Democracy or not?

From Greenwald (following Steele at the Guardian):

"We just had an election where Americans repudiated this war and made clear that they want to withdraw. Yet somehow, within a matter of weeks, Washington power circles were able to shoo that election result away like the annoying mosquito that it is and supplant their own pro-war judgment as the "mainstream" view to which all serious people, by definition, pledge their allegiance.

"When 2008 comes around and we still have between 130,000-150,000 troops occupying Iraq (at the cost of $8 billion per month) -- and another 20,000 or 30,000 American soldiers are dead or maimed and a few hundred thousand or so more Iraqi civilians are dead -- we can look back at this moment when the Washington Establishment, yet again, blocked the path of withdrawal."

If the Democrats are not willing to make this their national security position they will fail. If the Dems try to be Rep-light one more time (through the item in the 100-hour plan to supposedly finally implement the 911 commission's recommendations) they will miss what a majority of the people thought they were voting for.

At some point you have to trust that the people really are annoyed with the war, see no point in it and will support which ever party ends it. Then the party has to get behind the idea that this will NOT be the end of Pax Americana -- that the US really can survive competing on the world market for oil and the alternatives that will be developed. If it's sold as an optimistic can-do belief in what America can be then the Dems will roll the Reps like they've never seen.

Democracy will work, in the end, whether the rulers want it or not. If the people don't support the war, the war will not succeed. The question is whether the Dems can get behind it in time.