For all of my new found friends on the left (and old friends on the right) who have been cheering me on as I have skewered the Administration over their prosecution of the war, this post may come as a bit of a disappointment.
While I believe the increase in troop strength won’t by itself lead to a satisfactory conclusion to the war, I feel compelled to support the President and General Petraeus who have both indicated that the troop increase is necessary to get a handle on the security situation in Baghdad and Anbar province.
Yes, a less than enthusiastic endorsement but a realistic one, I think. I have said many times that we are well beyond the point where military action alone can save Iraq. Only the Iraqi government can carry out the political moves necessary to take the heat out of the insurgency, the militias, and the sectarian violence that is killing more than 150 people a day and creating a growing refugee problem as Sunnis flee the mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad to avoid the slaughter.
Having said that, the surge appears to be well thought out and, if implemented with the kind of vigor our troops have shown so far in running al-Sadr’s militia to ground, it is more than possible that there can be a large decrease in the violence – breathing room for al-Maliki to make the overtures necessary to broaden the support of his government among Sunnis while restraining the Shias from taking their revenge for Saddam’s atrocities.
But whether you think the surge will work or not (and yes, I want it to work very badly), you should ask yourself a question: Is it up to the Senate to micromanage the war by second guessing both the Commander in Chief and the Commanding general in theater?
The Biden resolution states “It is not in the national interest” for the President to send more troops to Iraq. Further, as Chuck Shumer helpfully points out, this is only the beginning:
Sen. Charles Schumer D-N.Y., said Thursday that the resolution the committee approved is not the last that will be heard from Congress.“A resolution that that says we’re against this escalation, that’s easy. The next step will be how do you put further pressure on the administration against the escalation, but still supporting the troops who are there,” he said on NBC’s “Today” program.
“That’s what we’re figuring out right now,” Schumer added. “But this will not be the end. There will be other resolutions with more teeth in it afterwards and my bet—they’ll get a majority of support and significant Republican support.”
Indeed, this is the dilemma for Democrats and those Republicans who wish to undercut the Commander in Chief during a time of war: how do you hide the fact from the voters that you are voting to cut our troops under fire off at the knees?
A very delicate political problem that the Democrats will find some way to solve. In the meantime, the larger question remains of whether the Senate should be setting war policy at all.
Yes they can cut off funding if they wish, although they cannot propose such a measure. All money bills must originate in the House (there are ways around that constitutional requirement but by tradition, the Senate usually allows the House to lead). And they can hold hearings and jawbone to their hearts content. But can they micro-manage issues like troop levels? Why not war doctrine? Why not tactics and strategy?
The answer is that these Senators are not interested in supporting the troops, or helping the Iraqis, or tamping down the violence, or anything except looking out for their own political hides:
If they were serious and had the courage of their convictions, they’d attempt to cut off funds for the Iraq effort. But that would mean they would have to take responsibility for what happens next. By passing “non-binding resolutions,” they can assail Mr. Bush and put all of the burden of success or failure on his shoulders.This is not to say that the resolution won’t have harmful consequences, at home and abroad. At home, it further undermines public support for the Iraq effort. Virginia Republican John Warner even cites a lack of public support to justify his separate non-binding resolution of criticism for Mr. Bush’s troop “surge.” But public pessimism is in part a response to the rhetoric of failure from political leaders like Mr. Warner. The same Senators then wrap their own retreat in the defeatism they helped to promote.
I’m not so sure about that last part. The American people are smart enough to know that things are not going at all well in Iraq. They don’t have to hear it from Senators or Congressmen or even political pundits. The one dimensional reporting we are getting from Iraq about body counts and the latest massacre is sufficient enough to sour them on the war effort. And while media coverage of the war is horribly incomplete, I doubt whether it would make any difference if the “good news” that happens in that bloody land were reported as well. Vice President Cheney’s rantings aside, it is not defeatism in the media or the Congress or in the blogosphere that is hurting our efforts in Iraq. It was and continues to be Administration policies that have proven themselves a failure.
Acknowledging that fact is the first step to fixing the situation. The second step is to lower our sights in what we can accomplish in Iraq militarily. And the final step will be in assisting the Iraqi government in coming to terms with the Sunnis and the Kurds and facilitating a truly national, non sectarian government where all Iraqis can live together in peace.
None of this will be accomplished by the Senate. And this is why I’m joining with Hugh Hewitt and other bloggers in signing a petition pledging not to support Republican Senators who vote with the Democrats on the Biden resolution. I would add that I will not support any Senator who votes for any resolution that undercuts the Commander in Chief or the Commanding General in theater in their plans to improve the security situation in Iraq. This includes a bunch of alternative resolutions eagerly being drawn up by Republican Senators who don’t want to be left behind when the “Stick it to the President” train leaves the station.
Hugh is also urging people to call Senator McConnell’s office ((202-224-2541) and urge him to organize a filibuster of the resolution.
Judging by the favorable reaction to his State of the Union speech, the American people, although highly skeptical, appear to be inclined to give the President one more chance to succeed in Iraq. The least we can do as Americans is to give our support to the Commander in Chief.
12:48 pm
Rick,
You are totally wrong, and in time history will not consider our Iraq strategy to date as a military failure. The Iraqi insurgency was well planned before we invaded. The same reason we have Hugo Chavez in power is the reason the Pentagon was over ruled in Iraq to install a temporary dictator; the Foggy Bottom. The Pentagon never had the option to maintain 300-400k troops in theater. If the military is stretched at 150k, how could we have maintained more than double that? Early on it was recognized that a political solution would have to be crafted, no amount of troop involvement could passive the population, but while that process was being carried out, troop protection would be a top priority until a sustained Iraqi military could be built and a legitimate government could be elected. The long slog Rumsfeld acknowledged was realism. We can’t leave Iraq, but we should do all we can to hold the country together until the dynamics of political reconciliation could move forward. Today we have the opportunity to begin the process to move the Iraqis to drop their affiliation to the Crown or other groups, to join in with the new Republic. Maliki needs a Princeton type victory to encourage this. Yorktown is down the road, but is achievable. God speed General Petreaus.
3:42 pm
Your last paragraph says that the response to the SOTU speech was favorable. I disagree.
What is your source of objective data? The Rasmussen report states, based on their polling, that the SOTU had no effect on the 56% of Americans favoring reducing the number of our troops in Iraq.
3:46 pm
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/23/sotu.poll/
3:54 pm
Rick:
The flaw in the poll you cite has a simple flaw: It only counts those who watched the SOTU. I don’t think I’m wrong to assume that Republicans are much more likely to be willing to sit through a Bush SOTU than Democrats or Independants or to assume that those Republicans would be more likely to rate the speech highly.
3:56 pm
Please excuse the cracked-out syntax. I blame over-caffeination.
4:58 pm
I signed the petition this morning. And, I’m not backing down. I watched Hagel on C-Span during the Senate resolution and he was disgusting.
7:18 pm
Yeah right. And what percentage of people watched the speech?
8:44 pm
Who watched the speech? More people than watched American Idol. The anti-war people are spoiled brats who cannot face reality. Whether you like the way we entered the war or not is of no consequence. When Osama Bin Laden says that Iraq is a key battleground in his jihad, that is all you need to know. The cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face crowd are delusional losers so full of hatred for Bush they are blind to reason. They want to believe Iraq is lost. They want to believe the US is a bully. But they turn a blind eye to the clearly and simple logical consequences of their defeatism and pacifism: global jihadism will grow and fester faster than they will dare imagine and within ten years the world and the US will experience death on such a massive level that they will curse the day of their pettiness and cowardliness. What a corrupted culture. It is unbelievable that we even have to seriously argue and debate this.
8:53 pm
MB:
I think the breakdown was “Idol” with a 19 share and SOTU with a 24 share (all networks combined).
That’s uh…about 52 MILLION people.
9:45 pm
Rick,
I’m with you in supporting this troop surge, although I don’t think it’ll stave off the inevitable Shia-on-Sunni-on-Kurd-on-Turkomen civil war. What it CAN do is give cover to Iraqi civilians who are fleeing to safe zones away from the violence.
David Brooks in today’s NY Times pretty much says the same thing and goes on to advocate a partition of Iraq, which he thinks is also inevitable and already beginning to occur on its own.
If you want to get a good look at why post conflict Iraq has pretty much slid off a cliff, read: Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. It isn’t a liberal screed against Bush; it’s an inside look by a Washington Post correspondent who had full access to Garner and then Paul Bremer and their plans and execution of those plans for Iraq. It looked like amateur hour.
11:15 pm
Actually a single national ratings point represents 1%, or 1,114,000 households for the 2006-07 season, so a 24 share is 24 million households, i.e. Rush Limbaugh’s audience plus 4-6 million people with nothing better to do.
2:25 am
“The anti-war people are spoiled brats who cannot face reality. Whether you like the way we entered the war or not is of no consequence.”
Neither are protestations of “We have to win” or “Losing will be a disaster, so we must fight on”.
Al that maters is the US military’s ability to impose stability on Iraq. The evidence seems to show that they have almost no ability to achieve stability, and that any operations to improve stability result in the opposite.
Sorry to say it but this surge is a pointless gesture.
What is more the “Support the generals” thing is getting a little old. The generals were saying “No surge please” until they were fired and replaced by someone who would say “Sir, yes sir”.
5:11 am
MM:
You sure live in an empty universe. One person to a household? Neilson makes it 2.1 ppl per household which adds up to around 55 million ppl.
Super Bowl’s get a 40 share or better – advertisers like it because 80+ million ppl are sitting in one place at the same time watching.
BTW - radio Neilson’s are figured differently.
8:29 am
I think you’re missing the point: if those who opposed continuing this war really wanted to they could’ve cut off funding.
By not doing so, they are in effect supporting the ‘surge’ but also sending a message that this support cannot be counted on much longer.
10:03 am
Rick:
You never addressed my point. Do you consider the CNN poll to be representative of a turnaround in public opinion to the war? Do you agree or disagree with my claim of a selection bias in the way the you are interpreting the findings of the poll?
10:17 am
Clearly most of the people who watched SOTU were Bush diehards. But I think the speech may have given Bush some breathing room – not much but enough. A window of six months to turn things around.
By summer, the ‘08 race will have begun in earnest and we’ll see how things are.
12:02 pm
Rick:
What do you mean by “Breathing Room” exactly? Bush has made clear that he’s going to do this regardless of how popular it is as long as the armed forces still take orders from him and Democrats wuss out on cutting funding. I think that the SOTU had little effect on either, so why do you believe that the SOTU and it’s supposed effect on public opinion makes Bush any more or less likely to pursue escalation?
1:06 am
I took the pledge and was proud to so. I wrote to many of the Senators in a vain attempt to influence them to ditch the CYA resolution. Victory in Iraq is the only choice.
11:20 am
Does our military control whether we win in Iraq, or are their other factors that we don’t control that will determine this conflict? I do know this war is tearing this country (USA) apart. Don’t the Iraqis have to work out a political process? I was against this war but now that we’ve broken it we have to restore some kind of stability to the country.What do we do if the surge doesn’t work, and before anybody rips me for being negative, there must be a contingency plan in place.