No Escalation

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There’s buzz building about a speech by Senator Ted Kennedy at the National Press Conference Club this morning. The Senator is sponsoring a bill requiring congressional approval of Bush’s planned escalation in Iraq.

Eventually I hope to post a YouTube video of the speech. Raw Story has a transcript.

In a conference call to bloggers, the Senator reminded us that the resolution of October 2002 that authorized use of force in Iraq was predicated on three assumptions: (1) That Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction; (2) that Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship with al Qaeda; and (3) that Saddam Hussein had broken UN resolutions. Well, the first two turned out to be false, and the third is now moot. President Bush cannot assume to continue military action in Iraq without further authorization.

But time is critical. If Congress doesn’t speak right now, Bush could have more troops on their way to Iraq the day after tomorrow. And then Congress would be put on the spot to refuse appropriations for actions already taken and troops already deployed.

The idea that Congress doesn’t have the authority to limit Bush’s actions is refuted by history. The Center for American Progress has a list of caps and limitations imposed by Congress in military adventures past.

Robert Greenwald forwarded this email from the Senator and asked it be disseminated:

Thank you so much for your concern and involvement on the issue of Iraq. I deeply believe that Iraq is the defining issue of our time. I am proud to have voted against the authorization for war in 2002, but the issue now is what we do going forward. Tomorrow night, President Bush is going to outline for the nation his “way forward” in Iraq. And from all reports, his way forward involves escalating American involvement by sending up to 20,000 more soldiers and Marines to fight in the middle of what has become a civil war. Every American, no matter what their political stripe, knows that the current strategy isn’t working and that we need a better way forward. I believe that President Bush’s plan is the wrong way forward. It’s just stay the course under a different name, and I strongly oppose it.

Today, I will introduce legislation that requires Congress to vote before the President escalates troop levels in Iraq. My legislation will provide that not one additional soldier can be sent and not one additional dollar can be expended until Congress debates and approves the President’s proposed escalation of American forces in Iraq. If the election in November was about anything, it was about accountability and the need for a changed policy in Iraq. Most Americans oppose this war, and an even more oppose sending more troops to Iraq. The American people deserve to be heard before we appropriate additional funds for additional troops in Iraq. In October 2002, Congress authorized (1) a war against the regime of Saddam Hussein because (2) he was believed to have weapons of mass destruction and (3) an operational relationship with Al Qaeda, and (4) because he was in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution. Today, Saddam Hussein is dead and we know that there were no weapons of mass destruction or operational relationships with Al Qaeda and there is a new, elected government in Iraq that is not in defiance of a Security Council Resolution. No one can dispute that the mission of our armed forces today in Iraq no longer bears any resemblance to the mission authorized by Congress.

Instead of continued mistakes and shoot-from-the-hip policies, it’s time to get this right. The President must make clear the mission of our troops and lay out a path to bring them home, and Congress must stop being a rubberstamp for failed policies and stand up and act.

We know from history that an escalation of troops into a civil war won’t work. Our leaders tried it in Vietnam, and each surge of force lead to the next. It escalated the war, instead of ending it. Like Vietnam, there is no military solution to Iraq, only political. It seems that the President is almost the last person in America to understand that.

An escalation of American forces would only compound the original misguided decision to invade Iraq. A military escalation in Iraq will not strengthen our national security; rather, it would further weaken it by enabling the Iraqis to avoid taking responsibility for their own future. And an escalation will not lead us to victory. American troops can’t force the Iraqis reconcile their internal differences.

Our service men and women in Iraq have served with distinction and valor. They’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do, and they’ve done it well. More than 3,000 of our best and our brightest have been killed in Iraq and more than 22,000 more have being wounded, many of them seriously. Our troops deserve a policy worthy of their sacrifice and their bravery, and I will continue to fight until we have one.

I urge every American to ensure their voice is heard in this critical decision. When the President speaks tomorrow night, he must be reminded that accountability and responsibility are no longer extinct in Washington ? they are alive and well.

Thank you, Robert, for always being involved in what Olive Wendell Holmes called the passion and action of our time. You continue to make an enormous difference. All the best,

Ted Kennedy

So, right now, contact your congressperson. Contact your senators. Write letters to newspapers. Do whatever you can to show support for Congress to stop more useless slaughter.

Update: Gallup Poll says the public opposes troop escalation by 61% to 36%.

Getting Colder

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Following up the last post — Just to show How Far the Righty Have Fallen — rightie bloggers are whoopin’ and high-fivin’ it up over the missile strike in Somalia. For example, Curt at Flopping Aces celebrates payback for the U.S. troops killed in the 1993 “Blackhawk Down” firefight in Mogadishu. “God knows we would never get it when Clinton was in office,” he says.

I assume the Bush Administration plans a retaliation for the U.S.S. Cole bombing of 2000 sometime in 2013. I guess we’re taking the old saying “revenge is a dish best served cold” literally.

The Pentagon says the recent attack was not about what happened in 1993. However, one of their justifications for blitzing the Islamists involved the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by al Qaeda in 1998. Suspected perpetrators of those acts of terrorism are being harbored by the ICU, the Pentagon said.

In 1998 the Clinton Administration waited only 13 days after the embassy bombings, not 13 years, to launch cruise missiles that struck an al Qaeda training complex in Afghanistan and destroyed a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in the Sudan that allegedly produced nerve gas. You might remember that subsequent news stories said the facility in Sudan was a legitimate pharmaceutical plant and that the missile attack killed an innocent night watchman. Republicans verbally bludgeoned President Clinton about the dead night watchman and the “aspirin factory” for, well, a long time. I think they’re still at it.

Still, you’d think that they would have approved striking and destroying an al Qaeda training facility in Afghanistan. Guess again; grief for that dear, innocent night watchman far overwhelmed any concern for national security. Ol’ blood ‘n’ guts himself, Christopher Hitchens, sniffed:

Well then, what was the hurry? A hurry that was panicky enough for the president and his advisors to pick the wrong objective and then, stained with embarrassment and retraction, to refuse the open inquiry that could have settled the question in the first place? There is really only one possible answer to that question. Clinton needed to look “presidential” for a day. He may even have needed a vacation from his family vacation. In any event, he acted with caprice and brutality and with a complete disregard for international law, and perhaps counted on the indifference of the press and public to a negligible society like that of Sudan, and killed wogs to save his own lousy Hyde (to say nothing of our new moral tutor, the ridiculous sermonizer Lieberman). No bipartisan contrition is likely to be offered to the starving Sudanese: unmentioned on the “prayer-breakfast” circuit.

After 9/11, of course, the rightie tune was that Clinton should have acted quicker and bombed the Afghanistan facility while Osama bin Laden was still there. The attack missed him by hours.

Regarding the pharma plant, though I understand the CIA and some former Clinton Administration officials still stand by the nerve gas claim, consensus leans on the aspirin factory side of the story. Even so, going by this Wikipedia article, the Clinton Administration was a lot more successful at capturing, prosecuting, and convicting the perpetrators of the embassy bombings than the Bush Administration has been concerning those responsible for 9/11.

However, as this blogger points out, righties since then have become considerably more sanguine about the slaughter of civilians, including children, in the name of fighting terrorism. Yep, after the attacks on 9/11 the righties shed their tender sensibilities rather abruptly, and they flipflopped from complaining that Clinton had done too much to claiming he hadn’t done enough.

The missile story also reminded me of this famous exchange between Senator Bob Kerrey and National Security Adviser Condi Rice from the 9/11 commission hearings:

KERREY: You’ve used the phrase a number of times, and I’m hoping with my question to disabuse you of using it in the future.

You said the president was tired of swatting flies.

Can you tell me one example where the president swatted a fly when it came to al-Qaida prior to 9-11?

RICE: I think what the president was speaking to was …

KERREY: No, no. What fly had he swatted?

RICE: Well, the disruptions abroad was what he was really focusing on …

KERREY: No, no …

RICE: … when the CIA would go after Abu Zubaydah …

KERREY: He hadn’t swatted …

RICE: … or go after this guy …

KERREY: Dr. Rice, we didn’t …

RICE: That was what was meant.

KERREY: We only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn’t swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?

RICE: We swatted at — I think he felt that what the agency was doing was going after individual terrorists here and there, and that’s what he meant by swatting flies. It was simply a figure of speech.

KERREY: Well, I think it’s an unfortunate figure of speech because I think, especially after the attack on the Cole on the 12th of October, 2000, it would not have been swatting a fly. It would not have been — we did not need to wait to get a strategic plan.

Dick Clarke had in his memo on the 20th of January overt military operations. He turned that memo around in 24 hours, Dr. Clarke. There were a lot of plans in place in the Clinton administration — military plans in the Clinton administration.

In fact, since we’re in the mood to declassify stuff, there was — he included in his January 25th memo two appendices — Appendix A: Strategy for the elimination of the jihadist threat of al-Qaida; Appendix B: Political military plan for al-Qaida.

So I just — why didn’t we respond to the Cole?

RICE: Well, we …

KERREY: Why didn’t we swat that fly?

Ahh, those were the days. There’s more amusing nostalgia in the linked old post. Are the righties now reduced to cheering the swatting of flies? To be fair, Pajamas Media reports the U.S. has “boots on the ground” in Somalia, but so far I haven’t picked up this information in other news stories.

In January 1998, the neocons at PNAC sent a letter to President Clinton advising him that “regime change” in Iraq should be the aim of U.S. policy in the Middle East. A look at PNAC’s archives for 1997-2000 reveals the pnac’ers were obsessed with Saddam Hussein. But they seem not to have noticed Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda at all, unless I’m missing something. Even memorandums written within days of the embassy bombings are about Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. And these are the same geniuses pushing Bush into an escalation in Iraq now. If neocon policies don’t touch off a pancontinental war across the Middle East and much of Africa it will be a miracle.

Another Mission Accomplished

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The Pentagon said yesterday that the U.S. had attacked suspected al Qaeda targets in southern Somalia. CNN reports:

The operation was launched based on intelligence that al Qaeda operatives were at the location, but there was no immediate indication of how successful the strike had been.

The official said the al Qaeda operatives had fled south late last month from Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, after Ethiopian-backed Somali troops forced out Islamist militants who had taken over much of southern Somalia. (Watch CNN’s Barbara Starr report on al Qaeda in Somalia.)

He did not identify the operatives, but U.S. officials accused the Islamic Courts Union of harboring suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

As this BBC timeline explains, the Ethiopian-backed Somalian government, which has been battling to take Somalia back from Islamists for awhile, captured Mogadishu right after Christmas and seized the port of Kismayo — “the last remaining stronghold” of the Islamists — on January 1. The BBC explains that now the United States is attacking Islamist fighters to keep them from regrouping and fomenting guerrilla war, which might make Somalia start to look a whole lot like Iraq.

As Andrew Cawthorne of Reuters reported after the fall of Kismayo on January 1,

“Washington encouraged Addis Ababa [Ethiopia] to go ahead. They provided the same sort of diplomatic cover they did for Israel going into Lebanon last summer, and for similar reasons — to keep a foothold in the region,” said analyst Michael Weinstein.

“Ordinary Americans are fed up with foreign interventions. So what’s happened in Somalia is now going to be a preferred strategy — using allies in the region as their catapult,” said Weinstein, a politics professor at Indiana’s Purdue University.

Western military sources say the United States gave Ethiopia intelligence and surveillance help to accelerate its victory.

Both Washington and Addis Ababa had portrayed the Islamists as linked to and even run by al Qaeda, putting Somalia firmly on the map of the U.S.-led global “war on terror”.

Yet President George W. Bush, haunted by such moments as his premature declaration of victory in Iraq in 2003, and his Africa policy-makers are unlikely to be crowing victory quickly.

Some analysts predict the Islamists, who fled rather than take heavy casualties, could regroup and fight an Iraq-style insurgency from remote corners of Somalia, or carry out bomb attacks elsewhere in east Africa.

“The parallels with Iraq are unsettling,” said Nairobi-based Somalia expert Matt Bryden.

There is no guarantee of peace and harmony in Somalia now that six months of Islamist sharia rule are over.

Indeed, the rapid return of warlords to Mogadishu shows how easily it could slide back into the anarchy and chaos it has suffered since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991.

“The Americans have learned enough in Somalia not to run up a ‘mission accomplished’ banner,” Bryden said.

Au contraire. Vance Serchuk The Weekly Standard seems to be waving a “mission accomplished” banner rather proudly in the current issue (January 15):

After holding Mogadishu for six months, Somalia’s Islamists have been swept from power, ousted in a blitzkrieg attack by the Ethiopian military. The nature of the emerging political order in Somalia remains profoundly uncertain, with the retreating Islamists threatening to wage an Iraq-style insurgency, and the internationally recognized Somali government facing doubts about its popular legitimacy, internal cohesion, and ability to ensure even basic security. Still, the battlefield gains of the past two weeks have created a rare window of opportunity in this long-suffering corner of the Horn of Africa, as well as in the broader war on terror.

The rout of the Islamists also represents a surprising success for the Bush administration, whose Somalia policy seemed hopelessly mired in interagency acrimony just a few months ago. Following the defeat of a coalition of CIA-backed “secular” warlords by the Islamists earlier this year, angry accusations flew from the State Department about Langley’s botched efforts, which seemed to have helped consolidate the very threat they were intended to preempt.

Yet ultimately, it was the behavior of the Islamists themselves, once established in power, that spurred key officials at Foggy Bottom to embrace a new, more aggressive set of policies. Prisoners to their ideology, the hardliners in Mogadishu failed to take the pragmatic steps that could have led to a rapprochement with the United States and allowed them to outflank the hapless “official” Somali government. Instead, the Islamists continued to shelter several known al Qaeda operatives, while welcoming other foreign jihadists into their ranks.

If only those awful hardliners had taken those pragmatic steps … but at The Agonist, Ian Welsh puts a different spin on pragmatism:

See, here’s the thing. The US, again, refused to talk directly to the ICU [Islamic Courts Union]. The ICU, like Hezbollah, wanted, needed, recognition (even more than Hezbollah). A deal could have been made. But it wasn’t. Instead what the US has done is back a foreign invasion in support of a puppet government with no popular support. …

…To summarize: the US has backed letting the warlords get back to their business of murder, extortion and rape. I’m sure the Somali people appreciate that.

Perhaps you see the problem.

Anyway, Jonathan Clayton of the Times (UK) writes that Somalia could start looking a whole lot like Iraq anyway.

The United States’ decision to bomb Islamists holed up in a corner of Somalia near the border with Kenya is a high-risk tactic which could ignite an Iraqi-style insurgency across a swathe of East Africa, analysts and regional experts say.

Buoyed by the success that its allies — Ethiopia and the UN-backed transitional Government — have had in driving the Islamists out of the capital in recent weeks, Washington clearly feels that it has an opportunity to wipe out what it sees as a persistent threat to Western interests in the region. The Americans have gone for the jugular.

The danger is that the high loss of life reported and the likelihood that many non-al Qaeda sympathisers have been killed, including more moderate leaders of the defeated Union of Islamic Courts, could see the operation backfire spectacularly and unite Somalis against its new US-supported government.

“The US has sided with one Somali faction against another, this could be the beginning of a new civil war … I fear once again they have gone for a quick fix based on false information. If they pull it off, however, it could be a turning point. The stakes are very high indeed, now,” said one highly respected regional analyst, recalling the futile US role in the hunt in the early 1990s for one Somali warlord which resulted in the Black Hawk Down incident when 18 US special forces troops were killed.

It may take some time to sort out the facts, but today’s news stories contain a number of claims of many civilian casualties as a result of the U.S. attacks, plus indications that Somalians are pissed off. Ethiopia and Somalia have a history, as they say, plus Ethiopia has a large Christian population, and Somali Muslims were not thrilled by the presence of Ethiopian troops in their country. Add civilian casualties from a U.S. raid, and insurrection easily could follow. Voilà — the mission is un-accomplished.

Our Last, Best Hope?

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Hope Yen of the Associated Press reported today:

President Bush will address the nation at 9 p.m. EST Wednesday about his new approach for the war in Iraq , the White House said. Bush is expected to announce an increase of up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops.

Yen goes on to report House Speaker (yay!) Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that Congress might not approve funds for military escalation in Iraq, and that Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader (yay!) Harry Reid sent a letter to Bush last week that said it was time to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq.

However,

Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a 2008 presidential candidate, said increasing troops would be a “tragic mistake.” But he contended Congress was constitutionally powerless to second-guess Bush‘s military strategy because lawmakers had voted to authorize the commander in chief to wage war.

I think that Biden is wrong on the Constitutional issue, and have said so before.

Shaun Waterman writes for the World Peace Harold:

“It’s a fundamental constitutional principle that Congress can initiate and regulate war,” law Prof. Neil Kinkopf of Georgia State University told United Press International.

Kinkopf, a former Clinton administration Justice Department official who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, authored a paper for the American Constitution Society last week arguing that Congress has the power to stop President Bush sending additional troops to Iraq — a move many expect him to announce this week.

I think Biden is hiding behind the Constitution to avoid the political risk of confronting Bush directly. Personally, I think he’s taking the greater political risk by being a wuss. Biden recently announced he is a candidate for the presidency in ’08. Does he seriously think he’s going to survive the primaries by being a Bush appeaser?

But let’s stick with constitutional issues for now. There’s no question that, over the years, the separation of powers between Congress and the White House vis à vis war have been corrupted considerably. Alexander Hamilton made it clear (well, pretty clear, given the 18th century English) in Federalist #69 that the President’s role of commander in chief had limits (emphasis added).

The President is to be the “commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States. …” … The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies — all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.

Hamilton’s views on the CinC role as expressed in Federalist #69 and elsewhere were that the President was something like a supreme military commander, coordinating the forces of the army, navy, and militia (which would morph into the National Guard, but that’s a long story) during time of war. Remember, the Founding Guys were preparing to tap George Washington for the CinC position. There was also some discussion among the FG’s about possibly relieving a president of the CinC job if he proved not to be too good at it. Unfortunately, they didn’t put that into writing.

Findlaw has an annotated Constitution online that I find to be an excellent resource for understanding constitutional issues. Here is the annotation for the duties of the commander-in-chief addressed in Article II, Section 2, first paragraph. The annotation provides a thumbnail history of how the CinC role became expanded and enlarged over the years. Much of this enlargement came about to enable the President to respond to emergencies — invasions and insurrections — in a timely manner, without having to convene Congress and have a debate. There were other reasons for tilting the war powers toward the executive branch that Findlaw discusses that I’m not going to review here.

Now, compare and contrast to the war powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8, paragraphs 11-14. The Findlaw annotation suggests there was considerable disagreement among the authors of the constitution about exactly who was responsible for what. Congress alone has the power to declare war, but court challenges arising from the Civil War brought about a SCOTUS decision that a state of war could exist without Congress declaring it. The question that haunts us to the present day is, “whether the President is empowered to commit troops abroad to further national interests in the absence of a declaration of war or specific congressional authorization short of such a declaration.”

Skipping ahead, we get to the War Powers Act of 1973. Dahlia Lithwick explains,

Under the War Powers Act, the president has 90 days after introducing troops into hostilities to obtain congressional approval of that action. It looks good on paper, but presidents have generally ignored the War Powers Act, citing Article II, Section 2 as their authority to send soldiers into combat.

But that takes us back to the original separation of powers issue — who gets to decide when the nation should commit troops? Although the Constitution doesn’t spell this out specifically, I do not believe the authors of the Constitution intended the President to have the power to send troops wherever he likes as long as he likes at his discretion.

We’re hearing a lot of noise from the pundits about the “power of the purse,” as if Congress’s only responsibility to the military is to fund it. But the Constitution provides that Congress alone not only has the power to declare war, also Congress is to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” Further, Congress alone has the explicit authority to “punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations,” the latter being as close to a global war on terror as the Founders might have imagined, IMO.

Very basically, my reading of the Constitution and various testaments of its authors suggest to me that the intention was to give Congress the authority to make political decisions about committing troops, and the president the authority to decide how to use the nation’s military resources to carry out the will of Congress. Although the President has some power to use military force without waiting for Congress’s permission, it’s going way too far to claim that Congress has nothing whatsoever to say about how the President uses the military and can check him only by denying funds. I believe Congress does have the authority, under the Constitution, to order the President to clean up his mess and bring the war in Iraq to a close.

This is an important point, because denying all funds for the Iraq War could have some consequences the advocates of that tactic haven’t thought out. I believe strongly that if the tactic would put our troops overseas at any increased risk whatsoever, it’s the wrong move. Further, that kind of brute force grandstanding could put the nation’s government into serious disarray and invite a mighty backlash against the tactic’s perpetrators. It’s a highly dangerous move, in other words, and I don’t blame Democrats for being reluctant to make that move.

But here’s the good news, courtesy of Think Progress:

According to a tally by Think Progress, only seven lawmakers have given their public support to Bush’s escalation plan, twenty-three have come out in opposition, and fifteen have said they will withhold judgement for now.

Think Progress will be keeping tabs on who is willing to go along with Bush’s misguided plan and who is speaking out against it here. Help us keep it updated by leaving more examples in the comments. (Or send us an email).

A veto-proof, bipartisan majority in Congress willing to say no to Bush would be the best of all possible developments. Not only would it pave the way for Congress to exert more authority; bipartisanship means neither party would take the blame for whatever mess Iraq is left in when we leave. I believe this is to the Republicans’ advantage as well as Democrats’, which is why I’ve had some hope for awhile that congressional Republicans eventually will choose to throw Bush overboard to save themselves. And that eventuality is, IMO, getting closer every day.

From The Economist:

Bush’s double-or-quits policy is rife with risks, not just in the Middle East — where the hanging of Saddam Hussein reminded the world just how far Iraq has sunk — but also back home.

They are risks that threaten to reduce Bush to Nixonian levels of isolation, and that threaten long-term damage to the Republican Party. Bush told journalist Bob Woodward that he would not withdraw from Iraq even if his wife and dog were the only people left on his side. The jest may not prove idle.

This might sound like hyperbole. Bush is currently receiving powerful support for surge from two of the country’s most prominent politicians: John McCain, who is the front-runner to win the Republican nomination in 2008, and Joe Lieberman, a former Democratic vice presidential candidate who defeated an anti-war Democrat in last year’s congressional elections. The two men are back from a 10-day visit to Iraq, and are even more voluble than usual.

At the same time, the Democratic leadership continues to be nervous about confronting Bush directly on the subject. Harry Reid, the new Senate majority leader, proclaimed his support for surge under certain conditions, before changing his mind a couple of days later. Hillary Clinton pulled the opposite trick — first coming out against surge, then laying down conditions that would make her change her mind.

But the hyperbole is fast becoming reality. McCain and Lieberman are part of a diminishing band of diehards on the Iraq War (Lieberman is a band of one on the Democratic side). And the Democratic leadership is likely to be forced to drop its equivocations over the next few weeks.

The most worrying problem for Bush, though, is the growing hostility to surge in his own party. Chuck Hagel’s description of the policy as Alice in Wonderland is par for the course: the senator for Nebraska has long criticized the war. But now two other senators who face uphill races for re-election in 2008 have added their voices to the criticism: Oregon’s Gordon Smith and Minnesota’s Norm Coleman.

Robert Novak, a long-time Republican-watcher, says Bush will find it hard to get the support of more than a dozen of the 49 Republican senators for sending more troops.

You can do your part to shove matters along by leaning on your Senators and Congress critters and signing Moveon’s petition against escalation.

Remember, Iraq isn’t the only serious issue we face now. The Democrats will be holding investigations and hearings on other critical matters, like torture and surveillance without warrants. These should not be seen as minor, secondary details to Iraq. And some semblance of bipartisanship would strengthen the Dems’ hands.

Sorta kinda related: Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith write at AlterNet that the Democratic Congress and the Republican White House seem to be engaged in a Constitutional collision course, and not just on Iraq.

Resist the Surge

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What Steve Gilliard says.

[Update] Wes Clark has an op ed in today’s Washington Post that’s worth a read.

The odds are that this week President Bush will announce a “surge” of up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq. Will this deliver a “win”? Probably not. But it will distract us from facing the deep-seated regional issues that must be resolved….

… What the surge would do is put more American troops in harm’s way, further undercut the morale of U.S. forces and risk further alienating elements of the Iraqi populace. American casualties would probably rise, at least temporarily, as more troops appeared on the streets — as happened in the summer when a brigade from Alaska was extended and sent into Baghdad. And even if the increased troop presence initially frustrated the militias, it wouldn’t be long before they found ways to work around the neighborhood searches and other obstacles, if they chose to continue the conflict.

Other uses for troops include accelerating training of the Iraqi military and police. But vetting these Iraqi forces for loyalty has proved problematic. So neither accelerated training nor adding Iraqi troops to the security mission can be viewed as though a specified increase in effort would yield an identical increase in return.

The truth is that the underlying problems are political, not military.

Vicious ethnic cleansing is underway, as various factions fight for power and survival. In this environment, security is unlikely to come from smothering the struggle with a blanket of forces — and increasing U.S. efforts is likely to generate additional resistance, especially from Iraq’s neighbors. More effective action is needed to resolve the struggle at the political level. A new U.S. ambassador might help, but the administration needs to recognize that the neoconservative vision has failed.

[Update update] Paul Krugman on the surge:

[W]hat’s clear is the enormous price our nation is paying for President Bush’s character flaws.

Promising Developments

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Nico at Think Progress:

This morning on CBS’s Face the Nation, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced that Congress may refuse to authorize funding for an escalation of U.S. forces to Iraq if President Bush cannot justify the strategy.

Pelosi stated clearly that Congress will fully support all U.S. forces currently in Iraq. “But if the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it,” Pelosi said. “This is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions, and we have gone into this situation, which is a war without end, which the American people have rejected.”

See also Taylor Marsh and Bob Geiger.

Demagoguery

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Here’s a YouTube video of Cindy Sheehan (via Mahablog commenter Sachem515) that I actually find a bit alarming.

In this video Sheehan says,

Rahm Emanuel, worked against every anti war candidate that ran in the primaries, and actually some of them that ran in the general elections. Rahm Emanuel, worked against every single one of those people.

Certainly, Emanuel in his capacity as chair of the DCCC ran away from the Iraq War last year. Certainly, he recruited and pushed Dem primary candidates whom he considered “safe” on Iraq — meaning, those who were willing to mouth pablum about staying “until the job is done.” Certainly Emanuel made stupid choices about candidates and races in which to invest DCCC money. Certainly, after the midterms Emanuel took credit that he didn’t deserve. And yes, he’s a back-stabbing ass. But to claim that he worked against any Democrat in the general election is going too far, I think. Let’s not get carried away here. If anyone can alert me to an incident in which Emanuel actually seemed to be trying to undermine a Dem candidate in the general election (claims that he didn’t work hard enough for somebody don’t count), please let me know.

The other part of this video that bothered me was Sheehan’s whining about Nancy Pelosi not including Iraq and impeachment in her “first 100 hours” legislative blitz. Sheehan is being disingenuous, or is misinformed, or is extremely stupid. The issues chosen for the “100 hours” were narrowly focused items to be accomplished in 100 hours. As in, getting bills passed and out the House door within 100 hours. The “100 hours” items were never intended to be the entire Democratic agenda; just a kick-off. The “100 hours” items are:

  • Adopt the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, a bipartisan panel created to investigate the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon
  • Increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25
  • Expand the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research
  • Require the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to reduce prices in the Medicare prescription drug program
  • Cut student loan rates for college undergraduates
  • Foster the development of alternative energy by creating a fund to be financed by the oil industry

    • The “100 hours” amounted to Pelosi’s version of Newt Gingrich’s famous “Contract On With America” from 2004 1994. These items were chosen because they were low-hanging fruit — popular with voters, good items to campaign on, and the House ought to be able to pass the bills within the time limit. A gimmick, yes, but all of the six items are important issues that have been held up by the Republicans lo these many years.

    Even Sheehan ought to be bright enough to know that the House could not whip up bills of impeachment in just 100 hours.

    Regarding impeachment — I’m all for it, but if it’s actually going to be accomplished the issue needs to be handled with great care. The issue is political dynamite, and if the Dems act prematurely — before there is a very strong public consensus in favor — it could blow up in their faces. It’s cheap and easy for Sheehan to demagogue the subject, as her ass isn’t on the line.

    Hearings are a good first step. Congressional hearings in the past have made a huge impact on public opinion. We do need to push the Dems for all the hearings and investigations they can think of. Several are already rarin’ to go. I hope the investigations will make impeachment viable.

    But Sheehan’s whining about the Dems is not helping to make impeachment viable. If she wants to help, she should use her stature as an antiwar activist to bring a serious discussion of impeachment to the public. Pandering to the easy applause of her fawning admirers must be fun, but it’s not going to make a dime’s worth of difference to the Cause.

    Finally, I very much dislike Sheehan’s implication that Iraq was the only issue that mattered with voters, and that antiwar activism was the entire reason the Dems took back the House and Senate, and that Iraq and impeachment are the only issues that matter now. A lot of Americans also care deeply about minimum wage and prescription drug prices and national security issues that don’t involve overseas wars. As important as Iraq is, this is not the time for the Dems to become a one-issue party; nor do I think so many Dems would have been elected had they all been one-issue candidates.

    Many of us have been looking to the day in which real progressivism might make a comeback for many years before George Bush was President. I think we may have a shot. If the Dems blow off progressivism in the next two years, I don’t expect to live long enough to get another shot. Sheehan may not care about progressivism, but some of us do.

    I’m anticipating many comments in support of Saint Cindy. Yes, I’ve gone from being a Sheehan admirer to concern that she’s just a female Ralph Nader. (I used to be an admirer of Ralph Nader, too; the only difference is that it took me thirty years to see the truth about Ralph [Update: see this, too]. I’m either getting quicker, or more jaded.) Note that I agree with a lot of what Sheehan says, and I am not at all opposed to holding Dem feet to fire as needed. But demagoguery is demagoguery, and a lot of what I see in that video looks like demagoguery to me.

    It Was a Nice Planet While It Lasted

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    The Times of London is reporting that Israel plans to nuke Iran. Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter (who are stationed in the United States) report:

    ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

    Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

    The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

    Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

    “As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources.

    There’s good reason to be skeptical of this story and suspect either bad reporting or Israeli saber-rattling. Still …

    The “Plan”

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    David Sanger writs in tomorrow’s New York Times,

    President Bush’s new Iraq strategy calls for a rapid influx of forces that could add as many as 20,000 American combat troops to Baghdad, supplemented with a jobs program costing as much as $1 billion intended to employ Iraqis in projects including painting schools and cleaning streets, according to American officials who are piecing together the last parts of the initiative.

    Why couldn’t he have created a jobs program for New Orleans? But pay close attention to this section:

    When Mr. Bush gives his speech, he will cast much of the program as an effort to bolster Iraq’s efforts to take command over their own forces and territory, the American officials said. He will express confidence that Mr. Maliki is committed to bringing under control both the Sunni-led insurgency and the Shiite militias that have emerged as the source of most of the violence. Mr. Maliki picked up those themes in a speech in Baghdad on Saturday in which he said that multinational troops would support an Iraqi effort to secure the capital. …

    …The American officials who described the plan included some who said they were increasingly concerned about Mr. Maliki’s intentions and his ability to deliver. They said senior Bush administration officials had been deeply disturbed by accounts from witnesses to last Saturday’s hanging of Saddam Hussein, who said they believed that guards involved in carrying out the execution were linked to the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that is headed by Moktada al-Sadr, whose name some of the executioners shouted while Mr. Hussein stood on the gallows.

    “If that’s an indication of how Maliki is operating these days, we’ve got a deeper problem with the bigger effort,” said one official, who insisted on anonymity because he was discussing internal administration deliberations over a strategy that Mr. Bush has not yet publicly announced.

    Thanks to the BooMan for pointing this out.

    This AP Associated Press story gives more clues to the meticulous planning and U.S. – Iraqi coordination that is going into the “Plan.”

    Al-Suneid and al-Maliki insisted that this drive to contain militants, as opposed to a largely ineffective joint operation with the Americans in the second half of 2006, would succeed because it would be in the hands of Iraqi commanders who have been promised American backup and airpower if they call for it.

    But U.S. political and military officials — in a message of congratulation on Iraq’s Army Day — tempered Iraqi claims of full independence.

    ”As stated by the prime minister today, MNF-I (U.S. forces) will provide appropriate assistance as determined by Iraqi and coalition (American) field commanders, for the implementation of the new plan for securing Baghdad and its surrounding environs,” said the statement from U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and overall American commander Gen. George W. Casey.

    And, of course both Khalilzad and Gen. Casey are being replaced — see Dam Froomkin.

    Back to the jobs program — Atrios writes,

    In all seriousness, of course throwing huge amounts of money at Iraqis to rebuild the country is the obvious thing to do. It was such the obvious thing to do that some of us were a bit confused when we realized they weren’t doing it. Had there been a massive public works program which hired Real Live Iraqis instead of whoever the hell Halliburton was importing to do the work, and instead of painting the goddamn schools they’d managed to turn the lights on for more than a couple of hours per day there’s some chance things could’ve worked out a bit better. My opposition to the war was never based on predictions of the disaster we have now, the scope of which is at least in part due to the fact that we have drooling imbecilic ideologues who couldn’t run a lemonade stand running this thing. I’m not saying the “incompetence dodgers” have a point – the war was a horribly wrong idea for so many reasons – just that it is clear that had there not been so much incompetence things would be at least a bit better.

    And just to show that there’s absolutely no hope the White House team will be any less incompetent, see Mark Benjamin in Salon:

    Hawks gathered in the plush, carpeted suites of the conservative American Enterprise Institute on Friday to discuss a new course in Iraq they say should be spearheaded by tens of thousands of new troops camped out in Baghdad neighborhoods in active combat roles well into 2008.

    The plan is not to be dismissed. Unlike the much ballyhooed Iraq Study Group, these are the people President Bush listens to, many of them the same influential voices who were predicting in 2002 that the war would establish a flower of democracy in the Middle East. Sitting in the overheated, standing-room-only conference hall, a Department of Homeland Security official leaned over to me to note the irony that reporters had paid so much attention to the workings of the Iraq Study Group, as opposed to the troop-surge plans being cooked up at AEI. “This is the Iraq Study Group,” he quipped.

    Among those in attendance to bless the plan were Senators John McCain and, of course, Joe Lieberman.