-Me

Now that public opinion has firmly moved into the category of opposition to the war, I want to know what the hold up is?

Why is our government unwilling to do what’s right, and what’s popular?

More importantly it sets a baseline for debate on how best to extricate ourselves from the Iraq debacle, a goal I’m fairly certain the vast majority of the people (and their representatives in Congress) share.

Republicans have spent ages demading a Democratic alternative to Bush’s Iraq policies.

Well now they have it, and if all they have to argue with are Boehner’s platitudes I don’t expect the debate to go well for them.

And while truly the US is not a direct democracy, still, if the Democrats succeed in making the case for this plan, even Republicans may have a hard time voting against the wishes of their own constituents.

As for constitutional questions, any non-partisan conlaw experts out there who can figure out a way to phrase the Democratic bill so that it passes constitutional muster?

You are correct that nothing is black and white and everything is ambiguous.

I am less sure about whether the Dems would be more resolute under any circumstances. As it is, the House Dems are trying to be.

But I also think that both what the voters said in November and whatever the polls are saying now are somewhat more ambiguous than you’re suggesting. If the voters were unambigously demanding an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, why was Joe Lieberman, the most constant supporter of the Bush Administration’s Iraq policies among the Democratic delegation in Congress, returned to office? And the Iraq and Afghanistan vets who ran for Congress as Democrats rejected so consistently?

If it were less ambiguous I think that Congressional Democrats would probably be more resolute than they obviously are. I would prefer a Congress that had the courage of their convictions and which, if they were convinced that we should withdraw immediately, would be willing to take the political risks required to do so.

I did not use the mulberry bush analogy for nothing. You are correct that we’ve been here/there before and will be here/there again.

Nevertheless, voters sent a pretty strong message last November that is reinforced and then some in recent polls: The hell with George Bush. We want out of Iraq.

I don’t think the Democratic bill is mere postering. I cannot say the same about Boehner, who if taken literally suggests that any American withdrawal — whether in months or years — will have to be such a well kept secret that someday Iraqis will wake up and the Americans will have vanished in the night.

This is a key point: Congress can only cut off or continue to fund under the Constitution…they cannot order the redeployment of troops in any theatre.

Is Pelosi’s proposal Constitutional – in the sense that she is declaring that they will cut off fundings if this benchmark is not met? I am not clear on this from the NYT.

The other interpretation is that the Democrats are unwilling to bear the political price of defunding the troops in theatre…and so are taking the extra-Constutitional route (advocated by some liberal apologists, who have made noises in the blogosphere recently that Congress not only has power of the purse, and confirmation, but can also order tactical deployments of troops…) and ordering the troops out under Congress’ authority to command the armed forces of the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/washington/08military.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=3e942ae728ff95e3&ex=1331010000&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

One concern is that Shiite militants and some insurgents will try to outlast the American troops if the buildup is too short. A longer buildup would give the American and Iraqi forces more time to disperse economic assistance, provide better protection to Iraqi neighborhoods and try to win over the Iraqi public.

“You have to protect the people long enough to get economic assistance to them and change their attitude and change their behavior,� said Jack Keane, the retired vice chief of staff of the Army, who has argued that the troop buildup should last 12 to 18 months. “You cannot do that in weeks. It takes months to do that. The problem with the short-term surge is that the enemy can wait you out.�

This is what many critics of the surge have failed to understand. The surge is not trying to solve the solution militarily. It is aware that only a political solution can solve the problem, yet one of the reasons we haven’t had a political solution yet is because the Iraqi people have little trust in their government. It is also because the militias have wide support because the people don’t trust the U.S. or the Iraqi government to provide security or economic growth. If we are able to hold these areas, if violence does go down, and we are able to provide economic stimulation to these areas, the militias will have less support, the government will have more support, and it will be easier for the government to make the moves needed for reconciliation.

But if you pull out the troops to early, then it makes it even more difficult for a political solution to happen.

How is this really different than what has gone on before? Isn’t this just more posturing before the cameras?

Even if this got through the Senate, Bush doesn’t want a timetable and would likely veto anything that hints of one. The Dems won’t get 2/3rds to override. Nor will the Dems call Bush’s bluff by holding back money if he doesn’t agree to their restrictions. And, for what it’s worth, given how invested Bush is in Iraq, I wonder if he wouldn’t keep the troops there anyway and leave it to the Democrats to challenge in court his authority to do so.

I’ve long reconciled myself to the fact that as much as we (yes ‘we’, we do agree on somethings) want out of Iraq, given the combination of Bush’s stubborness and the fact that we can’t win (as winning is currently defined), the troops aren’t leaving Iraq until after Bush leaves office. We’re stuck with him and we’re stuck in Iraq until January 09. It s****, but there’s nothing anybody can really do about it.