thedrifter
02-06-07, 07:08 AM
Senate vote: Discomforting, revealing, not about morale
Mon Feb 5, 6:43 AM ET
John Warner (news, bio, voting record) first volunteered to fight for his country at age 17, when he left high school and joined the Navy during World War II. He served until 1946, and four years later, he left law school to volunteer for the Marines in the Korean War. He eventually went on to serve as President Nixon's secretary of the Navy, and after being elected a Republican senator from Virginia in 1978, he rose to chair the Senate Armed Services Committee.
That's not the profile of someone who is naive about war. But now, at age 79, Warner is a leader in the fight to have Congress pass a non-binding resolution against President Bush's troop "surge" in Iraq -an undertaking that Bush and others criticize as undermining the war effort.
The crucial part of Warner's measure says, "The Senate disagrees with the 'plan' to augment our forces by 21,500, and urges the president instead to consider all options and alternatives … ."
The Senate faces hard votes on Warner's resolution and competing measures this week. Despite the courage of American troops and many Iraqis, the war has gone badly, metastasizing into something critics feared and the administration never imagined. Almost four years in, there's no end in sight, growing frustration among voters and little support for Bush's leadership.
Now the question is what to do, and on that Congress and Americans are painfully divided.
Warner's resolution is not an easy call. Critics say it sends a dispiriting message to the troops, and there's no getting around that. But the administration diminishes its case by trying to imply that its critics are unpatriotic if they don't silently follow the president's lead. No American leader should need a sermon on the value of honest argument and dissent, even in wartime. Voters elected scores of new legislators in November with the demand they speak up. Lack of support for the war is driving the resolutions, not the other way around.
Many critics on both sides of the "surge" also deride an anti-war resolution as a worthless middle position, either because it's political posturing that undercuts the commander in chief, or a pointless gesture that avoids using Congress' power to cut off funding for the war. But that, too, misses the essential point.
All or nothing is not the responsible choice. The public is no more enthusiastic about abrupt withdrawal than it is about staying the current failing course, and even critics of Bush's strategy warn that abrupt withdrawal would backfire. If a resolution can be worded to draw bipartisan support, it might point a path to unity, not underscore division.
The Warner resolution, like other drafts, offers one, essentially the plan proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group: Turn over most fighting to Iraqi forces while training them; help secure Iraq's borders; focus U.S. troops on fighting al-Qaeda; and engage Iraq's neighbors in diplomacy. Critics may not like that plan, but it's every bit as valid as Bush's. In fact, something similar is likely to follow Bush's troop surge whether the increase is effective or not.
The surge is underway, and nothing Congress can do in the short run will stop it. The resolutions are more about what happens next. Whether one passes or not - even whether they're a good idea or not - matters less than what the debate over them reveals: The Iraq war, with public support gone, is in its end game. What's being debated now is how best to get out.
Ellie
Mon Feb 5, 6:43 AM ET
John Warner (news, bio, voting record) first volunteered to fight for his country at age 17, when he left high school and joined the Navy during World War II. He served until 1946, and four years later, he left law school to volunteer for the Marines in the Korean War. He eventually went on to serve as President Nixon's secretary of the Navy, and after being elected a Republican senator from Virginia in 1978, he rose to chair the Senate Armed Services Committee.
That's not the profile of someone who is naive about war. But now, at age 79, Warner is a leader in the fight to have Congress pass a non-binding resolution against President Bush's troop "surge" in Iraq -an undertaking that Bush and others criticize as undermining the war effort.
The crucial part of Warner's measure says, "The Senate disagrees with the 'plan' to augment our forces by 21,500, and urges the president instead to consider all options and alternatives … ."
The Senate faces hard votes on Warner's resolution and competing measures this week. Despite the courage of American troops and many Iraqis, the war has gone badly, metastasizing into something critics feared and the administration never imagined. Almost four years in, there's no end in sight, growing frustration among voters and little support for Bush's leadership.
Now the question is what to do, and on that Congress and Americans are painfully divided.
Warner's resolution is not an easy call. Critics say it sends a dispiriting message to the troops, and there's no getting around that. But the administration diminishes its case by trying to imply that its critics are unpatriotic if they don't silently follow the president's lead. No American leader should need a sermon on the value of honest argument and dissent, even in wartime. Voters elected scores of new legislators in November with the demand they speak up. Lack of support for the war is driving the resolutions, not the other way around.
Many critics on both sides of the "surge" also deride an anti-war resolution as a worthless middle position, either because it's political posturing that undercuts the commander in chief, or a pointless gesture that avoids using Congress' power to cut off funding for the war. But that, too, misses the essential point.
All or nothing is not the responsible choice. The public is no more enthusiastic about abrupt withdrawal than it is about staying the current failing course, and even critics of Bush's strategy warn that abrupt withdrawal would backfire. If a resolution can be worded to draw bipartisan support, it might point a path to unity, not underscore division.
The Warner resolution, like other drafts, offers one, essentially the plan proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group: Turn over most fighting to Iraqi forces while training them; help secure Iraq's borders; focus U.S. troops on fighting al-Qaeda; and engage Iraq's neighbors in diplomacy. Critics may not like that plan, but it's every bit as valid as Bush's. In fact, something similar is likely to follow Bush's troop surge whether the increase is effective or not.
The surge is underway, and nothing Congress can do in the short run will stop it. The resolutions are more about what happens next. Whether one passes or not - even whether they're a good idea or not - matters less than what the debate over them reveals: The Iraq war, with public support gone, is in its end game. What's being debated now is how best to get out.
Ellie