Shake Off Vietnam
Get over it. It\’s an excuse we cannot afford.
Democrats support the troops one hundred percent. As for Mr. Bush, not so much,
if at all, especially if he\’s going to send more soldiers to the civil war slaughter.
So if the Democratic majority can\’t stop it from happening, who can?
But what exactly can the Democrats do to stop it? Mr. Bush holds the commander
in chief card, which is the strongest hold card in the political deck. Now he\’s trying to sweeten his poison pill with a plan for Iraqi jobs that should have happened over two years ago.
Cue the first 2007 anti Democratic canard. It\’s being pushed by the wingnut radio crowd, as
well as the infants at Fox \”News.\” It goes like this: The Democrats
want to cut off the funding for the troops. It is a lie.
Enter Howard Fineman\’s latest offering.
Even as they decried the \”surge\” and declared that it is \”time
to bring the war to a close,\” Democrats offered reasons for staying out
of Bush\’s way. Obama took the safest ground. \”I cannot in good conscience,\”
he said, \”cut off funding for our troops that are already there.\”
He and others will insist that future requests be included in the regular
budget. Sen. Joe Biden, whose Foreign Relations Committee will launch hearings
on the war this week, said that Congress\’s role is simply too limited to be
effective. \”It\’s all about the separation of powers,\” he said. Last
month he told Bush: \”This is your war, Mr. President, and there\’s nothing
we can do to stop you.\”Sidestepping
the \’Surge\’
They\’ve got the power of the purse, but the Dems may not use it on Iraq.
Is Senator Obama kidding? No one in good conscience would ever \”cut
off funding for our troops already there.\” The inference is ripe with
repugnant inference. The good senator from Illinois had to know what he was
saying, but it surely backfired. We\’ve got to be a lot smarter than this turn
of phrase in order to keep ourselves out of the Republican meat grinder. Teeing
one up for your adversaries won\’t do any of us any good, even if you calculate it will serve your own ambitions.
But Biden\’s capitulation that \”there\’s nothing we can do to stop you\”
is equally galling. Yet it was Senator Joseph Biden, who announce that he\’s
filing the papers to run an exploratory presidential campaign, who threw up his
hands yet again on \”Meet the Press,\” saying the Democrats are powerless.
MR. RUSSERT: …there’s really little Democrats can do. Why not cut
off funding for the war?SEN. BIDEN: I’ve been there, Tim. You can’t do it.
MR. RUSSERT: Why?
SEN. BIDEN: You can’t do it. It’s—what—because it
made sense in the Constitution when you said you could cut off funding when
you had no standing army. We have a standing army with a budget of hundreds
of billions of dollars. You can’t go in and, like a tinker toy, and
play around and say, “You can’t spend the money on this piece
and this piece and”—he—able—he’ll be able to
keep those troops there forever constitutionally if he wants to.MR. RUSSERT: Why not have legislation then that would cap the number of troops
in Iraq?SEN. BIDEN: Because it’s very difficult to—it’s constitutionally
questionable whether or not you can do that. I think it is unconstitutional
to say, “We’re going to tell you you can go, but we’re going
to micromanage the war.” When we wrote the Constitution, the intention
was to give the commander in chief the authority how to use the forces, when
you authorize them, to be able to use the forces.
It begs the question. If Senate Democrats, as well as some in the House, truly
believe they cannot do anything to stop Mr. Bush from escalating the war in Iraq, why
did we work so hard to win seats in the 2007 election? Was it all about investigations
and oversight?
Stop abdicating authority won, and start pushing back.
The American people sure didn\’t vote Democrats into power in Congress to watch
us become as paralyzed as the president. Today, no other issue weighs on the
American mind more. It\’s not good enough to hear our Democratic leaders say
there is nothing that can be done, or offer some canard that in \”good conscience\”
Democrats cannot \”cut off funding for our troops already there,\” which
is just a plain ignorant statement to make, made worse by yet another Democrat hurling the insult that
we are powerless to do anything. We will always fund the troops, but we will not offer a blank check to a commander in chief who is intent on buying a legacy through escalation in the middle of another country\’s civil war. Frankly, Senators Biden and Obama know better,
because they are both very bright men. However, they are setting rank amateur
examples in the leadership department.
Biden is reliving Vietnam choices, while Obama is listening to someone who
is warning him about them. But remembering the wrong lessons of Vietnam is how
the Senate got suckered into voting for the Iraq war resolution in the first
place. Just ask Colin Powell.
Shake it off.
No escalation.
No surge.
Period.
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