Although the House passed it last week by a margin of 246-182, the Democratic resolution opposing Dubya’s surge fails to win an airing in the Senate. Although seven Republicans joined the Senate Dems in advancing the bill, it fell short by four votes of the 60 required to initiate debate. “Both sides instead are girding for the next phase, a confrontation over war funding, with some Democrats determined to exercise the power of the purse to influence Iraq strategy.”
Category: The Middle East
Don Young’s Lincoln Lies.
“Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.” In vaguely-related news, conservative congressman Rep. Don Young trots out an obviously-fake Lincoln quote to bash Dems on Iraq. [ThinkProgress has the video.] ”’Now that he’s been informed these are not the actual words of Lincoln, he will discontinue attributing the words to Lincoln. However, he continues to totally agree with the message of the statement,’ [spokeswoman] Kenny said.” (For the record, and despite his suspension of habeas corpus, President Lincoln was a lenient sort, and assuredly not a believer in the reforming potential of public hangings.)
Tearing up the Blank Check.
“‘We stand together to tell this administration that we are against the escalation, and to say with one voice that Congress will no longer be a blank check to the president’s failed policies,’ said freshman Rep. Patrick J. Murphy (D-Pa.), who was a captain with the 82nd Airborne Division in Baghdad. ‘The president’s plan to send more of our best and bravest to die refereeing a civil war in Iraq is wrong.‘” The House begins three days of debate on a resolution opposing Dubya’s proposed “surge.” “The Democratic resolution is not binding on the administration, and both sides of the debate agreed that the real fight will come next month, when Democrats are to move to attach to a $100 billion war spending bill binding language that would limit future deployments to Iraq and begin to bring troops home.”
Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb?
In a welcome bit of good news on the international front, negotiators strike a deal in North Korea that lays down a plan for nuclear disarmament by Kim Jong Il’s regime. But all is not rosy yet: “In a harbinger of the potential for difficulties ahead, the official North Korean news agency said the agreement required only a temporary suspension of the country’s nuclear facilities…The agreement also seemed likely to face opposition in Washington by conservatives who remain unconvinced that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, ever intends to relinquish his nuclear weapons. Similarly, the Bush administration faced criticism from Democrats who charge the administration that broke away from the Agreed Framework in 2002 ended up five years later with a roughly similar accord.“
Meanwhile, in related news, a European Union report argues that it is now too late to prevent Iran from developing its own nuclear weaponry. “The admission is a blow to hopes that a deal with Iran can be reached and comes at a sensitive time, when tensions between the US and Tehran are rising. Its implication that sanctions will prove ineffective will also be unwelcome to EU diplomats.”
War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
“Faust’s interpretation helps explain the way the US responded to the 9-11 terrorist attacks with a war on Iraq. ‘Even a war against an enemy who had no relationship to September 11’s terrorist acts would do,’ she notes. People supported war not just because of the rational arguments offered by the White House, but also ‘because the nation required the sense of meaning, intention, and goal-directedness, the lure of efficacy that war promises.’ It was especially necessary to restore a sense of control after the terrorism of 9-11 had ‘obliterated’ it. The US, she concludes, ‘needed the sense of agency that operates within the structure of narrative provided by war.’” In the pages of The Nation, Jon Wiener evaluates new Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust’s work on war mania.
Bad Feith Reporting.
A new report by the Pentagon’s inspector general argues that former undersecretary of defense and Dubya war hawk Douglas Feith misrepresented intelligence findings during the lead-up to Iraq. Not a big surprise there, but it’s good to get Pentagon confirmation. “Feith’s office, it said, drew on ‘both reliable and unreliable’ intelligence reports in 2002 to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq ‘that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration.’”
Bottom Feeder.
Now, here’s a guy who hopes there’s something to this Blue Monday business: On the eve of the State of the Union, Dubya faces the lowest poll numbers of his presidency. “Bush’s overall approval rating in the new poll is 33 percent, matching the lowest it has been in Post-ABC polls since he took office in 2001…Equally telling is the finding that 51 percent of Americans now strongly disapprove of his performance in office, the worst rating of his presidency.“
Iraq is a Hard Place.
“Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.” I’m still furiously playing catch-up, so I’m obviously a day or two behind on blogging this…Then again, Dubya’s just as obviously three or four years behind in announcing it, so I’ll call it a wash. Nonetheless, after finally admitting that his administration has seriously screwed up in Iraq, Bush — sidestepping the suggestions of the Baker-Hamilton commission — calls for sending 21,500 more troops to the region, in what’s being billed as a “surge.” (Re: “escalation.”) When you get right down to it, Dubya’s basic argument in his televised address on Wednesday was this: “Through wishful thinking and outright incompetence, I’ve dug two nations into a huge hole. Please, please, please let me keep digging…“
Here’s the thing — A massive troop increase would’ve made a good deal of sense in 2003, during those crucial days just after the fall of the Hussein regime. A show of power then — and a quicker restoration of order and basic services — would have paid huge dividends down the road. But, now, all these years later, after so much infrastructure has been destroyed and so many sectarian schisms have been allowed to fester? 21,500 troops — many of them not fresh recruits but wearied soldiers returning to the region or having their tours extended — isn’t going to make a dent in the Whack-a-Mole game we’ve been playing against insurgents since 2003. At best, this escalation is a show of good faith to the al-Maliki government, which seems to be not much more than a brittle political arm of Shiite extremists (Exhibit A: the manner of Saddam’s hanging; Exhibit B: the refusal to do anything — until now — to rein in Al Sadr’s Mahdi Army.) Yes, folks, throwing more troops at a losing situation, backing a shaky government that can’t handle its own security issues, rattling the saber at Cambodia/Iran…who says Dubya isn’t a student of history?
Fortunately, for the first time since the beginning of the war, Congress isn’t having it, with even some Republicans joining Dems in rallying against the proposed troop increase and today venting their wrath at Condi Rice before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (No doubt the poll numbers against Dubya’s plan is helping to stiffen some GOP spines.) Still, Dubya has some allies in this fight — While the Dems are universally opposed to the escalation gamble [Dem Response by Durbin | Biden | Clinton | Dodd | Edwards | Feingold | Obama | Pelosi] and a not-insubstantial number of Republicans are balking, some key GOP pols are still supporting Dubya’s move (most notably John McCain, who’s been calling for a troop increase since day one, and Rudy Giuliani, likely trying to right the 2008 ship after his recent devastating document dump.)
Musical Chairs for Team Dubya.
In not-unrelated news, the Dubya White House shuffles its deck to make ready for divided government, replacing failed Supreme Court bid Harriet Miers as White House counsel (likely in favor of someone more aggressive, so as to counter Dem subpoenas), kicking national intelligence director Nicholas Negroponte over to State (to be replaced by Vice Admiral Mike McConnell), appointing Thomas D’Agostino as new nuclear chief (the old one, Linton Brooks, seems to have been of the “Brownie” school of management), putting Iraq ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in John Bolton’s former position at the UN (his job goes to Ryan Crocker), and overhauling their top military team in Iraq. As the WP‘s Dan Froomkin reads the tea leaves, “I see a possible theme: A purge of the unbelievers.”
The Dangling Conversation.
So, as I’m guessing you probably heard, Saddam was hung [obit]. Well, as a long-delayed deliverance of justice visited upon a bloodthirsty and sadistic tyrant, the execution may have been a success. But as a piece of political theater and a symbolic and unifying act of statebuilding, it definitely left something to be desired. Unfortunately, even notwithstanding the poorly-timed Shiite revelry, the hanging came across on tape less as a dispassionate exercise by the new Iraqi State than a heated episode of sectarian vigilantism, one that may grant Saddam more power in martyrdom than he’s had in life since his capture. Something to consider if and when Osama Bin Laden is ever brought to justice…