September 12, 2007
Not An Open-Ended Commitment. Just Really Bloody Long.
President Bush is expected to confirm tomorrow night that he will follow Gen. David Petraeus' and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's recommendations for the Iraq war. Get ready for a long, hard slog through this political season.
The dominant feeling on the Hill today is that after an agonizingly long five months of waiting for the Petraeus-Crocker report to arrive, nothing has changed with regard to a way out of Iraq. The "surge" strategy is working, lawmakers were told, but only in part. The missing link is national political reconciliation, and we still don't know how to get there. In summary: Give us more time.
Not good enough, appears to be the conclusion of most Democrats and even some Republicans. Their objection is twofold.
1. This strategy was billed as the last, best chance to get Iraq on the path to security and self-governance. Both Petraeus and Crocker admitted that not only was the Iraqi Parliament dysfunctional, but the will and ability to make it functional was out of America's hands.
2. It's possible the new bottom-up reconciliation strategy they happened upon in Anbar province can work elsewhere, Petraeus and Crocker said. But they're not certain it can. (They're not certain it can't, either. Their view is that the U.S. has a moral imperative to try.)
Turns out the report is less Rosetta Stone and more Rorschach inkblot. [See The Gate's live coverage of the Senate Foreign Relations hearing, Senate Armed Services hearing and joint House hearing for a refresher.]
Lawmakers aren't locked into conclusions here. One can agree that Petraeus and Crocker are honorable, well-meaning men who are the best capable of providing guidance on the war and still conclude that nothing the U.S. can do militarily or diplomatically will help move Iraq along to functionality. Agreement on the knowns -- a turnaround in Anbar -- does not demand agreement on the unknowns -- duplicating that success elsewhere.
This is no mere political escape hatch. It's a pretty good reason to embrace disagreement with the report's findings.
U.S. brigades will finish out their rotations and come home as expected, bringing us back down to the pre-surge troop level of 130,000 by next summer, depending on conditions on the ground. The work ahead is challenging and plentiful, Petraeus said, yet the drawdown means fewer hands to tackle it. The general promised an assessment of how well operations are progressing next March, and presumably will indicate whether that 130,000 figure gets bigger or smaller by 2008's end. Troops get to escape the peril of serving in Iraq based on the competence level of Iraq's security forces, police, bureaucrats and legislators.
American lawmakers, particularly those who opposed poking a stick in this hornet's nest in the first place, came away from the marathon hearings believing they'd just been asked to sit through yet another wait-and-see stage of the war.
"To say that you don't know when a war is going to end doesn't mean that you don't think it's going to end," said White House press secretary Tony Snow, dismissing charges that the war has become "open-ended." Yet he later conceded that even the planned drawdowns were not guaranteed and were "related to conditions on the ground."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., declared that the endgame is worth the $9 billion spent and 60 U.S. lives lost each month, and Petraeus agreed. On Capitol Hill, they are in the minority.
Democratic leaders in both houses are promising legislation that puts the brakes on Petraeus' plan. Proposals may include fixed withdrawal dates, like the one Barack Obama is stumping for, a pushed-up withdrawal timetable or a trigger mechanism for pullout if the next round of independent government reports are as pessimistic as last week's.
At this stage, it's doubtful even a rousing speech like those Bush used to give earlier in his presidency could persuade fence-sitting Republicans not to defect. Many Iraq experts agree with Bush that withdrawal in the near future promises a full-blown ethnosectarian war, mass displacement and a major humanitarian crisis. Whether the U.S. is able to prevent those nightmare scenarios, or should continue to take losses in an effort to do so, is where Bush finds himself increasingly alone.
The arguments for staying in, it should be noted, are as compelling as those for staying out. They're simply a lot less popular. There were no slam-dunk moments for Petraeus or Crocker during the hearings, and the consequence may just be a veto-proof majority of opposition to Bush in both houses.
Keeping in mind that Bush has been deeply unpopular for some time and hasn't been caught crying about it, opponents should assume he's got the stomach for a fight. Thanks to all those congressional subpoenas flying out of Congress recently, we've heard the term "constitutional showdown" used quite a bit. In reality, we haven't seen anything close to one. If Congress attempts to curb the president's war powers, that may not be the case for long.
Photo by Liz Lynch.
Posted at 7:53 PM
Posted to:
Bush Administration, Congress, Constitution, David Petraeus, Iraq, Middle East, Military, President Bush
Share via
