A maioria silenciada

Bill Leak, «The Australian»

We are condemned, the smart guys tell us, to stay in Iraq. None of the three leading Democratic presidential candidates will pledge to remove all U.S. forces by 2013. In the think-tankocracy of Washington, defense intellectuals of both parties argue that pulling up stakes is not an option.
«Some of the people mentioned as possible defense secretaries under a Democratic White House,» The Post’s Thomas E. Ricks reported last month, «offer a vision of a U.S. presence in Iraq that does not differ markedly from that of the Bush administration.» Even the fantastical idea floated by Defense Secretary Robert Gates – that U.S. forces should settle into a permanent presence in Iraq as they have in South Korea – seems to have won at least tacit acceptance among many defense deep thinkers.
Everyone’s on board except the American people, but what do they matter?
(…)
If Democrats are to win in 2008, it will be because they represent a decisive break, not a partially veiled continuity, with George Bush’s policies, and with his war policies most of all. The Democratic candidates, Clinton especially, need to assure voters that their voice matters more than those of the Beltway theorists who supported the war at the outset and still can’t contemplate ending the occupation. They need to assure voters, in short, that they take democracy in America seriously.[Washington Post]

O que parece ser o novo (e ameaçadoramente eterno) dilema americano: retirar ou ficar no Iraque. «Intelectuais» políticos versus povo, a nova luta de classes na América.

Jim Day, «The Las Vegas Review Journal»