There is one thing you can say the Democrats have achieved, regardless of specific proposals, and that is to exert enough pressure to make the president move. The US actually talked to Iran!
The ’stay the course’ litany is dead. And alMaliki is feeling the pressure, too. There is an oil bill actually written, and he visited Ramadi.
I don’t think any of that would have happened so rapidly without the Democrats calling for an end to the war.
Now it’s really a question of working out the details.

So, Mr. Cheney, stop with the crazy talk!

This could be a way to basically circumvent a veto. A bill repealing (or conditionally repealing) the AUMF would be vulerable to a veto, and end up being a lot like the non-binding resolution passed recently.

While Bush as SAID that he will veto the spending bill if the withdrawl admendment is attached, he is really between a rock and a hard place. If his veto sticks, he has defunded his own war today instead of later. If the congress sends up a new bill, the dems get to reattach their admendment, restarting the whole thing all over again. Or he can eat his words and not veto it, loosing massive ammounts of leadership power, with the Dems getting exactly what they want. While its not exactly clean politics, I think tricks like this are a natural concequence of our all-or-nothing veto system, which both sides have tried to change in the last 15 years.

As to if this is the “right” thing to do…. well, I think the dems are simply doing what they think the American people want, and I don’t really see anything wrong with that. It’s an ends vs means problem, and not a clear cut one either.

Great comment. The current Democratic amendment is certainly a compromise and it is much, much better than what Murtha proposed. You’re exactly right that the democrats are divided.

Like you, I think the criticisms against timetables are valid because they give the enemy the strategic initiative and it is never wise in war to announce to your enemy what you’re going to do ahead of time. It also ignores events on the ground.

WRT “undermining the troops” I think there is a big disconnect between what various people consider “supporting” the troops. In my view, once Congress made the political decision to go to war, they owe our forces every measure of material and other support they can provide. If some in Congress believe that US involvement in the war should end, they should pursue repealing the AUMF and not so-called “defunding” the war or placing limits using Congress’s power of the purse. Like it or not, only Congress can declare war and only Congress can undeclare war. Until Congress decides to repeal the AUMF I believe it has a moral and even legal obligation to provide the President, as the CINC, the resources necessary to prosecute the war, even if they don’t like the strategy the President is using. That’s why I’m particularly disgusted with John Murtha and his “slow bleed” strategy. Instead of focusing on the nitnoid minutiae of spending bills and placing fiscal limits on our forces, Congress needs to grow the cajones to deal with the AUMF. Defunding the war essentially says, “we authorized this war and continue to do so, but we won’t spend any money it.” It’s akin to what Congress does in other areas – It creates a legal requirement that something must be done, but then provides no resources, or not enough resources, to meet the requirement.

Ending American participation in the war at this point in time is a valid goal – I don’t agree with it, but it’s still valid. People who want to end our participation should spend their energy on the AUMF which is the legal and constitutional basis for the war. Congress should continue to provide resources for the war until it does reverse the AUMF.

We might as well get out of there now, it is impossible to make Iraq into the country we, or Bush, want it to be. The fact some people after 4 years(like Cheney) can’t see that is mindboggling to me.

Then there’s all this ‘undermining the troops’ crap. That’s just pure political BS. And while Entropy seems to be a reasonable person, I’m going to have to disagree with him here. The Dems are divided amongst themselves as to what they should do, and many agree with Entropy that Murtha’s solutions aren’t in the nations best intrest. What these amendments represent is a concensus within the democratic party.

I think the ‘morality’ of this amendment can’t really be assertained without knowing the private thoughts of every single democrat. More important, I think is its effectiveness as a policy choice, which we can’t really asertain before the fact. It might light a fire under the Military and Iraqi government and produce results, it might not.

My personal feelings change weekly, but I’d say that’s it is a reasonable policy that says in essence, ‘if we can’t be effective, better to not to even try’. That seems sensible to me, and doesn’t prevent us from helping Iraq in other, hopefully more effective, ways.

I think this war is well past the point where it can be “won”, so the outcome will probably be the same whether or not we follow the Democrats’ strategy.

And perhaps it won’t stop the war, but the Democrats really can’t push too fast on this or they’ll lose public support. This is why we see the strange sight of Republicans pushing the Democrats to go farther and actually cut off funding: The present polls show that the public doesn’t yet support such a drastic move.

The problem is that several prominent Democrats have done more than use “verbal arguments.” Murtha’s “slow bleed” strategy is particularly terrible and cynical and fortunately it hasn’t gained traction.

The fact is, the Democrats don’t have the votes to do what they really want – repeal the AUMF, so they’re trying to put all these amendments into critical legislation that’s really only meant to hinder the Bush’s freedom of action to prosecute the war. I think such measures are immoral since, on one hand, they do little to stop the war, but at the same time make it more difficult to win.

I don’t particularly like Cheney, but here I think he has a point, especially in regard to the “slow bleed” strategies some Democrats are advocating.

You hould have mentioned what kind of performance the WH expects from its attorneys, Shaun. Thank god that Krugman, one of the few journalists who do more than stenotyping, dug up the numbers:

“Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny.”
http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/03/paul-krugman-department-of-injustice.html

Well, this shows honest performance never was the decisive point, the main criterium for judging attorneys is how good they deliver smear arguments for republican campaigns.
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