Feingold: Stop the Money Flow
U.S. Senator Russ Feingold’s patience has run out:
As the president made clear Wednesday night, he has no intention of redeploying our troops from Iraq. Congress cannot continue to accept this. Congress can, by restricting funding for this misguided war, do what the president refuses to do – redeploy from Iraq to refocus on defeating global terrorist networks.
Some will claim that cutting off funding for the war would endanger our brave troops on the ground. Not true. The safety of our service men and women in Iraq is paramount, and we can and should end funding for the war without putting our troops in further danger.
Congress will continue to give our troops the resources and support they need, but by, for example, specifying a time after which funding for the war would end, it can give the president the time needed to redeploy troops safely from Iraq.
Our troops in Iraq have done their job professionally and heroically. But we cannot continue to send our nation’s best into a war that was started – and is still maintained – on false pretenses. An indefinite presence of U.S. military personnel in Iraq will not fix that country’s political problems. And sending more troops will not provide the stability that can only come from a political agreement.
Our country needs a new national security strategy that starts with a redeployment from Iraq so we can focus on the global threats to our national security that have only grown while this administration has been bogged down in that country.
You can read Feingold’s entire op-ed here.
I don’t think that it would be wise for the Democrats to truly pursue this.
Furthermore, I didn’t want to do an entire post on Bush’s plan. My opinion on it hasn’t changed. If anything, I found Bush’s speech to be embarrassing (stay off painkillers before giving a speech please), it contained nothing really new, I still don’t see how this plan might actually accomplish something, the list goes on and on.
11 Responses to “Feingold: Stop the Money Flow”
I agree with you about the delivery of the speech (and, perhaps needless to say, on the main content of your post about Feingold.) But I disagree strongly that the speech and the plan don’t outline significant change. That’s not to say that I’m optimistic; I’m highly skeptical about the chance of success but not because there’s not a “plan”. My skepticism is about whether or not the plan will be followed (whether or not Bush has the will to keep the pressure on Maliki), as well as whether or not this level of troops is enough to accomplish the mission.
Well, both our open minds were rewarded exactly as expected.
The New York Times summed it up. Americans were waiting for a speech about how we can get out of the mess Bush created and Bush gave us the same-old-same-old about “victory” so he could run out the clock on his presidency and leave his mess for someone else to clean up.
I strongly disagree with you on funding. Not only should the Democrats pursue damming up the money river, they should do it faster than a bolt of lightning. As Gordon wrote over at Alternate Brain, the first presidential candidate who promises to withdraw the troops during his inaugural ball in ’09 wins the White House. Cuitting off the funds won’t hurt the Democrats. Hell, it would show the spine for which people have been looking.
The American people want this over with now. And it doesn’t matter how it ends, the Democrats will be blamed for this massive failure regardless.
(The nice thing is that McCain may have irrevocably lost his chances for the White House in ’08 with his escalation proposal. He has the nomination sewn up already, but he may have killed any chance at a win with this.)
The Dems are still petrified that even though the public is on their side, they will be accused of losing Iraq. The rhetoric will be very similar to the rhetoric that was used about Viet Nam, which has haunted them for 30 years. They’ll be tagged with “retreat and defeat” in ’08 and the fickle public might doubt that they have the willpower to stand up to newly emerging threats. This war has been for all purposes, a major disaster, brought by arrogance, naivete and misjudgement. No one wants to be saddled with the blame for losing it.
If you don’t think it’ll do any good, then why do you support doing it?
For appearance’s sake?
Are you talking to me?
I don’t support the surge…
CS, I’m sorry to say I can’t agree as I didn’t hear any real details of any “plan” other than sending more troops and hoping it’ll work.
Yes, I heard talk about some “plan” that he and Maliki worked out. But no details of this plan really is nor what metric would be to used measure success nor what would occur if Maliki (or Iraqis in general) failed to follow through.
I do agree with your last sentence, “My skepticism is about whether or not the plan will be followed (whether or not Bush has the will to keep the pressure on Maliki), as well as whether or not this level of troops is enough to accomplish the mission.”
Rambie,
I would have liked to have heard more about specific requirements of Maliki and the consequences if he didn’t follow through, too. I guess my small amount of hope rests on the thought that Bush really does seem to know that this is his last shot, so I would think that this means he now has the will to pressure Maliki. In a perverse way, I guess to some extent Bush’s haggard appearance almost bolstered my confidence because he really knows that no one is going to allow him to give Maliki any more wiggle room.
CS, I’d be very happy if you’re right. However, it appears to me that Maliki is not in as much control as we’d like in Iraq and doesn’t really have the authority/power to disarm the militias.
I read on another thread that some benchmarks need to be met by Iraq/Maliki BEFORE we send more troops… if so maybe there is hope.
The situation in Iraq can’t continue, so there isn’t too many options I see and none of them are good:
1) Pull out soon (bad)
2) Reinvade Iraq and start over (not possible)
3) The “surge” plan (bad)
I don’t like to be so cavalier about our troops lives, but if we don’t try it there will always be some who will say, “It would have worked except the ____________ made us pull out.” Who knows, they could be right.
gwb is incompetent with delusions of being a messiah. What makes you think that he and/or his equally incompetent administration will suddenly become competent? This is simply more incompetence or wishful thinking, if you wish. I feel fairly confident that a war with Iran and/or Syria will inevitably lead to a conflagration extending from Indonesia to Morocco. Quite honestly I favor pulling our troops out gradually rather than try to escalate. Yes, we will have “lost”; however, we will have avoided a World War III. A Middle East ignited against us will put us back a long, long way. Although in a sad way it might be good – we won’t generate as much green house gas so global warming will not come as fast.
Didn’t anyone else notice Condi was put on notice by 3 members of the Senate with R’s next to their names today? Well those 3 members also made it clear that 2-3 months with no progress, and they will join in with Feingold about cutting the money off to remove us from Iraq.
This isn’t so much about political party as it is about disgust with Bushco’s handling of this mess, and the clock is about to run out him and his playpen in the sand.
Maybe we should have let him stay the course- he was less dangerous that way.