Confessions of a 'Defeatocrat'

We are seeing an astonishing and unprecedented parade of retired U.S. generals calling for a new direction in Iraq. These are voices of bravery, experience, conscience and loyalty. These are men who have been taught to look coldly and objectively at the facts of bloodshed. Can they all be wrong? How about the 15 intelligence agencies that recently offered the opinion that this war has not made us safer? Are they all defeatists? Are they to be ignored?

Was Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, former Army chief of staff, a defeatist when he said that it would take several hundred thousand troops to prevail in Iraq? His recommendation was ignored. Or what about Gen. Jay M. Garner, our first administrator in Iraq, who recommended that the Iraqi army be kept intact and used to stabilize the country? His recommendations were ignored. The Iraqi army was disbanded and the former military took their munitions and went off to form the core of the insurgency. Was former secretary of state Colin L. Powell defeatist when he warned: "If you break it, you own it"? Was Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower a defeatist when he ran for president in 1952 to change the course of Democrat Harry S. Truman's administration in Korea?

Will the White House toss the same tired insults at Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has voiced concern over the situation in Iraq? Or at former secretary of state James A. Baker III when the commission he is co-chairing delivers its report on reassessing our options in Iraq?

This administration's insistence on a "go-it-alone, stay-the-course" policy in the face of objections from a majority of Americans and Iraqis and most world public opinion, and in the face of a deteriorating situation, defies logic.

The United States is about to begin its fifth year of occupation and fighting in Iraq. That makes this war longer than U.S. participation in World Wars I and II, and longer than the Korean War and our own Civil War. With every year of occupation, our efforts to fight global terrorism and our military's readiness to fight future wars have further deteriorated, along with our standing in the world. Meanwhile, the radical Islamic cause wins more and more recruits.

Despite the presence of more than 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, 23,000 Americans injured or killed, tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths and the expenditure of nearly a half a trillion dollars, here are the dismal results:

· In September, 776 U.S troops were wounded in Iraq, the highest monthly toll in more than two years.

· Over the past year, the number of attacks against U.S. personnel has doubled, rising from 400 to more than 800 per week.

· Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, recently acknowledged that sectarian violence has replaced the insurgency as the single biggest threat to Iraq.

· In the past two months, 6,000 Iraqis died, more than in the first year of the war.

· Last week, electricity output averaged 2.4 hours per day in Baghdad and 10.4 hours nationwide -- 7 percent less than in the same period in 2005.

· A Sept. 27 World Public Opinion poll indicated that 91 percent of Iraqi Sunnis and 74 percent of Iraqi Shiites want the Iraqi government to ask U.S.-led forces to withdraw within a year. Ninety-seven percent of Sunnis and 82 percent of Shiites said that the U.S. military presence is "provoking more conflict than it is preventing." And Iraqi support for attacks against U.S.-led forces has increased sharply over the past few months, from 47 percent to 61 percent.

Now, Karl Rove may call me a defeatist, but can anyone living in the real world deny that these statistics are heading in the wrong direction? Yet despite this bleak record of performance, the president continues to stand by his team of failed architects, preferring to prop them up instead of demanding accountability.

Democrats are fighting a war on two fronts: One is combating the spin and intimidation that defines this administration. The other is fighting to change course, to do things better, to substitute smart, disciplined strategy for dogma and denial in Iraq.

That's not defeatism. That's our duty.

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) is the ranking member on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

He served 37 years in the Marine Corps.