Want to know what the upcoming, post-veto debate is going to look like? The Center for American Progress lays it out here:
Four Fundamentals in the Iraq Debate:
+ Americans want Iraq policy to change.+ Congress has shared power on Iraq policy.
+ The Iraq debate is likely to continue as long as President Bush is in office.
+ The strategic goal is to begin a responsible redeployment this year.
Four Post-Veto Scenarios:+ Provide a short infusion of funding of $40 billion.
+ Demand the president to account for the military readiness of units being sent to Iraq and acknowledge the strains on troops already in Iraq in the fiscal year 2007 supplemental bill.
+ Demand that certification of progress towards benchmarks for Iraq’s political transition remains a part of the FY2007 supplemental funding bill.+ Keep the pressure for redeployment dates by offering redeployment language in the markups of the fiscal year 2008 Defense Authorization and Appropriations bills.
The authors - John Podesta, Larry Korb, Scott Lilly, and Brian Katulis - suggest that some combination of the first two post-veto scenarios are the ones that the congress ought to pursue. I could not possibly agree with them more.
Congress cannot end this war on their own. As much as I wish it were possible to bring this war to an end today, I recognize that it is not something we can do. From both a domestic political and a military standpoint, it simply will not possible to end this either quickly or easily. Wishing it were otherwise will not make it so.
As we move forward over the coming weeks and months, it is important we always keep in mind everything we hope to accomplish. Ending this war with a minimum amount of blood shed, both Iraqi and American blood, must be one objective. Beginning the process of reversing the damage caused by this war to our standing in the region and the world must be another. Making sure that a mistake like this does not happen again in our lifetimes is a third goal. For that to happen, the people that made this war a reality, and the party that backed it far, far longer than it objectively should have, must be made to pay a severe political cost.
This war should not merely belong to President Bush. It must also belong to the Republican Party. Option one above will virtually guarantee that happens. By revisiting the debate every few months, we can force members of the Republican Party to go on the record with their opposition to brining this war to a close. And by tying the funding to a presidential report on troop readiness levels - option two - we can force the president and his party to take political responsibility for the damage they are doing to this nation's military.
I wish that we could stop this madness today. I wish there were adults on both sides of the aisle who were in charge. But so long as this man is our president, he is an obstacle we must both acknowledge and work around. Options one and two may not be perfect, but they are the best we are going to be able to do in our imperfect world.
UPDATE: Yes, of course, I realize that there were a number of House and Senate Democrats who voted to authorize this horrible war. In the House, only 126 of the 205 Democratic members voted against the AUMF. In the Senate, only 21 of the 50 Democratic Senators voted against it. Some of the have already admitted they made a horrendous mistake. In the Senate, 9 of the 29 who voted for the AUMF have already left office, left the Democratic Party, or both. And some have yet to convince me they truly have seen the light.
Either way, there will be plenty of time to deal with these people. For now, the number one priority must be to bury the Republican party and its neoconservative doctrine for a generation or more. We can work on people within the Democratic Party once that has been done.
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