Getting out of Iraq

Congressman David Wu (D-OR) and Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman write at American Prospect Online on an approach to ending the occupation of Iraq. That ending, they argue, will ultimately come as a result of Congress using its Constitutional power of the purse.

The real debate on Iraq begins with Congress's consideration of the military budget. The president has requested almost three quarters of a trillion dollars to fund the military through September 30, 2008. More than $150 billion is earmarked for Iraq.

We have already spent $350 billion there, so the president's proposal pushes our Iraqi costs close to the half trillion mark. At the same time, he is demanding a $100 billion cut in health care funding, falling most heavily on poor children, while he maintains his $200 billion annual tax cut, channeled mostly to millionaires.

It is Congress's job to restore fiscal balance first, by placing an overall limit on Iraq war expenditures. Congress should limit this president to spending half a trillion dollars on the Iraq war -- and no more.... [T]he president would have no choice but to sign this ceiling to get short-term funding for his war.

Another $150 billion, what Bush has requested for this fiscal year, would give about one year's funding to the occupation based on previous spending, spending that has allowed the Pentagon to cut too many corners, as kos points out. A spending ceiling on the whole Iraq debacle, using the argument of restoring fiscal balance and giving the administration what it asking for--in the short term.

Wu and Ackerman continue:

Even the administration concedes that Congress has the constitutional power to cut off funds. The challenge is to use this power creatively -- both protecting the troops and requiring the president to end his war on his watch. The key point is to establish the principle that President Bush is responsible for leading America out of the impasse he created. A budget cap will also create a framework encouraging Congress to focus on the big picture, rather than engage in constant criticism of particular strategic decisions. We have fixed our ceiling at a level which assures that all troops will leave Iraq by inauguration day of 2009. But our proposal provides a framework for a debate over a more rapid redeployment: if Congress wanted a quicker termination, it need only impose a rider to the next appropriations bill that specified some smaller number (say, $450 billion) as the appropriate budgetary ceiling for our tragic misadventure....

Our "half-trillion dollar solution" is a choice of the lesser evil. There are no good options left. The American people should know that things can get worse -- that, whether we leave today or after a decade of urban ground combat, we may have to go back if Iraq ever becomes a true threat to the world or immolates itself in genocide.

The American people are well aware that things can get worse, which is why a majority of them would support a plan like Murtha's that would ultimately limit the number of troops available to serve in Iraq, and would effectively end the occupation. The Wu/Ackerman proposal would essentially do the same, but without any of the potentially messy Constitutional complications of Congress telling the President how to conduct a war. It would essentially set a date for redeployment--the day the funding runs out. Personally, I'd prefer December 31, 2007, or even March 30, 2008 to September 30 of next year, but the key element is setting a date beyond which no more funding will be available. Wu and Ackerman address this as well, saying that it would be up to Congress to set the funding level and thereby setting the endd date.

What the Democratic Congress, and particularly the Democratic leadership, needs to realize is that the American people are a few steps ahead of them on this one. That, as far as the voting public is concerned, getting us out is the major priority. They support Murtha's general plan, and would probably support a Wu/Ackerman plan as well, as long as it was getting us out. These plans don't endanger the troops--they reassert Congress's critical role in governing this country and forcing executive accountability.

Update: via commenter JML9999, even the Governator wonders when in the hell we're getting out:

Before their Iraq briefing at the White House yesterday, the nation's governors were instructed that they were not to ask any pesky questions about a timetable for bringing the troops home.

So by the time California's Arnold Schwarzenegger was on his third question about a timetable for bringing the troops home, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace was just the tiniest bit out of patience -- just as some of the governors were with what one observer described as the strangely Soviet-style Q&A.