I don’t think this would be admitted publicly, but it seems to me that Ted Kennedy’s introduction of legislation to require Congressional approval for the surge escalation allows the Democratic majority to have its cake and eat it too.
If legislation appropriating funds specifically for the purpose was introduced on behalf of the administration, simple majorities would serve to defeat it (or a filibuster in the Senate – but it amounts to the same thing).
But if Congress passes Kennedy’s legislation, Bush can veto it, and the Democrats wouldn’t have the numbers to override the veto.
Presumably the Democrats can then say they demonstrated through their votes their clear opposition, but the responsibility is all Bush’s.
Given that polls show around 60% opposition even when the question about the surge is put to voters in the most positive light, it’s a political winner for the Democrats. And it wedges Republicans who will be forced to take a position on this issue alone rather than equivocating.
Also: Apparently the Decider-in-Chief’s speech will be broadcast live on the ABC at noon tomorrow (AEST).
Here’s Kennedy – thanks to Christine in comments for the link.
Update: Tim Dunlop links to the Democrats’ official response and he comments on Bush’s speech and cites this key point from Andrew Sullivan:
The premise of the speech, and of the strategy, is that there is a national democratic government in Baghdad, defending itself against Jihadist attacks. The task, in the president’s mind, is therefore to send more troops to defend such a government. But the reality facing us each day is a starkly different one from the scenario assumed by the president. The government of which Bush speaks, to put it bluntly, does not exist. The reality illumined by the lynching of Saddam is that the Maliki government is a front for Shiite factions and dependent for its future on Shiite death squads. U.S. support for the government is not, therefore, a defense of democracy in a unified country, whatever our intentions. It is putting the lives of American soldiers in defense of the Shiite side in an increasingly brutal civil war.
Yeah well we see through such lame trickery and only the dimmest American soldier would fall for that.
If anyone cares about the soldiers he will show it in the devout wish to:
1.Slash non-defense spending to the bear bones then slash it much more so it actually begins to hurt.
2. Put up with high gas prices during an all out surge to hit Jihadism from all sides through proxy war.
3. Forget about any ecological concerns in a scramble to get our energy capability together.
4. Build up our (ie the Wests) military whoop-ass sufficiently so that no third party countries are stupid enough to help the wrong side in our stoush with Crackerland….. (I’m looking at you China!)
Mark, what’s your take on all this talk of a “non-binding resolution”. A number of Dems and Republicans have said they would support a vote that basically says “we don’t support the surge idea”. Personally, I think it’s a pretty weak statement and would just convince Bush to push harder and would show that the Democrats are more interested in playing politics than achieving outcomes.
I tend to agree, mick. I think Kennedy’s legislation gives them a stronger hand politically.
Though worth noting that a non-binding resolution is veto-proof.
I think the choice between them (if choice it is, both could be voted on potentially) relates to whether you want to get Republicans on board or get electoral advantage by forcing Republicans to side for or against Bush on a vote that matters.
Though I haven’t looked at the alignments closely, I suspect there’s a bit of a split between the more liberal and more centrist/conservative Dems on those two options. This article from the New Yorker is interesting on the sense that some Dem pols have that the opposition of the “activist base” is taking them away from the party’s internationalist stance and towards pacifism:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070115fa_fact
Kennedy’s speech can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAulj5Pmzw (Biff! Take that LBJ!)
I particularly like his take on the original Congressional resolution authorising intervention in Iraq:
In other words the resolution has expired and Bush has no mandate for an escalation without specific Congressional approval, presumably after bogging the Decider-in-Chief’s ‘plan’ in the quagmire of the committee system.
Given the multitude of competing agendas in the run-up to the presidential election season I don’t think for a moment that the Dems will hold back funding. The challenge is to make sure that Bush owns the escalation and they don’t cop the blame when everything goes wrong.
The NYT reports that:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/washington/10capitol.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1168405200&en=a11159229ac74c93&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin
It’s a fair point. The last thing anybody (in Washington at least) would want is the propagation of another Dolchstosslegende which allowed Bush to escape blame by saying Congress refused him funds to win the war.
I’d agree, Christine, I think Kennedy makes some strong arguments.
However if in the (probably unlikely) event that Kennedy’s legislation were to pass, and Bush vetoed it, and presumably got his surge, how could it be plausibly seen as a Dolchstosslegende?
I agree totally with that too.
Had a listen to the whole speech now, Christine, and thanks very much for the link. (I’d previously read summaries in the papers).
Get what you mean about the swipe at LBJ… and he sounded a lot like JFK when he said “with pride and valour”.
I agree, it couldn’t. Very canny politics. Good to see those 40 years in the Senate haven’t gone to waste. Maybe a few pretenders for the nomination could take some lessons.
Just a sidelight, I’ve been musing at the effect the escalation and its eventual failure, coupled with the evident distaste for further adventures of this type, could have on R front-runner McCain’s (undeclared) campaign for 2008, given that he’s been blathering on about the need for another 150,000 troops.
It’s going to be an interesting year.
Indeed it is.
I think I posted a link from Slate on an earlier thread about McCain’s strategy to run away from the surge if it doesn’t work. Another profile in spinelessness.
http://www.slate.com/id/2156926/
This whole debate about TEH SURGE is a distraction. That New Yorker article is enlightening. Pacifism is the label put on those who decline to be involved in wars of aggression. Engaged internationalism is the new RWDB.
Mark is right to see that the Dems are playing domestic politics here. They want it to be firmly implanted in the electorates pee-wee mind that TEH SURGE was Bush’s last great plan and when it is inevitably seen as having done nothing to reduce the violence, that the voters will blame Bush.
Trouble is, the voters are not concerned about the violence. They are only concerned with media focus on US military casualties in the pursuance of nothing much.
But the surge will be orchestrated with the help of Fox as a new War. There they’ll be, our boys, going into glorious battle, again. Casualties will be a rallying point again. We’ll have a new Cindy Sheehan or two. The dead will no longer be meaningless victims blown up on the side of some dust-blown higgway, but purple heart ‘merican sacrifices in TEH SURGE.
Having their cake and eating it too. Very true, that that is what they want. But they’ll get neither, the Dems.
I think that’s probably unfair to quite a lot of the voters, wbb.
Quite a few, yes. But they know who they are, and won’t be offended.
A preview of what’s likely from TEH SURGE:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21041174-601,00.html
Totally scary. There are children living on those streets.
One of the nightmare scenarios envisioned by (the majority of) people who initially opposed this invasion was the prospect of house to house fighting. The Stalingrad scenario.
Well, we are finally seeing it. I care not one wit that I appear completely unurbane when I say that this US misadventure is a monstrous chapter in history. (Caps superfluous.)
Agreed.
How is it going to look after six months of “deploying US aerial and armoured power”?
Christ almighty.
So the ‘challenge’ is for the Democrats to vote the funds to support the war, but pretend that is not what they are doing?
Will the anti-war base notice this, or not?
It’s a good question.
Personally, I really hope that the Democrats do get to stop the horrendous thing regardless of their partisan interests. But I don’t hold out much hope.
David – yes, most definitely, but we don’t amount to much.
That would be the same JFK who escalated the Vietnam war? Who never acted to stop the coup that was designed to remove US ally President Diem from power?
The anti-war base is not a voting majority at the general election, but it will cast a disproportionate amount of votes in Democratic primaries, and will provide an even higher proportion of activists to those seeking the Democratic nomination.
And if they are angry enough to split the convention, or to go fishing if a centrist is nominated, the Democrats cannot win, in my opinion.
What a disgraceful anti-soldier speech.
He’s not fooling me. And he’s certainly not fooling Mark.
But Mark supposes he can fool the non-leftist American people. Or so it seems.
He’s actually wanting to vote on strategy??????
Which means he wants the enemy to win.
What else can it mean? That or its something to do with the constant bombardment of alchohol particles.
wbb: “Trouble is, the voters are not concerned about the violence. They are only concerned with media focus on US military casualties in the pursuance of nothing much.”
This is pure unadulterated ignorance and prejudice, in the literal sense of the word.
I live in the US. In my daily stroll through life, I talk to a surprisingly broad swathe of my fellow pee-wees about all manner of things, the war included. What they are concerned about w/r/t the war, its breadth and scope, would make wbb’s prim, narrow little skull spin at very high speeds, causing a pleasant and rather amusing Doppler sound to perfume the air.
w/r/t the substance of the post…
I’m no scholar of constitutional law, but I suspect that setting a precedent for Congressional micro-management of a war might be a bad idea in the long run. As time goes by, I’m increasingly convinced that one of the mercifully few errors made by the Framers was not defining a bit more strictly what they meant when they made the President the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. This was expedient in the 18th century, because of the technology of the day, but the phrase has been roundly abused ever since. The Iraq war will play itself out according to logics beyond my pee-wee mind; but as a bulwark against further debacles in the future, I would support (which I rarely do) a Constitutional amendment revisiting the ‘Commander-in-chief’ clause with a bit more specificity.
I can’t cite any particular knowledge, David, but my general sense from reading the US media is that people are infinitely patient, and few would be silly enough to wreck a perfectly good shot at getting the White House and stopping this nonsense once and for all.
I think Vietnam analogies can be taken way too far and I don’t think we’re talking Chicago ’68 here.
My influence on the American people could be overstated Birdy.
Don’t forget though, j_p_z, that the founders envisaged the President as something perhaps more akin to a constitutional monarch – there to execute laws and be the ultimate check and balance – ie the Prez was elected indirectly by electors whom the founders thought would be chosen by state legislators and be “wise men”.
Perhaps the James A. Bakers and Lee Hamiltons of the day
I think that they saw the power to declare war as one of the monarchical powers held by the British King that should properly be transferred to the representatives of the people.
So, in a way, Teddy has a constitutional point.
Andrew Jackson of course came along and changed things with all that high-falutin democracy stuff.
Remarkable too, post-Jackson, how many subsequent 19th century Presidents were Generals. Though Grant seems to have cured that habit.
I refer you to the results of the Democratic primary for Senator in Connecticut, 2006, when the activist base of the party defeated Senator Lieberman, who went on to win the general election 50-40-10 against the official Democrat and the Republican.
The founders envisioned the President as the Commander-In-Chief and unquestioned leader of the armed forces in wartime. And these leftist traitors have done everything they can to undermine this, to make strategy impossible and therefore to make sure their soldiers and the Iraqi civilians get killed.
Plus Kennedy has been involving himself in not-stop lying and political warfare against the President (and therefore against the Republic….. this is wartime).
This behaviour could not be more hateful.
If Congress dissaproves of this war they can stop it since they have the unquestioned constitutional power to defund this war.
They’ve got to piss or get off the pot.
A young Abe Lincoln tried to stop the Mexican war going ahead. But once its started its your job to win it quickly. And so he got behind the war and this is the right attitude.
What I hate about Kennedy is his relentless lying. Because the next day people are repeat these mantras as if they had some basis too them.
Of the 25 comments I just scanned at the Huffington Post about the planned escalation (Jan 9 10.35pm – Jan 9 11.20pm), 7 express deep hostility to the Democrats for planning a merely ‘symbolic’ vote against the war.
Of those 7, 3 explicitly call for impeachment of Bush, and one other appears to want it too. (Remember, Pelosi has already taken impeachment ‘off the table’).
While this could never be an accurate measure of the number of people who hold those views, I think it is an accurate reflection of the depth of such feelings in people who do feel that way.
No matter what they do, a perfectly good Dolchstosslegende will be constructed anyway. There’s simply no way to avoid this; it’s what the entire machinery is priming to do, right now. The groundwork (blame the media etc) is already very well-laid.
I Agree Bill Posters. All the ingredients necessary for a good Dolchstosslegende are there. We never lost a battle in Iraq, there is a nice domestic fifth column to point the finger at, a great deal of whining about Teh Liberal Medias from during the war which can easily be resuscitated after the fact and of course some Iraqi’s who are likely to wind up in fairly wretched circumstances to moralize about. If they happen to end up being ruled by the same bunch of thugs who are involved with the current Government, expect that detail to be conspicuously ignored.
The Democrats have already secured a place in the legend by winning the 2006 mid-terms and thus undermining the decider-in-chief.
In real time, a legend is constructed:
Two stabs in the back for the price of one.
Post Grant(whose legacy is under revision), Rutherford B Hayes had been a Civil War general. Garfield also held general rank.
In the 20th century, the Spanish-American war produced Taft who, although not a general, was the administrator of the Philippines. Oh, and I’m told that Eisenhower had some command experience in WW2.
Why aren’t the Congressional investigations (into phone-tapping, torture, removal of habeus corpus, Katrina inaction, forged Niger documents, targetting killing of journalists, white phosphorus in Fallujah, Halliburton profiteering, Plamegate, signing statements, 9/11 inaction, anthrax) on now? Once these start, they will tie up Bush and his cohorts so quickly that they won’t be able to launch their escalation of the war.
And here’s Windy pushing the same line:
What a coincidence.
Glad to hear, j_p_z, that the broad swathe is concerned about all the aspects of the war. Things must be changing, then. It wasn’t that long ago, that the broad swathe hadn’t even caught up with the bad news about the WMD. I’ll look out for a speedy US withdrawal then shall I?
But don’t take it so personally. Here in Australia, the broad swathe are definitely uninterested in the war. At the last election it was very much a case of don’t mention the war. Latham mentioned it once. He didn’t get away with it.
I plead the lateness of the hour, Herr Bismarck.
But now it’s Howard who doesn’t want it mentioned, wbb.
Yes, ok, so maybe we are reaching the tipping point, Mark. I’m still doubtful, but. I mean, Bush is on TV right this minute, announcing the start of major combat operations in Iraq.
Just watched the Bush speech…….what a joke. More of the same. Sorry that’s all I got right now. My anger is incandescent at the moment, I’ll need to read some transcripts.
The whole stab in the back thing really is incredibly irritating. I just can’t help but feel that it is somewhat inconsistent for the same groud who harp on endlessly about democracy abroad to talk as though it is some how ilegitamite for the citizens of western democracies to influence western foreign policy.
Yeah. Couldn’t stop thinking “you worthless piece of shit” right the way through. It’s pathetic. Just years more of this:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21042278-38201,00.html
I decided not to watch it.
What I’m trying to say wbb is that it’s incredible that Howard and Downer have been so quiet on Iraq after all the hyperbolic rhetoric of years gone by. There must be some element of this ascribable to the fact that they know people watching the horror and chaos on the news are outraged, and they don’t want to draw attention to our “participation” and support.
Ruddy should be running hard on this – now’s the time to do it, because what’s happened to the Coalition’s once trumpeted “national security advantage”?
Mark …. and j-p-z too:
My own feeling is that this may be part of an overall political strategy by the Democrats to gradually force America’s Failed Emperor to abdicate and to force His Court Jester to reign as well …. thereby clearing the way for an interim Democrats president, similar to what happened when Tricky Dicky Nixon had to resign over far less serious matters. ((Yeah, I know, I keep banging on about this scenario – but it’s the only one I can think of that wouldn’t lead straight to defeat, humiliation, ruin and a second Stalingrad for the United States)).
Bismarck:
American are willing to have national leaders who have had war service whereas in Australia we have shown time and again that we prefer to avoid having prime ministers with any military service at all, we have had only Gorton and Whitlam – who both served in RAAF aircrew during WWII. Truman was an artillery officer, Eisenhower an army general, Kennedy and Nixon both ex-US Navy …. all of them very competent politicians and effective presidents too; add Ford and George Bush Snr. to that list as well. But how do you account for the outstanding president, Clinton, who was a gangplank-dodger as a young man? How do you account for Johnson, who served in the US Navy but then became a useless dithering war-wimp when he got the top job?
How do you account for the American electorate’s rejection of an outstanding statesman, a true hero in both war and peace, a visionary leader and a latter-day FDR, John Kerry, on one hand …. and on the other hand, its fanatical adulation for and its unquestioning RE-election of a manifestly incompetent G W Bush, whose only attempt at any military service was to dodge being sent to the Viet-Nam War by hiding in the air guard (state-based local air training organization), when he wasn’t AWOL that is?.
Are you referring to that well-known Democratic President Gerald Ford? Who was appointed as VP (and confirmed by the Senate) after VP Agnew resigned rather than contest corruption charges in court?
The idea that the USA would accept a change of the party of the President by means of a double-impeachment or double-resignation is quite far-fetched.
Transcript here
Graham Bell: “How do you account for the American electorate’s… fanatical adulation for and its unquestioning RE-election of a manifestly incompetent G W Bush…”
Fanatical adulation? Unquestioning re-election? Both times, the guy barely won by a hair (and maybe even a crooked hair at that). Skepticism did and does abound. But for better or worse, we go by the book and respect the system, as we’ve done for longer than nearly anybody else on this planet. The alternative would be to (in Sherman’s stinging phrase) “reap the fate of Mexico.”
Our electorate simply does not always see things the way others wish us to, and we reserve the right to act on our own wishes, not the wishes of others; and that is quite fair, as you yourselves require the same. We are a nation of 300 million people, with needs and responsibilities that can not always be readily understood by other peoples who have not had our experiences. Why should that be surprising? The same is true of any nation.
The people gave Kerry a fair hearing, and decided –again, by a hair– that they didn’t want what he was peddling. This hardly equates with a blind adulation for Mr. Bush.
“There’s small choice among rotten apples”
–The Taming of the Shrew
wbb: “I’ll look out for a speedy US withdrawal then shall I?”
For the zillionth time, we encounter the typical narcissistic light-weight lefty fallacy: ‘no one can possibly be intelligent who does not fully agree with my positions.’
‘A grave mistake!’ he cried. ‘It seems
The whole world’s wrong but me!’
–The Ballad of Howard Cosell, MAD magazine, early 70s
Transcript.
And what does this mean, exactly?
Sounds like they’ll be paid to let foreign oil companies make off with the loot!
What I think he’s probably referring to is giving the Sunni provinces a share of the revenues.
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!!!!
People, people! Please! Wake up. The American public is not against the Reconstruction effort, per se. They have become opposed to the WAY it has been handled and demand CHANGE; not withdrawal.
Kennedy is skating on extremely thin-ice here. If the Dems get painted with not permitting the President the opportunity to implement changes demanded by the voters, the Dems will be screwed in 2008.
Besides in constitutional reality there is no chance in hell in stopping Bush getting his way.
Presumably it means that there will be a law that will determine what proportion of oil revenues go to each province, roughly similar to the agreement that distributes GST revenue to the States here in Australia.
Presumably Bush is claiming that this law will reassure each province that they will get a reasonable share of those revenues, and make each section of Iraq more likely to accept the central government.
FDB, you may wish to read this article at DailyKos about oil Production Sharing Agreements, which disputes your apparent claim that ‘foreign oil companies’ intend to ‘make off with the loot’.
I see the neocons got a para in the speech:
Mark
Why whouldn’t they? Neoconservatism is still the most potent ideology across the Anglosphere, despite the screeching of the Marxists in postit cultural studies drag
David, I know that there are arrangements for profit sharing. I was, and remain, under the impression that those proposed in Iraq are skewed towards the investors (i.e. more than is usual, and particularly when so much local rebuilding is required).
FDB
How much profit is “usually” distributed to non-investors in ANY commercial venture? Could you please point out some of these, so that this non-investor can get a slice of the profits?
FDB, what do you believe is the usual skew of profit sharing between oil companies and governments in oil contracts? What is the skew proposed in the Iraq PSAs?
Graham Bell – I had no political axe to grind with Mark in my comment. It was purely a bit of light-hearted nitpicking. As you know, the Australian and US systems of government are dissimilar in some important respects. While the office of Prime Minister has assumed increasingly presidential overtones, its occupant is still selected from serving members of the House of Representatives. However, a person can run for President of the United States without having to put in the years of political slog that the Westminster system usually requires. A particularly successful and high-profile military career has often paved the way to the presidency. But a glittering military career neither guarantees success nor dooms less decorated opponents.
I don’t think the multiplicity of roads to the White House indicates any rule of general application as to the success of a presidency. The US electorate did not share your hagiographic view of Kerry (a latter-day FDR? Spare me). Clinton the draft-dodger beat two decorated war heroes (Bush Snr and Dole), so where does that take your excoriation of Bush Jr? And Johnson’s US Navy Service was a neat bit of window dressing carried out while he was a serving Congressman. It takes up less than 3 pages of Dallek’s 377 page biography. He was awarded a Silver Star by MacArthur for the achievement of completing one flight as an observer in a B-26 (over Lae in New Guinea). The crewmembers killed when their plane was shot down during the same mission received Purple Hearts. He was hardly steeped in military tradition.
j-p-z:
Don’t take it too much to heart. We don’t hate America ….. in fact, we’ll love America …. just as soon as those g-d m-f s-o-bs pack their bags and get out of your White House.
Hey. Now that Saddam Hussein has had his neck-tie party, wonder if the Russians still have a well-guarded dacha or cabin in a remote part of their vast land vacant ready for the next ruler who needs to go into exile; G. & L. would love it there – far from a sticky-beak Congress ….
John Greenfields on the thoughts of the American electorate:
Gallup pole on the thoughts of the American electorate:
Perhaps he can change the constitution while he’s at it. Nothing that dim-witted sot does surprises me anymore.
John, the only Marxists I can find commenting on the Iraq War at the moment are the ones supporting it – see the succession of comments by patrickm on the other thread.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/01/04/scourging-the-surge/#comment-298702
The exploitation of mineral wealth is always subjected to royalties.
That’s what’s being talked about – not giving dividends to individual Iraqis, but distributing oil revenues among provincial governments.
There are lots of parallels between Reagan and Johnson in their “war service”.
Bismarck, you should have a look at the Robert A. Caro biography. He devotes a lot of space to Johnson’s equivocation over whether he should enlist – balancing up his political self-interest and his cowardice, his attempts to use his connections with FDR for his own interests, the amount of time devoted on his “service” to partying and womanising, etc., etc.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone.
link
Update: Tim Dunlop links to the Democrats’ official response and he comments on Bush’s speech and cites this key point from Andrew Sullivan:
Thanks, Mark. I’ll check that out. I find Johnson an intriguing figure (in both senses of the word).
The two volumes (so far) of Caro’s biography are great reads, Bismarck. He’s more hostile to LBJ than Dallek but really captures the complexity of the man and his motivations.
Mark, I agree that Dallek was altogether too easy on Johnson and also superficial in too many areas. I would have liked much more on his mastery of the black arts as leader in the Senate. On your recommendation, I have ordered Caro and will look forward to an appropriate forum here in which to drop my newly-acquired pearls of wisdom.
I’m sure we can arrange something, Bismarck.
Graham, et al..
did you know that no one here gives a healthy shit about what anyone thinks about us anymore?
JPZ, am I correct?
I read V1 of Caro’s biography about ten years ago and gained a new appreciation of Johnson and his practice of the dark arts in Texas and in the Senate. Yet to catch up with V2.
So he got all those boys killed, you might as well laugh. He was an absolute original. Here’s Lyndon ordering a pair of pants: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmNcfIB_mQ0
V2 is excellent on his dark Senate arts.
Another Kim — no, actually I think that’s a big mistake, and potentially sort of a nihilist one to boot. There’s a lot of matter for thought in all of that, but let’s not get into it here — this is an Oz blog, after all!
David Jackmanson:
Far-fetched as that may be, it is still a h*ll of a lot less risky than allowing G W Bush and his cronies to continue destroying the Great Republic. If Nancy Pelosi did become interim president there is a very good chance she would score a triple win:… 1. achieve some sort of resolution to the conflicts in both Iraq and in Palestine; 2. withdraw US and COW troops carefully and so avoid a repeat of Hitler’s Stalingrad disaster or Napoleon’s Middle-East stuff-up and, while she is on the job, 3. start kicking some terrorist ars*s.
Bismarck:
and I took it as such. Just on Kerry: definitely no hagiography there, none!! and my mention of FDR was quite deliberate. Despite being among the multitude outside the US who were astonished when born-loser G W Bush was re-elected …. I felt a touch of relief because, despite Kerry’s fight to stop the useless slaughter in the Viet-Nam War, had he been elected president, he would not have pussy-footed around and we would now be in a full-on war. A winnable war being fought on American terms but still a war. Too late now; the die has been cast.
Everyone:
My post at 12:46pm had
No. No. No. Not “reign” but “RESIGN”, I was too soft on the “S” key. Resign! Resign! Resign!