Bush, he said, was yielding to media pressure in the devlopment of his policy in Iraq and in response to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s intimation that Maliki’s “time is running out,” he said, “I might be able to say that the Iraqi government is better able to continue working than some other governments.”

Paratroopers were pouring into Baghdad airport to set up for the Bush-Cheney “surge,” even as an American teacher was killed in an ambush likely conducted by people operating right out of Maliki’s Interior Ministry headquartered in the Green Zone. At the same time, 19 people in a Shia neighborhood were killed by a car bomb, and Maliki’s government claimed it had rounded up 400 Sadrist militiamen, a claim disputed by representatives of Sadr and the Mehdi Army.

East of the capital, two more people were killed, and four wounded by a car bomb. Four were killed and 13 wounded the night before in northern Baghdad by mortars. Two killed and four wounded in Mosul when a wedding was machine-gunned. 83 oil transport trucks en route to Iraqi Kurdistan were seized by “Iraqi “police” in Tikrit. Three policemen wounded in Samarra… 25 others killed by miscellaneous car bombs and shootings near the capital… dead bodies founding Iskandariya… suicide bombings in Mosul… ambushes in Kifil… two more American soldiers killed in Anbar… this is a snapshot of Iraq.

All we get here are snapshots. We do not live with the war unless we have been there, have lost someone there, have seen a loved one sent back “changed” from there, or have someone in harm’s way. For most of us, Iraq is something we can fix with the TV remote…kind of. The immensity of the horror and the depth of the criminality that has characterized this war are such that – against all odds and against our cultural Will to Denial – this war left bloodstains on the American psyche that resulted in a Congressional transfer of power this month.

Sixty percent of Americans are adamantly opposed to Bush’s “surge,” that is, an escalation of troop numbers by 21, 400. As the Bush administration pushes troops into Baghdad, a recent poll shows that the direction 64% of Americans are looking runs through Kuwait, to Ramstein, to the East Coast of the United States.

Every time there is an abrupt disruption in Iraq, these numbers go further south for the administration. The Surge will guarantee that. This plan has now put Maliki in an impossible position, where he can assist the US in attacking Sadr City and see his own “government” come apart like a two-dollar shirt, or he can defy the US by declaring his government’s demand for an emergency withdrawal of occupying forces.

No matter what the various actors decide to do, The Surge has inaugurated a whole new level of instability in a place where few thought that was possible. The situation in Iraq, however, is only the preface to this article. I want to discuss the development of electoral politics in the US, and how it is being shaped by this war into what could become a historic and extremely dangerous interstitial period in the paleoclimatology of US domestic politics.

Before conducting an analysis of the maneuver warfare of parties and candidates, it is important to have a rough idea of demographics. For example, if you refer to yourself as an African American, there is an 89% chance you will vote mainly for Democrats. If you are a white evangelical Christian, you are three times as likely (prior to 2006) to vote for a Republican. Moreover, certain categories vote in numbers that either minimize or amplify their impact on elections.

White people are 75.1% of the population, but they constitute 81% of the electorate in general (Presidential year) elections. African Americans constitute 12.3% of the total population, but 10% of the total vote. Hispano-Latinos make up 12.5% of the population, but 7% of the active electorate. The Catholic ratio is 24.5% - 26%. The Jewish ratio is 1.3% - 4%; and so forth.

These numbers are amplified further when they are concentrated and can operate as “swing” votes. There is little doubt, for example, with much of big business champing at the bit to trade with socialist Cuba, that the reason the weird embargo against this innocuous country remains in place is that there is a high concentration of anti-socialist Cuban expatriates concentrated in a key region of a key contested state, Florida, where there are 27 electoral votes. Neither party wants to taint its Presidential candidates in a way that cedes Florida, and anyone who dares can be painted as a commie-lover.

Other numbers are minimized by application of law, like felony disfranchisement, which eliminates tremendous numbers of African Americans, and is applied for bullshit felonies, like failure to show up in court for a misdemeanor, as well as highly selective application of drug laws.

Still other numbers are neutralized by geographical gerrymandering and bloc-voting. In a state like, Mississippi, for example, almost 40% of the population is Black, but in a winner-takes-all race like the presidential elections, white voters overwhelmingly vote Republican, often precisely because Blacks vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

Then there is the Wealth Primary, which determines in advance who is suitable to vote for, in advance of the base ever having an opportunity to participate in the selection of candidates. John Bonifaz and Jamin Raskin invented this term in their book by the same name. In their introduction, they state:

Long before the political parties select their nominees and voters cast their ballots, long before the vast majority of citizens have even focused on upcoming federal elections, candidates for the United States Congress now compete in a critically important phase of the modern electoral process: the wealth primary. The person who collects the most money -- the "winner" of the wealth primary -- almost always captures his or her party's nomination and then, if he or she can out-raise and out-spend the winner of the wealth primary in the other party, goes on to win the election. Theoretically, you can get elected to Congress without being the winner of this two-part wealth primary, but when you look at the statistics, it is extremely unlikely.

The Wealth Primary does not take all controversy and competition off the table between the two parties, but it takes a lot of things off. Those with the means are empowered by this system to determine the key issues that will not be debated. We will be more specific about this dynamic further down; for now, it is sufficient to point out – lest anyone be deceived by the idea that “the people” can pool their resources to outspend the rich – that as of 2001, the top one percent of Americans held 33.4% of the net worth and 39.7% of the financial wealth; while the bottom 80% had 15.5% of the net worth and 8.8% of the financial wealth.

Aside from establishing the complexities of American politics, we present these examples of that complexity to provide the context for assessing how the war will impact on US domestic politics, and vice versa.

As things stand right now, in 2008 Presidential politics – which will entrain other politics over the next two years – the front-runners are (Democrats) Hillary Clinton (29%), Barack Obama (18%), John Edwards (13%), Al Gore (11%), and John Kerry (8%)… (Republicans) Rudolph Giuliani (31%), John McCain (27%), Newt Gingrich (10%), and Mitt Romney (7%).

The growing public opposition to the war is monolithic in neither rationale nor degree. One person is opposed on anti-imperialist principle, another because “one Amurkin life ain’t worth that of 100 Ay-rabs,” etc. And one may call for immediate withdrawal, another for phased withdrawal, another for some pie-in-the-sky milestone. We have to return to that, because it is extremely important, but for now we can simply say that the war is unpopular, and the candidates have to position themselves on the issue not to reflect public sentiment, but in relation to one another. Barack Obama doesn’t need to call for immediate withdrawal; he has to show that he dislikes the war more than Hillary Clinton.

If we accept that The Surge will be a disaster and that the war will continue to deteriorate into a blood-washed nightmare, and that support for the war will continue to diminish… and if we hypothesize that the Bush administration will not leave Iraq before 2008… then we might safely surmise that aggressive support for the war will become a tremendous political liability. This means that John McCain has already shit in his nest, as has Mitt Romney. Rudy has played his cards pretty close on the war, avoiding it like a nest of cottonmouths. Clinton and Edwards will have to bare their backs at Canterbury and recite mea culpas, and Edwards has already beat Clinton to the punch on that one. Neither of them will be able to completely shake the taint of opportunism, with all their videotaped warmongering from 2003 still on file. Kerry is correctly perceived as an effete blueblood poseur, and his taint is that of the loser (election theft shenanigans notwithstanding). Gingrich is tainted with scandal.

Obama, no matter how much he can personally quell the negrophobic anxieties of white voters, will excite Democrats with the “electability” issue; and Democratic Party strategists still harbor the fantasy of recapturing the South… not to mention that white males everywhere vote majority Republican, and white women are not far behind. Even in the 2006 race that the Republicans lost, white men voted 53% Republican and white women voted 50% Republican. Men distrust the abilities of women (as do many women who have internalized patriarchy), and Hillary Clinton is a lightening rod for political misogyny, even for the misogyny of the left (there is plenty to go around). This also raises an “electability” issue, even with Clinton’s backing from the powerful and conservative Democratic Leadership Council (more on them further down).

The perennial dilemma for political operators – which has been exacerbated by the social polarization around the war – is that you have to win the primary of your party to get into the general election. Giuliani, for example, supports gun control, abortion rights, and gay unions; so, in the general election he’d probably slaughter all comers from the issue-averse Democrats by neutralizing these issues in the election year and capturing a huge crossover vote. But he has to first secure the nomination of the born-again base. A CNN survey after the 2006 election that the Republicans lost shows 70% of white evangelicals voting Republican, and they are half of the consistent Republican base.

Clinton has to overcome the fact that half of registered Democrats want US troops in Iraq withdrawn, and PDQ, then figure out how to tack back to the right for the general election.

We could go on with these dilemmas ad nauseum, but the point is clear by now. The unprecedented unpopularity of the current administration on this single issue has created a very unstable situation for both parties. This is occurring in a period when the conditions surrounding these maneuvers are also extremely unstable and unpredictable.

Another recent poll showed Clinton being “electable,” with 29% very likely and 24% somewhat likely to vote for her if she ran now. And she does have the backing of the immensely powerful DLC, which is the money-making 747 that could suck Barack Obama into its intakes and spit him out as a vapor trail. Both will have to be exquisitely careful to evade a situation that pits liberal feminists against African Americans. Canny Republican operatives are likely already figuring out how to recreate an OJ wedge-moment before, during, and after the election of 2008, the trends in motion that constitute the messy backstage are only going to become more critical.

The war will get worse… much worse, (1) because most Democrats and Republicans still genuinely believe that US failure in Iraq will strengthen both Iran and Syria (it very well may), and (2) because neither party has the slightest independence on the one terminally festering issue that blockades US influence in the region – Israel and Palestine.

Republicans are lashed to Israel not only by the strategic fantasies of the neo-cons, but by a millenarian popular base that believes Israel has to triumph in order for Jesus to come back for them (whereupon the Jews will all go to Hell). Democrats are tied to Israel by the fact that Jewish voters are concentrated as “swing votes” in Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, and California, and 61% of American Jews “strongly support” Israel. The Israeli lobby has also proven adept at campaign finance, but more importantly by intimidation. When Cynthia McKinney spoke up for Palestinians, the Israeli lobby coordinated her political destruction as an example to all. Both parties are so cowed by the strategic leverage of Israel in the US that they consistently join in demagogic attacks against all of Israel’s critics, claiming – wrongly – that opposition to Israel’s actions and policies is tantamount to anti-Semitism. (Hillary Clinton is the fifth highest recipient of Israel lobby campaign cash.)

-- STAN GOFF is a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant. He is the author of three books; Hideous Dream - A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti (Soft Skull Press, 2000), Full Spectrum Disorder - The Military in the New American Century (Soft Skull Press, 2004), Sex & War, Energy War - Exterminism for the 21st Century, and My Year with the Liberals.

He is the former military affairs editor for From The Wilderness, and has written foreign policy analysis for Sanders Research Associates. He also occasionally writes for Truthdig.

He is a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), Veterans for Peace (VFP), and Military Families Speak Out (MFSO). His son is in the active duty army and has been deployed to Iraq four times. Goff is on the coordinating committee of the Bring Them Home Now! campaign, and advised Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) on organizational development. His website is called "Insurgent American [ www.insurgentamerican.net/ ]