House Passes Iraq-Nam Withdraw Deadline

Friday, the US House of Representatives passed an emergency war appropriations bill that included for the first time a deadline for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq-Nam, September 2008. The vote was 218 for and 212 against. The bill carried with it a great deal of pork barrel spending in an effort to get extra GOP votes to ensure it passage. The Senate will take up the matter this week, but the deadline in its version is non-binding. Meanwhile, the White House had kittens over the vote, as well it should. The Democrats have ensured that the war remains the president’s baby for the next two years.

About an hour after the vote, the president was telling the media, “Today, a narrow majority in the House of Representatives abdicated its responsibility by passing a war spending bill that has no chance of becoming law, and brings us no closer to getting our troops the resources they need.” That much is true. Then, in a leap of logic that only one as unaccumstomed to making sense as the the president is, he said, “It delays the delivery of vital resources for our troops.” Quite how passing a $124 billion appropriations bill delays resources is unclear – unless he decides to veto the bill.

The pundits have suggested that the Democrats may have bitten off more than they can chew here, but in fact, the GOP is walking into a corner carrying the paint can as it goes. The Senate’s filibuster rule virtually ensures that the Republicans can talk and talk and talk to prevent the deadline being inserted into the Senate version of the bill. And in so doing, they will talk and talk and talk but not actually appropriate the needed funds. In addition, if the conference committee were to sneak the deadline back into the bill after the Senate votes (as the Republicans often would do in the previous congress), the president might have to carry out his veto threat. Quite how he would justify vetoing the needed money for his war is hard to see. And indeed, the hard-core, out-now crowd in the Congress would then have to simply do nothing to force the White House to withdraw much sooner than September 2008.

The pro-war case lost the last election, and in the hearts and minds of most Americans, every US soldier and marine who dies from here on out is a wasted life – whether that word can be voiced politely or not. The surge will ultimately fail because the Green Zone government in Iraq-Nam is prepared to fight to the last American, but it is unprepared to actually try to govern the country. The House vote doesn’t bring the war any closer to an end, but it has drawn the battle lines in Washington more clearly. This is Mr. Bush’s War, and he’s the one who lost it.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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