This morning’s NY Times features a story about the new-found power of the moderate Left, which is pursuing a moral agenda of limiting and eventually abandoning Mr Bu$h’s dreams of imperialism in Iraq.

Over the last four months, the Iraq deliberations in Congress have lurched from a purely symbolic resolution rebuking the president’s strategy to timetables for the withdrawal of American troops. Behind the scenes, an elaborate political operation, organized by a coalition of antiwar groups and fine-tuned to wrestle members of Congress into place one by one, has helped nudge the debate forward.

But there are tensions in the relationship between the groups, which banded together earlier this year under the umbrella of Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, and the Democratic leadership. The fissures could be magnified in coming weeks as the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, struggle to cobble together a strategy after President Bush’s veto of the $124 billion Iraq spending bill that tied the money to a timetable for withdrawal.

It is said that one of the strengths of the Democratic Party is the multiplicity of positions on a given subject, and it probably is true that much of this party is composed of groups with differing emphases. Recent polls show that almost every faction agrees with the majority of Americans that it is past time for the country to give op the neocon fantasy of destabilizing the Middle East in order to create a region that is more amenable to the external imposition of American power.

There was no one single underlying reason to preemptively attack a country that had done us no national harm. But the results of this policy have been horrendous.

At the beginning the cheerleading from the media, and other unthinking sectors of the society was overwhelming, carrying us along in an emotion-driven wave of jingoism and patriotism.

This is a pathology that has happened before, by the way. It’s quite common throughout history as I learned from some wonderful WWI-era magazine illustrations.

At the beginning of a war, people adore the troops and see them march off to war, sending them away with love and pride. Crowds across the nation met them on their journeys and cheered them on, with parades and acclaim.

We eagerly followed their progress, marveling at the reports of their progress as embedded reporters fed us news of their fight, and when they returned home they were feted and lionized, Unless they were wounded, in which case we were not allowed to see them, nor their wounds.

We were horrified when we learned of their terrible medical care.

So things don’t change very much. Americans want us out of Mr Bu$h’s ego-war and he is determined to have his way, no matter what the citizens think, because in his mind we are scum. Make no mistake about that, he despises us because he found us so gullible and so easily fooled by his lies. He doesn‘t think much of the media, either, because they’re as stupid and foolish as the American people. To the media’s eternal shame, they’re incapable of admitting they’ve been taken by a bunch of con men.

This is a long fight; it will last another 16 months, unless he decides he likes being king so much that he refuses to leave in January 2009, as the law says he’s supposed to.

People should be thinking today about Mr Bu$h’s attitude towards the law.

The Democratic Party must gather itself up and use every tool at its disposal to keep the Republican Party off-balance, on the defensive, and always answering the daily questions about Mr Bu$h’s war, because it’s also the Republican Party’s war. He wanted it and they let him have it. And when they say, “Hey! The Democrats voted for this too!” there is only one retort: “Right. Because we were lied to. That’s been well-documented. Do you approve of a war based on lies?” Every public statement from a Democratic party representative should hang the war and its lies on every Republican, not just George Bu$h. We must press forward with the original democratic agenda as espoused by Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi. Let us not forget that there is a backlog of evil legislation passed by the Republican enablers. There is much harm to be undone while we stop this terrible war.

We owe this to the troops.