I’ve spent the better part of this year transitioning from surprise to amazement to confusion to disappointment, and back again, as the national Democrats cave repeatedly on Iraq. I’ve expressed my feelings previously, over previous cave-ins. This time, I’m still angry, but I’m not in the mood to blare it out yet again. Instead, I want to hear some informed opinions. Harry Reid said he would not provide no-strings war funding. Nancy Pelosi said it too. Reid pulled a late-night cave-in, then Pelosi dominoed right behind him. Why?
We’re all upset, but there’s no need to see who can insult Politician X in the most devastating manner. I am interested in arms-length commentary about what has been going on with this year’s war funding votes in the House and Senate.
PS I also want to recommend this DKos post on the recent war vote.
For all of the differences that exist between the parties,those in the upper echelons of power, by now, understand what an unmitigated disaster would result from a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq.
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p>This is one of the reasons you see Mrs. Clinton refusing to campaign on immediate and complete pull out. She knows it is unwise, and she knows that the American people know it also.
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p>No matter one’s opinion of the events that led us into Iraq in the first place, or the missteps that have occurred since, they are only important in an historical context. We are there now.
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p>Whatever promises are being made by candidates to get out Iraq pronto will be broken, pronto, should they assume the office.
I disagree with your assumption that withdrawal from Iraq would result in “unmitigated disaster”. Withdrawal would result in the return of 150,000 American troops, and the rapid formation of another non-democratic, turmoil-ridden Middle Eastern nation, of which there are already several. Suggestion of disaster due to leaving Iraq is reached only by hand-waving and an unfettered imagination. Disaster could come from a lot of sources. Such is life. But leaving Iraq is strongly in our interests.
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p>But the point is more about the actions and motivations of members of Congress. Their rhetoric does not support your analysis. Obviously Hillary agrees with your points, but Sen. Reid, Rep. Pelosi, et al. do not. Yet in the final analysis they avoid a budget showdown, rather than hold their ground. Why?
that the present administration will is setting Israel up to be the next Pearl harbor.
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p>What is the progressive response to the annihilation of Israel? Who will wear that crown of thorns? Perhaps Pelosi and Reid are in fact attempting to forestall nuclear catstrophe in the middle east and others are attempting to hasten it. Ergo our recent intel report that stated that we were all wrong for four years. An incredible eureka experience out of nowhere. I think not. Machievellian—very likely.
Why would the Japanese want to attack Israel?
Another question would be, if in the end they aren’t going to cut off funds, why do they threaten to do so? It only makes them look feeble and uncommitted to their own words.
Our continued presence in Iraq does not mitigate the disaster in any way.
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p>The most you could say is that the armed occupation postpones the worst reckoning until the occupation ends–while at the same time making that reckoning worse the longer the occupation lasts.
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p>You are right to suggest that some will blame the reckoning on whoever is CIC when it happens. Then we can have another multigenerational culture war over whose fault it was.
Just as Democrats while in the minority were not completely powerless, neither are the Republicans now.
That’s true so far as it goes, but it doesn’t explain this. Republicans don’t have the power to fund the war as they wish unless Democratic leaders give it to them. The question is why they keep doing that? You suggest Republicans are using what power they do have from the minority to make this happen, and that’s not impossible, but how do you mean to say they’re doing so?
As I’ve been saying here for almost a year (and as I predicted the day after the 2006 elections) the congressional Democrats are up against a petulent child president who has 150k hostages in Iraq (American troops) and at least as many mercenaries (so-called “contractors”). He isn’t going to remove them even if Congress refuses to fund them. A president who is not a petulent child would have begun a draw-down long ago, but that’s not going to happen with this president.
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p>So, Congress has to give the petulent child president the money that he demands to support his hostages. Things might change with a new president in 2009. I guess we’ll see.
the Democrats don’t have enough spine to do the right thing, which would be to authorize Congress to cut off funds for our disastrous war/occupation of Iraq. We don’t belong in Iraq anyway. Let the Iraqis take care of their own affairs. The United States government has spent far too much time and money for the past half-century meddling in other people’s affairs. We have to learn to mind our own business and tend to our own backyard.
I think at this point you just have to call a spade a spade and remove Bush and Cheney from office.
You can have the hearings in the House. But you don’t have enough votes in the Senate to convict. The GOP doesn’t care about the facts, and no matter what the hearings would bring up in the House, you wouldn’t get a single one of the GOP’s 49 votes to convict (you wouldn’t get Lieberman’s either, he thinks the war’s going GREAT!)
…one other factoid. There isn’t enough time in GWBush’s malAdministration for impeachment AND conviction to take place.
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p>What is interesting is that the Congressional Dems, despite their blustering and blathering, don’t even appear to be interested in investigating.
The senate looks at things in a historical context. Additionally there are other forces at work that we will never be privy to.
I resist simple explanations like, They have no backbone. Oh, it’s an accurate enough description of behavior, but what’s behind that? What is its structure?
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p>I can only assume the Congressional Democrats operate from a different set of concerns, or a different theory of power, than me. Or both.
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p>In particular it seems to me that they are strategically satisfied with the status quo–being opponents of an unpopular war waged by an unpopular president–and don’t want anything to change that until they have reaped every political gain from it they can.
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p>I think this is wrong in more ways than I can count, including strategically.
Thank you for addressing the subject of this post.
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p>If the calculation is strategic, why do you think the Democrats threaten to cut off funding in the first place?
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p>As someone on the radio said, they play the worst kind of poker possible: go all in, then fold. Then do it again.
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p>Statements like “It is a priority for the troops to come home” leave room for negotiation, yet do not by any means rule out a complete cut-off of funds. It scares the opposition, because they do not know how far you are willing to go, and what is unknown is frightening.
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p>In contrast, saying “No more funding without timelines” pins you down: you then must do exactly what you said. Which is one thing if you are fully prepared to do it, and entirely another if you are not.
I really don’t know why the leadership makes threats it won’t back up. It’s almost as though the leaders think by losing so spectacularly they win.
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p>I guess the conventional explanation is they are protecting their right flank, or their “war” flank, and have no worries about their left.
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p>It’s dumb dumb dumb to look weak and spineless when you are hoping to persuade voters to put you in power. That’s why I say their theory of political power must be really different than mine. I suppose that if they are wrong about the strategy it’s not a stretch to be wrong about the tactics too.
I think for years, politics has operated with gentleman’s agreements not to go too far. This concept is hard to explain, so bear with me..
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p>Example:
In the past, if the Senate went in recess, and if the President said he wouldn’t make a recess appointment, there wouldn’t be one. Today that’s no longer true, there’s a complete lack of trust between the Senate and the President, which is why Harry Reid will keep calling the Senate back into pro forma sessions while they’re on break for the holidays, to rob Bush of the ability to use recess appointments.
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p>Example: Government agencies can be staffed with political hacks, but the political hacks MUST know what they’re doing. Reasonable people might disagree on their policies, but they aren’t allowed to have contempt for the very job they’re appointed to. This has been destroyed under Bush, with people like Bolton appointed to the UN, and Brown, the former head of FEMA; people who had contempt for their jobs and their missions, and produced the quality of work expected from a person who hates what they do.
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p>Example: Karl Rove and Harriet Miers receiving subpoenas. In the past, respect for Congress meant that a President would generally answer a subpoena without really valid reasons not to. Bush is against Congressional subpoena power as a concept, and he believes he is above the law and the Constitution, and so he is creating a Constitutional showdown by refusing to allow Rove and Miers to testify.
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p>In addition to all this, part of what it means to be a Republican involves the active denial of facts that don’t fit your worldview. See their denial of global warming, denial of the potential stem cell research, denial that abstinence only sex education doesn’t work, denial that countries with free reproductive rights have lower rates of abortion than countries with high impediments to these same rates, etc. Democrats don’t have the luxury of being able to ignore facts.
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p>Essentially, Bush has broken all the old gentleman’s agreements that relied on trust in your opponents. This has been a long time in coming, ever since Republican policy has been that of scorched earth campaigning, and now it’s borne fruit. The Democrats don’t like it, never have, and never will, it’s anathema to the way Democrats operate.
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p>Democrats still operate under the old rules. Republicans don’t. I think the hope Democrats have is that if they stick to the rules long enough, Republicans will come back to using them too and the bitter poisonous atmosphere in DC can dissipate. Are they right or wrong? I’m really not sure, but I think this explains their behavior. They hope that one day soon, under a Democratic President, the rules will change back, and they don’t want to accept the GOP’s scorched earth tactics as the new standard of operation in DC.
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p>I’m in complete agreement with your assessment but not so much with the motives you impute to the Democrats… You lay the case out well and I can agree that part of it is as you say: that the Dems hope and pray for the day that Republicans will come back to playing fair…
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p>The other part, however, is the sheer unwillingness to go there… Go where? To where the Republicans have gone. We often think it an easy thing to be corrupt and mean and machiavellian and all that… But in fact, for people of true character, it’s actually quite the effort to even consider these methods, and, on the rare occasion they think it necessary they usually end up doing it quite ham-handedly. That’s why I always cringe when I hear people ask “Where is the Democrats Karl Rove?” or “Let’s Swiftboat the GOP”. It’s not in the liberal/progressive character to to be and/or do such things.
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p>Or, to put it in another way:
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p>“But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.”
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p> Faramir, LOTR The Return of the King
Your post is interesting, and dovetailed with a thought I had today while listening to Rush ranting about Hillary Clinton. The Republicans have built up the Clintons tremendously. Call it fear, call it adversarial respect, but they attribute to the Clintons a dominance far greater than that with which we Democrats perceive them. And I was wondering why, but perhaps your post explains it.
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p>Bill Clinton comes to mind as the most significant, perhaps the only, Democrat in recent memory to stand up to Republican hardball politics. I am referring to the government shutdown of 1995-96. I was a little young to have an analytical opinion of that event, but some quick research indicates that while blood was let on both sides, Newt Gingrich came out as the big loser and thus Bill Clinton scored a political victory.
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p>Your post suggested to me that this event probably would have sent shockwaves through Republicans nationwide who had always been able to count on hardball tactics to bend Democrats at the last minute. Here was a Democrat who would go against them all the way to the end. Perhaps they fear Hillary for this reason, that she will share Bill’s drive to fight, and their hardball dominance over the Democrats will again be derailed.
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p>I haven’t been to DC in the last couple of years. I expect, hearing tales from those who have, that it’s a vastly different place. Think of the fear that gets pushed around outside the beltway and ratchet that up a thousandfold. Think of the most afraid: Cheney and Bush, both true cowards at heart, who haven’t had a rational thought since Sept 10 2001. Every rational tactic or ploy of the Democrats has failed not for lack of backbone, but because the Republican cowards aren’t responding rationally. It isn’t going to end until they do or they die. Probably gonna take the rest of us with them…
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p>I give the Democrats props for acting like a real party: that is to say, equal parts fractiously centripedal and disagreeably centrifugal. It’s how both parties used to act and quite the norm for a democracy. It’s the lockstep Republicans with the gravitational force of their cowardice in chief that’s outside the norm here… There are, you see, some things the Democrats won’t do… places they won’t go. Republicans, however… been there, done that.
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p>When you really think about it, It’s surprising, nay amazing, that we haven’t yet descended into complete and utter chaos…
Think of the most afraid: Cheney and Bush, both true cowards at heart, who haven’t had a rational thought since Sept 10 2001.
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p>The frightening thing about GWBush is that, before he was elected president, he could actually string words together into coherent sentences. He cannot now, and he hasn’t been able to for a number of years.
Why are some folks liberal and others conservative? Nurture or nature?
With so much money on the table the Democrats and Republicans are loathe to walk away. No caving, just business. There is no skin lost on their noses for a few GI deaths or wounds. At worst, a news outlet might not give the coverage the politician wants for shedding a few tears over the grave or bedside of a victim soldier.
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p>Our politicians support our Generals. General Dynamics, General Electric, General Motors,etc. To hell with “We The People”.
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p>The AP reports that the US Army wants another 74,000 soldiers by 2010. Look to see conscription (National Service) get voted in by both sides between the time of the national elections and the oaths of office. My guess is that the new torture weapons to burn and deafen protestors will be on line to stop any citizen protest.
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p>There is only the War Party and everyone else. I’ll support a candidate that wants to undo the aims of the War Party but I doubt to see one in my lifetime.
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p>…”surprise… amazement…confusion… disappointment”, plan on a War Without End and these emotions will disappear.
One is that the military no longer has any interest in the average American male because he is no longer capable of fending for himself let alone kill the enemy.
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p>USA will use “financial incentives” and “Contractors” to swell the ranks.
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p>How many individuals leave public office with less financial resource than when they entered? Why do we now have career polticians? The answer is that Washington appeals to those who are inherently self serving, and consumed by greed. Perhaps not initially, but the disease soon spreads. Both Pelosi and Reid are up to their necks in it.
Compulsory Military Service is a non starter—for many reasons.
One is that the military no longer has any interest in the average American male because he is no longer capable of fending for himself let alone kill the enemy.
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p>One, the US military is no longer interested in a draft because they saw what it did to the misguided and unnecessary war in Vietnam. It was when the US military started drafting kids from middle and upper-middle class families that their effort fell apart. It was at that point that the US military determined that it could no longer rely on compulsory service (i.e. conscription) to accomplish its goals in misguided and unnecessary wars.
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p>Two, the US military has shown that it will lower standards to achieve their recruitment goals, if they cannot achieve them otherwise. They have done so in the last few years. One interesting factoid is that their recruitment efforts may get people to sign up, but that doesn’t mean that they will stay in after “basic” training. They get to report recruitment numbers (which are none too good to begin with), but not retainment numbers.
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p>Three.USA will use “financial incentives” and “Contractors” to swell the ranks
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p>I’ll set aside the “contractors” numbers (they’re nothing more than mercenaries) for the time being. You may be right about “financial incentives,” but in a perverse kind of way. There have been proposals to condition federal financial assistance–federally backed school loans, federal loan guarantees, and so forth–on federal service. Who is that going to hit the most? Not the wealthy–they don’t need federal assistance. Not the poor–they probably couldn’t make much use federal assistance. So we are centered on the middle and upper-middle class. A back-door draft of the middle class.
Yes, conscription was ended for purely political purposes.
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p>Then, afterward, they adapted themselves into a professionalized force for which conscription is no longer suitable. So I don’t think it is fair to say that the military doesn’t want conscription in order to reduce political opposition to war.
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p>The recruitment problem of the last few years is obviously a result of Iraq and the stop-loss policies implemented since 2002. The resulting decline of the quality of the recruits poses a creeping problem of the same sort that makes conscription undesireable and not especially useful to today’s forces. In other words, the quality of the force is being steadily degraded.
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p>When people express anger at Bush et al. for destroying the fighting capacity of our armed forces, this is what they are talking about. Even after Iraq ends, it will take some time to fix.
No one’s willing to piss off the military-industrial complex. We’re in for even scarier times unless someone has the guts to begin speaking out against the corporate interests which are really behind all the war policies.
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p>Also, where were the Dems in all the years they were in the minority. Why didn’t they at least use the power they did have to express their outrage?
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p>I’ve had it with the Democratic Party. I realize there’s not much alternative, which is what makes the current situation so damn depressing.