(Bumped for the afternoon crowd - g10)
Let's talk about the Capitulation Bill.
Among the presidentials, Senator Dodd has come out strongly against the bill (video here). Senator Clinton is playing coy ("When I have something to say [on the bill], I will say it"). Obama also has not yet said whether he will vote for it. Outside of Congress, Edwards emphatically rejects the bill. Biden appears to support it (Update: Biden is a yes on the bill).
Like the good folks over at MyDD and throughout the blogs, I'm stunned that any Democrat would seriously consider voting in favor of a Republican bill.
Democrats just don't get it.
When I say "Democrats," I exclude the growing number of Democrats who are calling for defunding or redeployment, such as Senators Kerry, Dodd, Feingold, etc. and the Out of Iraq Caucus in the House. I refer to the Democrats who voted against the McGovern bill, against Reid-Feingold, and those who intend to vote for the Capitulation Bill.
We have "turned the corner" so many times in Iraq that we have come full circle, and the United States Congress finds itself at the same moral junction as it did in 2002, when it chose to vote for the invasion of Iraq.
It seems that too many Democrats have forgotten about the lead up to the war. About how we got there, about what's happened since. They appear to be so damn intent on looking forward to 2008, that they dare not glance back at the darkened road behind them.
But looking back is necessary, especially as members of Congress think about how they will vote on the Capitulation Bill. The party should adopt the face of Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings. He is depicted with two faces, for he had the ability to simultaneously look at the past and the future.
Looking back before jumping forward is the mark of sound leadership. It prevents the party from making the same deadly mistakes based on the same empty fears as it has in the past. So let us look back, in the hopes of choosing the correct path forward.
The President
Reid called the benchmark language "extremely weak," but he noted that Bush initially demanded a bill with no strings attached on Iraq.
"For heaven's sake, look where we've come," Reid said. "It's a lot more than the president ever expected he'd have to agree to."
No, Senator Reid, with all due respect, it's exactly what the president expected he would agree to. It is this president's modus operandi. He stakes out a position and obstinately sticks with it. At some point, he lets Congress dance around it, foolishly thinking it can have any influence on a executive which has governed as if it were the only branch of government.
This is, after all, the same president who planned to invade Iraq no matter what the UN said (the wait for resolutions was all a farce) and no matter how many millions protested ("Bush Says Protests Won't Change His Iraq Policy").
This is, after all, the same president who, in 1999, dreamed about invading Iraq. It is the same administration that decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein in February 2002, and proceeded to claim with straight face over the next twelve months that no such decision was made. Indeed, right up to March 6, 2003 (just two weeks before Shock & Awe), the president lied and stated that he had not made up his mind about military action.
This is, above all else, the "stay the course" presidency, one that uses the illusion of compromise to bait the opposition into abandoning its principles, to lure the foolish into eroding the strength of its own position.
In 2002, with shamefully limited exception, we had a Congress filled with such fools. Fools who believed that the president was being reasonable and open-minded by going to the UN and to Congress. Fools who believed what was spoon-fed to them by an administration which could not be and should not have been trusted. Fools lacking foresight and swimming in cowardice. Fools who voted "yes" for war.
Four years, 3,434 caskets, and almost half a trillion dollars later, Democrats--especially the presidential contenders--are clamoring to distance themselves from their greatest folly.
But in looking forward and seeking to end this war, Democrats apparently refuse to look back.
For if the Levins and Landrieus in the Senate and their counterparts in the House paused just one second to reflect on the early years of this man's presidency, they would understand that "compromise" is the deadliest weapon in his political arsenal. They would acknowledge that the president's decision not to end this war is just as unalterable as his decision to begin that war.
Learning from history, the way forward is clear. Ending the war will be accomplished not by impassioned pleas (or nonbinding bills) which fall on his tin ears, but by legislation which will bind this president's hands and force him to act in the best interests of this nation.
As Senator Biden stated in the Democratic debate, his biggest mistake was "overestimating the competence of this administration and underestimating the arrogance." Let no Democrat make that same mistake again.
...And The Press
It's not just 2002 all over again with respect to the Democrats' relationship with the president, but with respect to the press, many in the party are again letting the noise machine dictate their actions.
The Democratic proposals, varied as they may be, all fully fund the troops. Every soldier will receive everything he or she needs, as the redeployment will be fully funded.
Yet, the press is again failing the people. Only now, instead of breathlessly repeating administration claims of WMD, the press today parrots White House talking points about how the Democrats want to "cut off funding for the troops" (Exhibit A-- this screaming WaPo headline: "Clinton, Obama to Back Vote to Cut Off Funding for Troops in Iraq"). More journalistic atrocities on this issue are documented by MediaMatters here, here, here, here, and here. As Big Tent Democrat pointed out, CNN even conducts polling on the issue of "not providing any funds to the troops in Iraq"...even though not a single member in either chamber has advocated that position.
And again, as in 2002, too many Democrats are taking the media spin at face value. Caught in a funnel cloud of gross mischaracterizations and outright lies, some Democrats apparently believe the spin to be true. Here is Senator Levin's justification for voting against Reid-Feingold:
Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he opposes any measure that cuts off money for the war.
"We don't want to send the message to the troops" that Congress does
not support them, said Levin, D-Mich. "We're going to support those
troops."
Indeed, this sentiment is echoed by Senator Biden, who will reluctantly vote for the Capitulation Bill, justifying his vote thusly: "I wish you could end [the war] today. But I'm not going to vote to leave the troops without money."
The logic behind this position --and, in a broader context, the opposition to Reid-Feingold -- is fascinating. The assumption is that even if Congress were to stop funding an occupation and fully funded redeployment from Iraq, the president would ignore the bill and keep the troops in Iraq regardless of the consequences.
That is a shocking assumption, for if that is the Democrats fear, their inaction is all that more contemptible. That belief that this president would willingly (further) endanger the troops in Iraq for political gain means that they believe that the armed forces are being held hostage by a madman, for only a madman would operate in such an immoral manner. And if that is true--as it must be, to make the Biden/Levin/"cut off funding for the troops" position tenable--then do not the Democrats have a duty to save the troops from this president through whatever legal means are at their disposable? Should that presumption not galvanize them to take the boldest action to ensure that not one more soldier dies because of president's reckless indifference?
But no, apparently, the president is so irrational that he surely will leave hundreds of thousands of troops in the desert, but yet he is rational enough to be trusted with billions more in funding and with the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers for an indeterminate amount of time.
Okay...
Now, as in 2002, the media's hype of a threat has lulled Democrats into paralyzed inaction. Fearful of giving the media and Republicans ammo for an election one year and five months away, they are refuse to exercise their constitutional power and defund the war. Instead, an incremental approach is supposed to be more palatable. In February, when the House pushed for a non-binding disapproval of the now-failed escalation, Speaker Pelosi quieted those who wanted more forceful action by promising that the toothless bill was only "the first step." On the Capituation Bill, we are again told that this is just a starting point for a larger approach to accountability. But, as Keith Olbermann emphasized yesterday, this "first step" is "a step right off a cliff." For instead of seeing bills getting successively stronger since Democrats have been elected, we have seen them getting weaker and weaker as members of Congress allow media pressure and GOP bullying tactics to erode away at the most fundamental of promises made during the 2006 campaign: that the Democratic Congress would do everything in its power to end the war.
A
n incremental approach to ending this war--the introduction of optional benchmarks and hollow measures of accountability--are nothing more than a fatal foreplay and political gamesmanship of the highest order. For the simple fact remains: Congress has the constitutional power to end this occupation, if it so chooses. Whether the fight to defund the war and fully fund the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq takes place
now or in another Friedman, the political environment will not change.
Republicans will never vote to end this war. Ever. Senator Obama's "consensus" strategy precisely reflects the type of blind eye to history that I have emphasized in this post. There are not sixteen Republicans of conscience in the United States Senate on this issue. And as Joe Trippi, an adviser of John Edwards said, "Any compromise that would get 16 votes isn’t a compromise worth making."
So where does that leave us?
Now, as then, we have a president so obstinate he ignores the will of the people.
Now, as then, we have a press that fails to properly investigate and report on these life-or-death issues.
And now, as then, Democrats have a choice.
Do they learn from the history of this war? Do they listen to the members of their party that got it right in 2003, like Senator Feingold and certain members of the Out of Iraq caucus? Will they stand with those who have learned from the history of this war, like Senator Kerry? Or will they heed the sheepish calls to complacency and caution uttered by those in our party who have been so wrong in the past?
We have come full circle.
We have arrived at this moment, armed with fours years worth of knowledge. No Democrat can claim after voting for the Capitulation Bill that they were misled into voting for more war. As Meteor Blades wrote in his stirring post, any Democrat who votes for this bill is buying the occupation.
Let the Democrats look back before stumbling forward. Let them peek over their shoulder and see the corpses of truth and honor strewn in the street. Let them catch a glimpse of the "Commander Guy" in all his 2003 glory, proclaiming "Mission Accomplished". Let them turn and see themselves in 2002, when they voted in overwhelming numbers for this war. Let them gaze at their past selves, the ones who parsed words to justify their vote on the floors of Congress, the ones who all too quickly laid down their concerns at the alter of political comfort and took up the banner of war, the ones who blindly trusted an administration that gave no reason to be trusted, and the ones who took the path of least resistance and consequently led our nation down a path to hell.
Let them look back at themselves, and let them shudder with shame.
And let them go forward, four years wiser, and let them finally break the cycle of war.