Congress’ Rhetorical Political War Over Iraq Rages

The question: Was it engineered by newly liberated White House political guru Karl Rove, or was it like an act of spontaneous combustion — that just happened..during an election year…framed in a way to create a political trap for Democrats?

Was this something GOPers felt just had to be brought up now (months before the elections)? Or was this on the books a long time? And if these are non-binding resolutions, what good do they have — except to function as devices to define political foes?

Are we being too harsh? The New York Times:

The House and the Senate engaged in angry, intensely partisan debate on Thursday over the war in Iraq, as Republicans sought to rally support for the Bush administration’s policies and exploit Democratic divisions in an election year shadowed by unease over the war.

It was one of the sharpest legislative clashes yet over the three-year-old conflict, and it came after three days in which President Bush and his aides had sought to portray Iraq as moving gradually toward a stable, functioning democracy, and to portray Democrats as lacking the will to see the conflict through to victory.

You have to ask yourself a fundamental question:

By raising this now, didn’t the administration and the GOP step on a rare cycle of good news? Didn’t all the press conference and sound bites of polarized politicians and GOPers essentially accusing Democrats of being cowards who want to cut and run essentially step on the positive image and boost President George Bush got by the dean of terror bigwig Zarqawi and Bush’s surprise visit to Iraq? MORE:

In the House, lawmakers moved toward a vote Friday after more than 11 hours of debate on a Republican resolution promising to “complete the mission” in Iraq, prevail in the global fight against terrorism and oppose any “arbitrary date for withdrawal.” In the Senate, lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to shelve an amendment calling on the United States to withdraw most troops by the end of this year, although Democrats vowed to revisit the debate next week.

Both actions were carefully engineered by the Republicans in charge, and for the moment put both chambers on a path to rejecting Congressional timetables for withdrawal .

House Republicans asserted that their resolution was essential to assure American troops and the world that the United States was behind the war in Iraq and the broader struggle against terrorism, conflicts they said were inextricably intertwined.

By now even a head of cabbage knows what’s going on: Republican stragetists want to link as tightly as possible the war in Iraq to the war on terrorism and all of the imagery of 911. So if the Democrats oppose even one facet of the resolution, this can be used as a political battering ram to link all of these factors together (“opposes the war…must be soft on terrorism…must be weak-kneed on 911…couldn’t protect us from terrorist attack).
Writes the LA Times’ Ronald Brownstein:

The new Republican drive to focus attention on the Iraq war represents a high-stakes gamble: that doubts about the direction Democrats might set on national security exceed anxieties about the course charted by President Bush.

Through a series of high-profile efforts culminating Thursday with sustained House and Senate debates on the war, the White House and congressional Republicans are aiming to portray Democrats as too soft and too divided to steer the Iraq conflict to a successful conclusion.

But in the process, Republicans risk deepening their identification with a war that, surveys show, still sparks skepticism and concern among most Americans — even after the spike in public support that followed the killing of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

In Thursday’s debates on Capitol Hill, Republicans argued that Democrats would withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq too quickly. But they also provided the opportunity for a succession of Democrats to argue that Bush would stay too long.

The political fallout from this escalating confrontation in November’s midterm election may pivot on which three words voters find more troubling: “cut and run” or “stay the course.”

It may also pivot on the Democrats’ political skills. Too often the Democrats appear to be a mouse eaten by a snake (the GOP). But a small group of GOPErs broke with their own party. Michael Scherer reports in Salon:

Rep. Walter Jones, the North Carolina Republican who invented the phrase “Freedom Fries,” invited me into his Capitol Hill office Thursday morning, a cluttered space festooned from floor to ceiling with military memorabilia, Pentagon plaques and photographs of soldiers. Then he pulled out an e-mail he had recently received from an Army captain who served in Iraq.

The email quoted another American soldier serving in Iraq, a voice that Jones wanted people to hear. “Tell all those assholes in D.C. to get us the f— out of here. This is bullshit,” Jones said, reading from the email, but choosing not to pronounce the f-word in full. “Either that or tell them to tell Bush to send over the twins. They can bunk with me. That would be useful.”

Jones is not a natural dove. He sits on the Armed Services committee and his district includes Camp Lejeune, the home base of nearly 47,000 sailors and marines. But Jones is one of a handful of Republican congressmen to break ranks with President Bush and the GOP leadership over Iraq. In recent months, he has been campaigning for a “full and honest” debate on the Iraq war.

Of course, none of that has happened.

That’s on the mark. Republicans who are cheering on Republican leaders in this battle in Congress know that it’s to box the Democrats in a corner. Democrats know it, too, so they’re trying to go on the offensive/defensive.

So everyone knows it’s a political skirmish. What’s lost in the process? Not only a “full and honest” debate on the wear but a “full and honest” assessment about where the U.S. is, how it can be in a better position, what specific steps can be taken to help American troops be more effective and safer, and what the U.S. long-term strategy will be. And many others — if the idea is problem SOLVING.