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Rend Al-Rahim's got the best idea I've heard in a long time for some sort of acceptible solution to the whole problem of Iraq: convene a Dayton-type meeting with all the factions, and hammer out an agreement they can all live with. Who knows what the chances of success would be, but like I said, this is the first truly original idea I've heard in a long time, so it deserves to be debated, at the very least.
I wrote an article predicting how the Iraq war would be ended by Democrats in Congress back in January which prognosticated that it wouldn't be until this fall that Republicans would start supporting Democratic efforts to end the war.
David Broder, of the Washington Post, has finally come around to my way of thinking. Since he's seen as being a kind of "dean of the chattering classes" I must admit I feel a bit vindicated.
Last night on PBS' News Hour With Jim Lehrer, Republican Senator (from Texas -- where else?) Kay Bailey Hutchison apparantly does not live on this planet. She was speaking of (in her opinion) the ridiculousness of running a war in Baghdad from Washington, D.C., but the way she put it earns her a Biggest Whopper Of The Week award. She said we can't try to run a war "from 30,000 miles away," putting the Capitol building somewhere between the Earth and the moon (Distance from Washington, D.C. to Baghdad as the "great circle" flies: 6,222 miles; Earth's diameter: 7,900 miles; Distance from Earth to moon: 240,000 miles; Kay Bailey Hutchison's science IQ: ???).
The third option is not a palatable one, because the news media will attempt to portray it as "the Democrats blinked" (the news media's not very good with nuance and grey areas). But it is really the only politically viable strategy at this point. President Bush is, sadly, going to get his escalation.
On the positive side, you have already forced all of Washington into a consensus on a very important point, without even having to vote on it: September is the deadline for the "surge." Democrats, Republicans, and the news media are all in agreement on this one crucial milestone: if there is no marked progress as a result of the surge by September, the troops are going to start coming home.
While some in the media are holding out hope that the White House will sit down like adults and work with the congressional conference committee to agree on language that Bush will actually sign, it must be said that this is deluded and wishful thinking. Because Bush wants to veto this bill -- for several political reasons.
The first part of the legislation is a brilliant idea championed by Jack Murtha. It is a masterful bit of legislative jiujitsu that turns the tables on Republicans (which is why they've been so terrified of it, and why right-wing pundits have been personally attacking Murtha ever since he came up with the idea). Murtha's idea is to tie Bush's hands by requiring any soldiers deployed to Iraq to be (1) fully trained, (2) fully equipped, and (3) have had the adequate rest time off the battlefield which Pentagon regulations require. You can see why Republicans are terrified of the prospect of voting against such an idea -- how can you say you "support the troops" if you vote against any of these common-sense ideas which actually do support the troops instead of just paying lip service to the idea? But since the Republicans have been making such a stink, Pelosi has seemingly softened the language a bit, by adding a loophole whereby Bush could send untrained, unequipped and unrested soldiers into Iraq by personally signing off a waiver for them to go, no matter what the Pentagon said. Although the mainstream media is painting this as somehow "backing down" from Murtha's original stance, it is also a brilliant way to paint Bush into a corner. If troops were demonstrably not ready to go, and Bush signed off on them anyway, then he will be the one to pay the political price with the military families and the public at large.
Don Larsen was, by all reports, an excellent Army Chaplain. When he was a Pentecostal Christian, that is. His superior while he was in Iraq, Chaplain Kevin L. McGhee, called Larsen "the best" out of the 26 chaplains he supervised. But then Larsen applied to change his religious affiliation to Wicca, and the Army railroaded him out of Iraq and out of the Army.
The whole sordid story is extensively detailed in a recent article in the Washington Post which (though long) is well worth reading for anyone interested in the subject.
That adds up to 57 votes. And that is three votes short of the 60 which are needed. Can the Democrats convince three Republican senators (most likely, three who are up for reelection in 2008) to vote against their party in the hopes of keeping their jobs?
I certainly hope so, but I wouldn't bet money on it at this point. Especially since Harry Reid is not only holding a Saturday vote at the beginning of a holiday weekend, but he is also hinting that if they do get the 60 votes to go forward, he will hold sessions all next week to debate the resolution and have a floor vote on it. Congress gets all of next week off, so a vote for the resolution is a vote to deny yourself a week of vacation. Not exactly an enticement for those sitting on the fence. Or maybe Reid is being crafty, and will back down from his threat to take away the Senate's vacation in return for those three votes? That would be a brilliant piece of political hardball, if he could pull it off.
We have lost more helicopters in Iraq during the past three weeks than during any period of the war. Details are sketchy, but we've lost either six or seven helicopters in the past few weeks (sources disagree on the total number, and on how many of these were military choppers and how many were civilian contractors'). Nobody seems to be sure if this is due to: (a) new tactics by insurgents with conventional weapons (heavy machine guns); (b) insurgents getting new weapons such as shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles (SAMs, or MANPADs); or (c) just a statistical anomaly.
So you can expect a lot of teeth-gnashing, and rending of garments in frustration from the Republicans in the House floor debates this week. But take it all with a grain of salt. The right-wing blogosphere, as I mentioned, is going to reach new heights of high dudgeon, but in the end there will only be one vote. And only one bill will pass over to the Senate, giving Harry Reid the opening he needs to pressure Senate Republicans: the House has already passed a bill, if Republicans stop debate on the House measure, then you are the obstructionists, and we're going to make damn sure American voters are aware of that fact, all the way up to Election Day 2008.