Hell No

by hilzoy

Via TPM, the AP:

"In grudging concessions to President Bush, Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and shorn of billions of dollars in spending on domestic programs, officials said Monday. (...)

While details remain subject to change, the measure is designed to close the books by Friday on a bruising veto fight between Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the war. It would provide funds for military operations in Iraq through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Democrats in both houses are expected to seek other opportunities later this year to challenge Bush's handling of the unpopular conflict.

Democratic officials stressed the legislation was subject to change. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss provisions before a planned presentation to members of the party's rank and file later in the day.

Democrats in Congress have insisted for months they would not give Bush a blank check for his war policies, and officials said the legislation is expected to include political and military goals for the Iraqi government to meet toward establishment of a more democratic society. [Ed. note: Why imposing benchmarks on the Iraqis constitutes not giving Bush a blank check eludes me. "Stop being mean to your little sister, or I'll take away someone else's allowance!"]

Failure to make progress toward the goals could cost the Iraqis some of the reconstruction aid the United States has promised, although it was not clear whether Democrats intended to give Bush power to order the aid to be spent regardless of progress. (...)

Either way, Democratic leaders have said they hope to clear a war spending bill through both houses of Congress and send it to Bush's desk by week's end. They added the intention was to avoid a veto."

Greg Sargent reports that the leadership will not confirm this. One of the guys at AmericaBlog thinks it might be a trial balloon. So, on the off chance that they are interested in my opinion: No. No. No.

Hell no.

More below the fold.

Let's divide this into two three parts: first, what's right, second, what's politically smart, and third, the one thing that makes me hesitate. Note that the reason I discuss the politics at all is not (NOT!) that I think this decision should be made on political grounds; it's that there's something peculiarly awful about doing the wrong thing when it's not even in your interest.

What's right: Either you believe that the Iraq war is already lost (or perhaps: that while some strategic genius might manage to save the day, George W. Bush will not), or you don't. ('Lost' here means: that we cannot succeed in leaving behind a stable Iraq.) Personally, I do, and I think the surge, in particular, has been hopeless from the outset. The whole point of the surge is to provide the Iraqi government with the breathing room it needs to make some real political progress. But there is no indication -- none at all --that the Iraqi government is either willing or able to do any such thing. For this reason, I'm less exercised than most people about their vacation plans: I don't think they'd be making much progress wherever they were, so I'm not that concerned about where they fail to make it. (Though I do agree that it would be polite of them to pretend to be trying.)

If the Iraqis don't make political progress, then the surge will come to an end at some point, the various militias will come out of hiding, and we'll be back where we were before, only with our army that much nearer to breaking, our country billions of dollars poorer, and with a lot of our soldiers and Iraqi civilians dead. A lot of widows, widowers, orphans, and parents who have to bury their children, which no parent should ever have to do.

If you believe this, then you have to try to end the war as soon as possible. You just do. Moreover, I believe that majorities in both houses do believe this, and that if they had to vote knowing that the day after their vote, God would bring them into the presence of every single American and Iraqi who had lost someone they loved as a result of continuing the war, and would give those Americans and Iraqis both the knowledge of their future loss and the ability to read the minds of each Senator and Representative, so that they would know exactly why each had cast his or her vote, the war would end very quickly. Certainly no one who would not be willing to vote to prolong the war even if she had to face every single friend or loved one of every person who dies as a result of the surge knowing that those people had the power to read her heart has any business voting that way.

How exactly those Senators and Representatives who think the war is lost should try to end it in the actual world, in which God will not do what I just described, is a tougher question. It's not obvious to me (at all) that just cutting off funding is the best way to do it -- and by 'best' I mean 'the way most likely to lead to some vote that will actually end the war'. This is a tactical question, and I have no idea which tactics are most likely to lead to such a vote. But I do not see how writing Bush a blank check could possibly be the best way to go. I honestly don't.

The politics: When Clinton and the House Republicans reached an impasse and the government shut down, people didn't blame Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans because of some general rule that says: in such situations, the Congress is always to blame. They blamed them because they thought that Newt Gingrich was being unreasonable. If the Congress wants to turn this situation to political advantage, they should present Bush with a bill that will either help to end the war if he passes it, or make him seem unreasonable if he doesn't. He would seem unreasonable, for instance, if he vetoed a bill simply because it had a waivable deadline, or because it required that he report on the Iraqi government's progress, or if it required that troops meet the basic standards of readiness the armed forces theoretically require. Any of these things would also weaken Bush's position, in different ways: the readiness provision by making it clear that the troops are not, in fact, meeting those standards (nor can they; I don't mean to suggest that this is in some way their fault); the others by putting Bush in a position in which he has to explain why, exactly, he thinks that his surge is a good idea, or by forcing him to make increasingly unrealistic statements about progress.

You win, politically, by structuring things in such a way that it becomes clear why your position is right and your opponent's position is wrong. (This presupposes that your position is right, of course: making things clear does not help you if it's you who are wrong. This is why one should always try to ensure that one is right first.) In this particular case, structuring things so that both the weakness of Bush's position and his unreasonableness become clear is also essential to ending the war. What burns me about the idea of just caving to Bush is that it does nothing towards this end. It's just capitulation.

The one thing that gives me pause: Maybe I am, as they used to say, Blinded by Bush Hatred, but for what it's worth: I do not put it past Bush to respond to any actual cutting off of funds by leaving the troops high and dry in some utterly avoidable way and blaming it on Congress. I don't even put it past him to respond in this way to some sort of waivable deadline such that if he doesn't do something or other (e.g., certify progress of some sort), funds will be cut off. Nothing in Bush's record suggests to me that he would be above, say, letting the troops run out of money, or bullets, or gasoline to make a political point. If I were in Congress, I would rather give Bush the money than risk that. It's succumbing to blackmail, but there are worse things to do.

Before I did so, though, I'd work very hard to try to find out whether there is any actual risk of this happening first.

Comments

[Dantheman]

hilzoy,

Even though I felt the surge was only PR gloss from the beginning (since adding such a small number to the forces therecannot be expected to do anything useful), I am actually in favor of doing this if (and only if) there are a significant number of Republicans in Congress who are saying privately that we have not given the surge enough time to succeed, but if there are no positive results by September 1, they will vote with the Democrats to withdraw. This would present an appearance of bipartisanship in pulling out, and therefore increase the pressure on the President to go along. Not sure this overrides the flaws in continuing the war, but it is a politcal consideration in favor of it.

[hilzoy]

Dantheman: true. But only if they sign affidavits to that effect in blood and place them in the keeping of some mutually trusted third party, to be turned over to the media in the event they welsh.

[Nell]

An excellent post marred by the b.s. about potential Bush "blackmail" at the end.

Bush, the president who committed the very impeachable high crime of diverting $700 million appropriated by Congress for the Afghan war to planning and prepping for an invasion of Iraq?

Quit letting Bush hold the troops hostage and do what needs to be done to get them home. The petulant "blackmail" scenario would be the worst politics possible, and would hurt the very pig-headed Republicans who've kept this war going.

Ditch your caution and improve the morality and politics of this post.

[cleek]

You worthless passel of cowards. They're laughing at you. You know that, right?

The national Democratic Party is no longer worth the cement needed to sink it to the bottom of the sea.

oh wait, that was over something else. maybe this time we'll mean it.

[liberal japonicus]

I think this has really gotten you pissed, based on this

Let's divide this into two parts: first, what's right, second, what's politically smart, and third, the one thing that makes me hesitate.

Not that it shouldn't, mind you.

[hilzoy]

Oops... will update. Thanks ;)

[Slartibartfast]

that while some strategic genius might manage to save the day, George W. Bush will not

Hm. Well, the President is no strategic genius, but that's not exactly a surprise. Come to think of it, we probably haven't had a strategic genius as president, ever. Probably as close as we've come is Washington, although Lincoln was pretty advanced in that he recognized that McClellan needed to be fired.

Then there's Eisenhower. A man with some smarts, but probably didn't rise to genius.

I'm thinking we're going to have to leave the warfighting, and planning thereof, to the Pentagon. Alarming, I know.

[Slartibartfast]

Speaking of genius, though:

Some buttrflys wings have spots. The buttrfly wings are smicob. I love buttrflys.

Well, maybe not. But pretty decent for just getting out of kindergarten. "Smicob" means, for those of you who aren't parents of small children: symmetrical. And yes, she knows what that means.

She's been screened for gifted, and is being subjected to a more rigorous testing in a few weeks.

[xanax]

Slarti - May her gifts blossom smicobly.

[hilzoy]

Slarti -- let us know what happens -- and say hi from me. Not that she has any clue who I am, or anything, but maybe it's the thought that counts.

[Gary Farber]

"Come to think of it, we probably haven't had a strategic genius as president, ever."

Aside from the others you mentioned, while I also would hesitate to call FDR a "strategic genius," I would at least note that he did a pretty good job, overall, of supervising the running of our part of a global war.

There's an argument that says that the odds of the Germans getting the A-bomb were so low that the massive amounts of money and effort we spent on the Manhattan Project would have been better spent on more conventional arms, more bombers and tanks and fighters and so on, but I think that's an argument that's really only makeable in hindsight.

[Hartmut]

Having read van Crefeld's Fighting Power I'd say an army reform would have been a far better investment. Some problems of then still haven't been dealt with and Rummy&Bush even turned the clock back in certain aspects.

It seems now pretty clear that, while the "Uranium Project" went nowhere, the SS worked quite successfully on a different route that would have led them in the end towards a fusion bomb (though an immobile one due to weight and size). It's still hotly debated, whether an actual test was carried out in spring 1945 (The Russians still refuse to release the material that could finally prove or disprove it).

[novakant]

Let's forget about the troops for a second: shouldn't Democrats be asking Bush what exactly he is doing and planning to do to bring about a political compromise/deal/arrangement between the Iraqi factions?

Why you ask?

1.) The partisan angle: he doesn't seem to be doing anything in this regard. He's all about troops and victory, but there is not even a glimpse of a possible political initiative on the horizon. So blame him for that.

2.) It's actually important. While there is the old hen and egg problem, no deal without security and vice versa, it seems illusionary to believe that with time US troops can pacify/stabilize Iraq to a greater extent than they are now. While I still think that the US troop presence there is preventing even worse things, the factions will just keep on doing what they are doing now and there's not much the US can do about it unless a political deal is reached.

[Jesurgislac]

Slarti: I'm thinking we're going to have to leave the warfighting, and planning thereof, to the Pentagon. Alarming, I know.

Yes, given that the Pentagon's strategic genius has allowed about 850 000 Iraqis to be killed, over 3000 US soldiers to be killed, and left two million Iraqis as refugees because their own country is unsafe to live in. That this utter disaster is all down to the Pentagon's planning/warfighting, because the White House left all planning up to them, should alarm you.

If true. I confess, this assertion that the White House have left planning the war in Iraq entirely to the Pentagon, with no interference whatsoever from - for example, Dick Cheney - is news to me.

And, OT: She's been screened for gifted, and is being subjected to a more rigorous testing in a few weeks.

Your child's butterfly-love is admirably expressed: let us know how it goes.

[John Thullen]

It is late May, 2007.

The Republicans on the Hill have floated September as the end of their patience.

Three, four months from now.

Meanwhile, not all of the 30,000 troops (up from 21,000, or 18,000, but who's counting) are even in Iraq yet. The Surge is a slow-drip on a fast-track to a seeping gut wound.

Meanwhile, there is no political settlement between Shi-ites, Sunnis, and Kurds in sight.

Three or four months.

The Bush Administration is a criminal enterprise with blood on its hands and the city dump is full. The next 800,000 dead Iraqis will need to be buried upstate.

The Democrats can't or won't or don't know how, but show me one person who does.

In September or October, the usual suspects among the Congressional Republicans will tour another market in Baghdad wrapped in kevlar, cootchy-coo the baby in the baby carriage which has a wire running to a small nuke nearby. They will look into the American people's eyes via satellite and smile the ghastly death's head smiles of the well and truly f----- who just figured out that the pin they hold in their hands is not attached to the grenade.

Leave or stay, the pin is pulled.

[john miller]

JT: "Leave or stay, the pin is pulled."

In a long history of great lines, this may be your greatest.

[farmgirl]

john miller: seconded.

[trilobite]

Hell, no, indeed!

If they are going to do this, then I hope they at least have the sense to say, loudly and at every opportunity, that the only reason they did it was political, to avoid Republican stab-in-the-back accusations. Sure, they'll sound like the worthless cowards they apparently are, but at least they won't sound like they think this thing will WORK. Fer the luvva Mike, at least TRY to give those 100,000 idiots in Ohio some grounds on which to differentiate the parties!