Earlier in the week, Glenn Greenwald and Matt both made posts which I believe accurately express the frustration of many progressives at the apparent lack of meaningful action by the Democratic congressional leadership to end the war. Our current votes are symbolic. The escalation is already happening. Overall, the situation is actually worse than when we won the election more than three months ago. In this environment, frustration seems to understandably be mounting.

Of course, figuring out a way to end the war, when you are still not even close to the votes for a timetable, is not the easiest thing to do. Both before and after the election, I spent a decent amount of time talking with BooMan on strategies and legislation Democrats could employ to end the war. Apart from a resolution to revoke Bush's authority to conduct the war, I don't think we came up with much. However, it needs to be pointed out that in this environment of frustration, uncertain ideas, and a lack of votes for a quick end to the war, there is a coherent Democratic plan to end the war. It is being led by Jack Murtha and Nancy Pelosi, and will work as follows:

Murtha and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have decided that they must take the lead in pressuring not only Republicans but also cautious Senate Democrats to take steps more aggressive than nonbinding resolutions in challenging the Bush administration.

The House strategy is being crafted quietly, even as the chamber is immersed this week in an emotional, albeit mostly symbolic, debate over a resolution expressing opposition to Bush's plan to "surge" 21,500 more troops into Iraq.

Murtha, the powerful chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, will seek to attach a provision to an upcoming $93 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. It would restrict the deployment of troops to Iraq unless they meet certain levels adequate manpower, equipment and training to succeed in combat. That's a standard Murtha believes few of the units Bush intends to use for the surge would be able to meet.

In addition, Murtha, acting with the backing of the House Democratic leadership, will seek to limit the time and number of deployments by soldiers, Marines and National Guard units to Iraq, making it tougher for Pentagon officials to find the troops to replace units that are scheduled to rotate out of the country. Additional funding restrictions are also being considered by Murtha, such as prohibiting the creation of U.S. military bases inside Iraq, dismantling the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and closing the American detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"There's a D-Day coming in here, and it's going to start with the supplemental and finish with the '08 [defense] budget," said Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, who chairs the Air and Land Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

The theory behind this plan is that it will significantly restrict the amount of available troops Bush can use to conduct the war, and then continue to gradually reduce the number of available troops even further over the next two years. It also provides cover for the many extremely cautious and calcified Democrats who still cower in fear at every Republican attack, and who give credence to every conservative narrative in our political discourse. Combined with today's symbolic vote, which will get people on record opposing Bush's policy, and a national media / activist campaign from groups such as MoveOn, and this strikes me as a very workable plan to significantly de-escalate the war by the middle of 2008. And once we start moving in the direction of de-escalation, it will become virtually impossible for anyone to ever find either the political capitol or the actual military resources to reverse course. If the Senate can be persuaded to go along with this plan, it seems as though it will bring the war to an end, albeit slowly.

I am not a policy guy. I do not have lots of fancy ideas on how to end the war through legislative means. I would love to see a timetable, but 67 Senators are still opposed to that idea (many of them quite progressive), and we need 60 Senators to be in favor. While those favoring a timetable continue to grow, they are growing slowly. Given this, it seems to me that the only currently available means to end the war is to keep up the pressure for a timeline through continued public activism / demonstrations via campaigns such as Set A Deadline, while simultaneously backing the Murtha / Pelosi plan with everything we have got. Once the numbers of troops in Iraq start decreasing via the Murtha / Pelosi plan, I imagine that support for ending the war altogether via a timetable will increase dramatically within Congress. If all goes well, the war can be over entirely by the end of 2008 / beginning of 2009.

This is not, obviously, a quick end to the war that most of us here, and most people in America, would desire. It is, however, a realistic means of achieving our shared goal that is actually moving forward. If this plan fails, we are pretty much SOL on ending the war until after Bush leaves office (and that won't be a guarantee even then, looking at the leading 2008 contenders). It strikes me as a realistic and reasonable plan, and so I support it. We still need to have a massive attitude change among many Democrats in Washington D.C. on a variety of issues, and that goes for staffers and consultants as well elected officials. They still remain petrified of offending the Republican Noise Machine, and generally operate under a mentality that the 2006 elections were a fluke instead of installing Democrats as a longer-term governing majority. But even as we work toward that attitude change happen, we have to end the war with the Democratic Party we have, rather than the Democratic Party we want.