How to Make a War Disappear

Iraq is fading from the minds of the American public, and politicians, pollsters and pundits are trying to figure out how it happened.

Although 2007 casualties have been the highest in five years of war, a combination of Congressional Democrats' ineffectual efforts to stop or slow it down along with Republican unwillingness to buck Bush in numbers large enough to override vetoes has created an Iraq fatigue in both the media and public.

Now, Politico reports, "Democrats plan to spend the December recess reviewing their strategy and determining if they missed opportunities to put limitations, even if they were smaller than war activists were demanding, on Bush’s war policies.

"Some Democratic strategists are warning that congressional leaders are 'muddling through' with a strategy that carries both political and military risks for the party."

"News about the Iraq war," the Pew Research Center reports, "does not dominate the public's consciousness nearly as much as it did last winter" and cites figures to support that contention.

There is enough blame for this to go around--divided Democrats, absence of Republican spine, Petraeus' flacking for the Surge, too little MSM courage coupled with too much posturing and puffing on the blogosphere--all adding up to impotence in resisting a pathologically stubborn Administration.

Now facing a new year, with the Presidential contest upstaging all else, where do the vast majority of Americans who want to end the most disastrous war in our history go from here?

Republicans, under the cover of electorate ennui, will try to ride it out behind their White House candidates' bluster. Democrats will keep promising to get us out but not just yet.

Like it or not, those who hate this war are faced with no better hope than the kind of incremental easing out that seemed unthinkable a year ago.

We can only hope they don't botch that, too.