In case you've missed it, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid announced his support yesterday for Russ Feingold's latest effort to bring the war in Iraq to an end. First, the news:
Reid (Nev.) announced that he had teamed up with Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.), one of the Democrats' strongest war critics, on legislation to set a deadline of March 31, 2008, for completing the withdrawal of combat forces and ending most military spending in Iraq...
Reid had previously opposed setting a firm end date for the war, a stance he has backed away from in recent months as others in his party moved to increase pressure on Bush. He officially converted after visiting wounded soldiers last week at Walter Reed Army Medical Center...."If the President vetoes the supplemental appropriations bill and continues to resist changing course in Iraq, I will work to ensure this legislation receives a vote in the Senate in the next work period," Reid said in a statement.
The Feingold-Reid bill calls for Bush to begin withdrawing troops within four months, similar to the language in the Senate's $122 billion spending package. But it would prohibit funding beyond the March 31 deadline, except for counterterrorism, security and training operations.
Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the Democratic leader does not expect the bill to become the official position of Senate Democrats, given its strong terms, but rather the "next in a series of steps designed to try to force a change in administration policy."
And now, since we've already begun to see the president and his party go into hysterics about this, a bit of history for you to keep in mind over the coming weeks and months. TalkLeft:
Senator Russ Feingold reminds us:The amendment offered by Sen. John McCain on Oct. 15, 1993, would have eliminated funding for operations in Somalia immediately, except for funds for withdrawing troops or for continuing operations if any American POWs/MIAs were not accounted for. The mostly Republican senators who supported the McCain amendment were not disregarding the safety of our troops, or being indifferent to their need for guns, ammunition, food and clothing. They were supporting an appropriate, safe, responsible proposal to use Congress' power of the purse to bring an ill-conceived military mission to a close without in any way harming our troops.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure where I come down on this issue. On the one hand, I absolutely and without question want this war to end, well... yesterday. On the other, if the congress succeeds in forcing the president to end the war by fighting and winning an epic constitutional battle, I can't help but fear that Bush would botch the implementation of the withdrawal so badly, either intentionally or unintentionally, that the withdrawal could end up becoming a political liability for people who made it happen.
And yes, I did say "intentionally or unintentionally." This is, after all, by its own admission an administration that believes it can, should, and must do whatever it believes is necessary to protect the nation's security. They sent our soldiers to war without body and vehicle armor. They've tortured, or sent elsewhere to be tortured, innocent human beings in an effort to protect us from "evil." They sat by for days and did nothing while an entire city drowned. Seriously, why at this point would I trust them to do anything right? The short answer, of course, is that I don't.
What do you do when you want a war to end, but you don't trust the people responsible for implementing its conclusion to execute it properly? I honestly don't know.
From a domestic political standpoint, it seems to me that the key is to work to make this a bipartisan issue. I'm not usually one to invoke bipartisanship, but in this case I'm not sure I see any other way forward. To see why, think through two different scenarios.
In scenario one, Democrats successfully push for withdrawal without attracting significant support from Republicans. If the withdrawal is both carefully planned and executed, it would be a huge win for both the nation and the Democratic Party. In scenario two, Democrats succeed winning support from some Republicans before forcing the president's hand. Here, although the political upside for the nation is the same, the political benefits are shared to some extent by both parties. Frankly, given that my primary concern is ending the war, I'll take either of the positive versions outlined here. It's what happens when something goes wrong - and knowing these people something will go wrong - that I'm worried about.
Imagine a version of scenario one where the withdrawal is implemented in typical Bush administration fashion. In that version of events we get a military and political disaster. From a military standpoint, the entire nation loses; from a political standpoint, my hunch is that only the Democratic Party loses. The frame practically writes itself: they forced withdrawal, and now look what happened. But imagine that same outcome in scenario two: with bipartisan support for the withdrawal, it will be much, MUCH more difficult for the responsible parties to escape blame. Failure in this scenario becomes nonpartisan.
This war has been a disaster. Unfortunately, the current occupant of the White House doesn't understand that. Instead, he seems absolutely convinced that withdrawal will have disastrous consequences. And yet somehow I'm supposed to trust him to oversee this withdrawal?
God help us.
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