The levees seem to be holding– and indeed, to be becoming stronger by the day– in the face of the threatened “surge”. No, I’m not talking about New Orleans, but about politics in Washington DC. And the surge in question is at this point entirely political: the recent “surge” in interest for a plan to send an additional “surge” of US troops to Iraq to accomplish the mission of–
Well, what? People have had different ideas about that…
Today, two articles in the WaPo show that political support for the surge is weak even among Republican lawmakers. This, just three days before the inauguration of the new Congress, in which the Dems will be controlling both houses. (Yay!) … And also, coming in the wake of the strong opposition that Joe Biden, the incoming chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voiced to the surge idea on December 26.
Here’s what he said:
- “I totally oppose the surging of additional troops into Baghdad, and I think it is contrary to the overwhelming body of informed opinion, both people inside the administration and outside the administration,” Biden told reporters yesterday. He said he plans to hold hearings for his panel next month in a bid to influence the president’s decision.
Today, in this piece on the WaPo’s news pages, Michael Abramowitz notes that the earliest and strongest “surgent” on Capitol Hill has always been Sen. John McCain, and “the idea has been gaining traction at the White House as a way to improve security in Baghdad.” (Improving security in Baghdad was the main mission defined for a surge in Iraq in this influential article, published last week by Jack Keane and Fred Kagan.)
Abramowitz writes,
- But the [surge] proposition generates far less enthusiasm among rank-and-file Republicans, many of whom must face the voters again in 2008, presenting a potential obstacle for Bush as he hones the plan, according to lawmakers, aides and congressional analysts.
Two Senate Republicans with potentially tough reelection contests in 2008, Minnesota’s Norm Coleman and Maine’s Susan Collins, returned from recent trips to Iraq saying they did not think sending more troops was a good idea. Branding the U.S. war effort “absurd,” Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) made waves in early December with a speech questioning the continued presence of troops.
And while other Republicans say they are open to the president’s proposal, some made it clear that they will only be supportive if the troops have a coherent mission and the deployment is linked to a larger political strategy for reconciling feuding sects.
He quotes GOP Sen. Arlen Spector asalso voicing strong opposition to the surge plan, and describes Sens. Sam Brownback, Saxby Chambliss, and– most importantly of all– Richard Lugar, as expressing significant reservations about it.
He notes this:
- “Republicans are scared to death of it politically,” said Ed Rogers, a top GOP lobbyist with ties to the White House and Republican leaders on the Hill. “The fear is that it won’t make any difference. There won’t be a perception of turning the corner.”
… And then, over on the WaPo’s opinion page, the very well-connected paleo-conservative commentator Bob Novak writes,
- President Bush and McCain, the front-runner for the party’s 2008 presidential nomination, will have trouble finding support from more than 12 of the 49 Republican senators when pressing for a surge of 30,000 troops. “It’s Alice in Wonderland,” Sen. Chuck Hagel, second-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, told me in describing the proposal. “I’m absolutely opposed to sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly.”
What to do about Iraq poses not only a national policy crisis but profound political problems for the Republican Party. Disenchantment with George W. Bush within the GOP runs deep. Republican leaders around the country, anticipating that the 2006 election disaster would prompt an orderly disengagement from Iraq, are shocked that the president now appears ready to add troops…
I checked with prominent Republicans around the country and found them confused and disturbed about the surge. They incorrectly assumed that the presence of Republican stalwart James Baker as co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group meant it was Bush-inspired (when it really was a bipartisan creation of Congress). Why, they ask, is the president casting aside the commission’s recommendations and calling for more troops?
Even in Mississippi, the reddest of red states, where Bush’s approval rating has just inched above 50 percent, Republicans see no public support for more troops.
Novak somberly assesses the new political line-up that Bush will face in DC when he finally gets back to work there after an unconscionably long and lazy holiday break:
- Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, as Foreign Relations Committee chairman, will lead the rest of the Democrats not only to oppose a surge but to block it. Bush enters a new world of a Democratic majority where he must share the stage.
Just as the president is ready to address the nation on Iraq, Biden next week begins three weeks of hearings on the war. On the committee, Biden and Democrats Christopher Dodd (Conn.), John Kerry (Mass.), Russell Feingold (Wis.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) will compete for intensity in criticizing a troop surge. But on the Republican side of the committee, no less probing scrutiny of Bush’s proposals will come from Chuck Hagel.
Yay! An opposition movement in Washington, DC, at last! And one that is noticeably wider than being just one opposition party… (JWN readers may recall that a number of times I, like co-poster Scott Harrop, have expressed admiration for the clear-minded positions adopted on Iraq-related issues by GOP Senator Chuck Hagel, and also for some other GOP senators. Some of them have proven to be disappointments; but most, not.)
So okay, the lawmakers from both parties in the current block-the-surge movement may not all yet be ready to push for the speedy and total withdrawal of US troops from Iraq that I have long argued is necessary. But at least it now looks as though they’re building a solid political barricade in front of any tendency the Prez might have to take the extremely foolish step of increasing the numbers of useless sitting ducks marked with huge targets US troops being sent to deployment points throughout Iraq.
This is great news. And if we can continue to build up the ability of Americans to contain the the most damaging urges of the president and restore both our country’s policy in Iraq and its position in the world to one of greater sanity– including, importantly, one of far greater realism, and far less arrogance and militarism than we’ve seen from Bush so far– then it looks as though 2007 might indeed turn out to be far better year than many of us had feared.
Happy New Year, one and all!
Is this another dream we conjure up to convince ourselves tht Bush is not nuts?
Alas, the only audience that counts here is Bush, who constitutionally can send troops anywhere he pleases without asking anyone’s leave. He is the Decider, and he decides whatever Cheney tells him to decide. The Surge, I fear, is bound to happen and it will lead to war with Iran. As C3P0 liked to say, “Oh my, we’re doomed!”
Regardez-vous Senator blubber-mouth Biden’s recent pre-emptive declaration of his of his own insipid inanity:
“We should not exaggerate the ability of the United States Foreign Relations Committee or the Congress to get a president to act in a manner in which the Congress thinks is more rational or more appropriate. There’s nothing the United States Congress can do by a piece of legislation to alter the conduct of a war that a president decides to pursue. This is President Bush’s war.”
Absolutely false! Only the Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war. The President of the United States has no such “enumerated” power. He has only the delegated authority to direct the armed forces to achieve such political objectives through war as the Congress directs he shall pursue, no more no less.
Specifically in the present instance, the Congress can (1) revisit and revoke the so-called “authorization of force” (i.e., Gulf of Tonkin II) resolution against Iraq, now clearly and universally recognized as obtained by President George W. Bush through concerted, fraudulent, and consciously duplicitous mendacity. Congress can also (2) agree to fund only the withdrawal of American military forces from the territory and airspace of Iraq, refusing to fund any other military operations in Iraq that obviously endanger the troops’ own safety and accomplish no recognizable political goal consistent with the true interests of the United States. Finally, (3) refusal by the top officials of the executive branch fo “faithfully execute” those laws that the Congress has insisted upon gives the Congress all the reason required to impeach and remove from office those recalcitrant officials. All this, by the way happened in the mid-nineteen-seventies as necessary to bring to an end our previous mad misadventure of this sort.
The United States of America has a carefully crafted tri-partite system of government where each branch has adequate and effective means at its disposal to protect its own sources of political power as well as thwart the overreaching excesses of the other two branches. In short, and despite Senator Biden’s blubber-mouth pandering to the so-called “Imperial Presidency,” Congress has all the means necessary to compel an end to George W. Bush’s private vendetta war in Iraq: a needless conflict absolutely contrary to the best interests of the United States. That Senator Biden ostentatiously proposes to hold hearings while simultaneously pronouncing their effective value negligible begs the question of why America even has a Congress in the first place if it won’t do the job of NOT DECIDING ON WAR WHEN APPROPRIATE that the framers of our Constitution envisioned. Letting a single man, the President, decide to have his own war to squander our nation’s blood and treasure may appeal to Senator Biden (who apparently envisions himself in the same office doing the same thing shortly) but such a dejected and defeatist attitude on the part of a member of Congress hardly befits the office he holds — obviously an impotent one by his own estimation.
I, for one, do not want to hear any more empty threats — openly acknowledged as such by the “threateners”! — to “study” or “investigate” a disastrous and unnecessary situation that we all know has to end yesterday. The ending needs to start by (1) cutting off the funding of, (2) revoking the statutory authorization for, and (3) punishing the perpetrators of the illegal, immoral, pointless, wasteful and self-destructive military occupation of Iraq.
Then the empty talk, “studying,” “investigating,” “resolving,” and denouncing of burning flags, queer wedddings, multi-lingual immigrants, and violent video games can recommence in all its famously fatuous futility.