Today's Featured Opinion Piece

FEINGOLD LEADS WAY ON IRAQ WAR
Robert Kuttner
Boston Globe

- PRESIDENT BUSH, faced with plummeting support for the war in Iraq, keeps turning to an old standby. In another high-profile speech on Thursday, Bush warned Americans to be terrified of terror, and tried once again to tie Iraq to Al Qaeda and the attacks of 9/11.

The public isn't buying it. A large majority -- 64 to 32 in CBS polls -- opposes Bush's conduct of the war.

Yet the opposition party has been mostly missing in action. Democratic pollsters and political advisers seem to believe that with Bush failing as a war president Democrats should stay out of the way and let him sink.

There is an obsessive worry that Democrats, above all, cannot risk looking weak on defense. If the war keeps going badly and Democrats are seen as opposing it, one strategist told me, they risk getting the blame.

Senior foreign policy Democrats, such as Senators Joseph Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton, have been willing to criticize Bush's decision to take the country to war on false pretenses, as well as his conduct of the war. But they have not offered a serious discussion of how to get us out.

This mentality is the opposite of leadership. The failure of the opposition party to offer a coherent alternative is one reason why support for the Democrats has not been rising as support for Bush sinks. It is why Democrats have become the butt of Jay Leno jokes as not standing for anything.

One Democrat who has offered another course -- and he must be feeling very lonely -- is Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. He has urged the United States to make a commitment to get all combat troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006. As Feingold says, we need a coherent alternative to either ''stay the course" or ''cut and run." That alternative is phased withdrawal.

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