NOTE: The Moderate Voice runs Guest Voice posts from time to time by readers who don’t have their own websites, or people who have websites but would like to post something for TMV’s diverse and thoughtful readership. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Moderate Voice or its writers. This cross post is by the independent blog Walking Think Tank:
Obama’s Opportunity
By Walking Think Tank
It’s safe to say that Barack Obama would not be running for president if he had not opposed the authorization of force in October 2002 and Hillary Clinton had not supported it. The experience factor would loom too large if he could not make a case that his judgment is superior.
But Obama has not been able to weave his critique of Hillary’s Iraq vote into the broader narrative of his campaign – that he is a different kind of politician who can unite the country.
Obama’s challenge is to show he possesses the leadership capacity to move the nation forward while simultaneously exposing Hillary’s greatest vulnerability. His opportunity is to propose legislation that seeks to ensure the nation never again goes to war the way we did in 2003 – a cause that should unite both war supporters and war opponents,.
This is our duty to our troops and their families. For our chances of military success are greatest when our political leaders are united, and that unity of purpose can only come from broad political agreement over both the need to threaten force and the broad strategic means for carrying out such a threat. It is the agreement over strategy – both diplomatic and military – that was woefully lacking in our invasion of Iraq. And as a result, we were left with a bitterly divided Congress, a divided nation and a disastrous strategic plan.
Yesterday, I laid out the case for The Unity in Wartime Act of 2007. (Please read the whole thing.) It would provide for a two-step process for authorizing war in order to maximize the
chances that lawmakers will debate the issues thoroughly and that the president and Congress will be partners in readying the nation for war. And to the extent possible, it will ensure that we never again face a situation where members of Congress who vote to authorize war later say they didn’t really mean it.
The simple framework would first have Congress render its judgment of support for or opposition to any proposed military deployment of more than 20,000 troops for the purpose of threatening offensive operations, but such a vote shall not constitute an authorization of force. The authorization of force will require a separate vote.
The first vote, in effect, says that we mean business. The second vote says that war is necessary and the nation is ready to begin carrying out its threat of force at the president’s
discretion.
This framework wouldn’t usurp any constitutional prerogatives of the president. Votes on large-scale deployments to threaten force would not be binding and could come after the fact, if troops are deployed when Congress is in recess, for example. Nor would this framework encumber a future Congress. Rather, the point is for this Congress to translate its experience
into firm principles that will guide future decisions to go to war, which have been all too haphazard in the past.
As I recently wrote, “Members of Congress – both those who support the war in Iraq and those calling to bring the troops home – should all understand that the nation is paying a great
price because the premature debate over authorizing force produced a fragile consensus that has become a deep fracture.
Because they have learned from hard-won experience, they owe it to the men and women of our military to make this lesson indelible, and out of this dark chapter in our nation’s
history to find shared principles that will light a path for a future Congress to travel in their hour of uncertainty.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.