After the 100 Hours, a War Awaits
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, January 5, 2007; Page A17
....Pelosi's plan for a blitzkrieg of legislation in the first 100 hours of the new Congress is fine....But it tiptoes around the big, ugly monster of an issue sitting in the middle of the room -- the war in Iraq. The new Congress is going to have to stop temporizing and stand up to George W. Bush on the war....(T)he nation has made abundantly clear what it thinks of this tragic war. Challenging the president on Iraq isn't partisan politics, it's the new Democratic majority's patriotic and constitutional duty.
So far, we've heard promises that the new Congress will exercise vigorous oversight -- which Congress should have been doing all along. I can understand that Pelosi and her counterpart on the Senate side, Majority Leader Harry Reid, wouldn't want to start by making the ultimate threat: using the power of the purse to cut off funding for the war. But sooner or later, there's going to have to be a confrontation.
Not once has Bush given the slightest indication that he intends any significant change of course in Iraq. Quite the contrary: The expectation in Washington is that soon he will announce an escalation of the war -- increasing troop levels but calling the increase a "surge" and giving the impression that it's a short-term measure. Don't be fooled by the focus-group word "surge," because a two- or three-month increase in troop levels makes no military sense. If and when the president sends more troops to Iraq, they will not soon come home.
Given that the Democratic Party's fortunes keep rising as Bush sinks deeper into the Iraq quagmire, political expediency might tempt the new leadership in Congress to let the president have his way and reap the rewards in 2008. But that would be wrong. Democrats can't give speeches saying that sending more troops to Iraq without a viable mission is nothing more than a futile sacrifice of young American lives -- and then limit their dispute with Bush to whether he gets to send 3,000 more troops or 30,000.
Very soon, perhaps inconveniently soon, Democrats are going to have to take a stand... http://tinyurl.com/v7q5f [Open in new window]
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By Eugene Robinson
Friday, January 5, 2007; Page A17
....Pelosi's plan for a blitzkrieg of legislation in the first 100 hours of the new Congress is fine....But it tiptoes around the big, ugly monster of an issue sitting in the middle of the room -- the war in Iraq. The new Congress is going to have to stop temporizing and stand up to George W. Bush on the war....(T)he nation has made abundantly clear what it thinks of this tragic war. Challenging the president on Iraq isn't partisan politics, it's the new Democratic majority's patriotic and constitutional duty.
So far, we've heard promises that the new Congress will exercise vigorous oversight -- which Congress should have been doing all along. I can understand that Pelosi and her counterpart on the Senate side, Majority Leader Harry Reid, wouldn't want to start by making the ultimate threat: using the power of the purse to cut off funding for the war. But sooner or later, there's going to have to be a confrontation.
Not once has Bush given the slightest indication that he intends any significant change of course in Iraq. Quite the contrary: The expectation in Washington is that soon he will announce an escalation of the war -- increasing troop levels but calling the increase a "surge" and giving the impression that it's a short-term measure. Don't be fooled by the focus-group word "surge," because a two- or three-month increase in troop levels makes no military sense. If and when the president sends more troops to Iraq, they will not soon come home.
Given that the Democratic Party's fortunes keep rising as Bush sinks deeper into the Iraq quagmire, political expediency might tempt the new leadership in Congress to let the president have his way and reap the rewards in 2008. But that would be wrong. Democrats can't give speeches saying that sending more troops to Iraq without a viable mission is nothing more than a futile sacrifice of young American lives -- and then limit their dispute with Bush to whether he gets to send 3,000 more troops or 30,000.
Very soon, perhaps inconveniently soon, Democrats are going to have to take a stand... http://tinyurl.com/v7q5f [Open in new window]
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posted by Dan at 12:28 AM
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