfect legislative opportunity.”

An additional factor: The failure of last year’s end-of-the-session efforts to oppose the war convinced some in the movement that the numbers just weren’t there. “At the end of the year, Congress went out with a whole bunch more votes on Iraq with the same result. Some of the [news] stories were saying that members of Congress were getting tired of it,” Isaacs said.

The new strategy doesn’t mean that the groups won’t be active during budget battles. “The budget debates provide an enormously rich opportunity to engage the public,” said former Maine Rep. Tom Andrews of the group Win Without War. “We’re spending $8 [billion] to $10 billion a month.”

During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) referenced the kind of legislation that the anti-war crowd will be backing when she asked Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) if he would co-sponsor a bill to prevent the president from entering into any long-term agreements with the Iraqi government without consulting Congress.

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Let me get this straight. The "anti-war movement" (translation: America-haters) is angry but resigned about their failure to hand America a humiliating defeat in Iraq (and throw Iraq into a genocidal civil war in the bargain) but they have a new plan.

They want to prevent the Bush administration from forming a long term security agreement with Iraq that would involve basing troops in that nation. You know like we do in Western Europe. This way the kind of stability that the American military presence brought to Western Europe after WWII will not come to the Middle East.

The anti-war movement/America haters/Democrats/BDS mental burnouts (the terms are synonymous) are not going to be happy until they fill Iraq with even more mass graves than Saddam Hussein did.

Also, don't forget the ultimate outcome of an Iraqi bloodbath. The incorporation of Iraq into a greater Shiite caliphate governed from Tehran.