There are some obvious political considerations that potentially explain the muted objections to Democratic inaction on the war.
The most obvious, and the most ignoble, is a desire that the war in Iraq - as destructive as it is - still be raging during the 2008 elections, based on the belief that Americans will punish Republicans for the war even more than they did in the 2006 midterm elections.
Is that naked political calculation driving some of the unwillingness of some Democratic elected officials to end the war? One would like to think not, but it is growing increasingly more difficult to avoid that suspicion.
Then there is the related, somewhat more reasonable political consideration which is grounded in the fear that if Democrats end the war in Iraq, all of the resulting violence and chaos which rightfully belongs in George Bush's lap will instead be heaped on the Democrats
"we were so close to winning if only the Democrats hadn't forced a withdrawal".
It is certainly true that war supporters, desperate to blame someone other than themselves for the disaster they have wrought, would immediately exploit this dishonest storyline, but does that really matter?
If ending the war is urgently necessary, is that consideration even remotely sufficient to justify a decision by Democrats to allow it to continue? Isn't that the same rationale that was used by Democrats who voted in favor of the 2002 Iraq AUMF. "if we oppose it, we will be damaged politically for years to come, and since it will pass anyway, why not support it and avoid incurring that political damage"? It is difficult to reconcile criticism of Congressional Democrats who voted on political grounds in 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq with a willingness now to allow them to avoid compelling an end to that war.
What does seem clear is that one of the principal factors accounting for the reluctance of Democrats to advocate de-funding is that the standard corruption that infects our political discourse has rendered the de-funding option truly radioactive.
Republicans and the media have propagated - and Democrats have frequently affirmed - the proposition that to de-fund a war is to endanger the "troops in the field."
This unbelievably irrational, even stupid, concept has arisen and has now taken root - that to cut off funds for the war means that, one day, our troops are going to be in the middle of a vicious fire-fight and suddenly they will run out of bullets - or run out of gas or armor - because Nancy Pelosi refused to pay for the things they need to protect themselves, and so they are going to find themselves in the middle of the Iraq war with no supplies and no money to pay for what they need.
That is just one of those grossly distorting, idiotic myths the media allows to become immovably lodged in our political discourse and which infects our political analysis and prevents any sort of rational examination of our options.
That is why virtually all political figures run away as fast and desperately as possible from the idea of de-funding a war - it's as though they have to strongly repudiate de-funding options because de-funding has become tantamount to "endangering our troops" (notwithstanding the fact that Congress has
de-funded wars in the past and it is obviously done in coordination with the military and over a scheduled time frame so as to avoid "endangering the troops").
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