The Great Troop Rift
An interesting and unfortunate battle is about to be waged in the U.S. government, and that is the fight to get our troops out of Iraq--or at least the fight for politicians to appear strongly enough on one side or the other of the issue to get elected in 2008. Strap in, because this is going to be one of the biggest, and maybe ugliest political battles of the decade.
This, folks, is politics at its absolute worst. This is that ugly territory where literally life-and-death issues are decided by people have one goal and one goal alone: to get elected.
You have the Democrats promoting a phased, pull-out plan, the same week as U.S. General Petraeus (the Julius Caesar of this campaign) saying that the U.S. needs to put more troops there, and for a longer period of time.
You also have an un-popular president of a bruised and battered party on his way out, who has no plans of changing his course and will almost certainly pass the buck onto whoever replaces him. Meanwhile, he's trying to increase the Iraq war budget with another $100 billion (good for about 50 days, at $2 billion per day). The Democrats are determined to squash that bill, but probably won't succeed because they can't gather enough support within their own party. Technically, they aren't even 100% behind a phased pull-out, and Hillary Clinton even softballed the whole thing, saying "this is not a hard deadline, but a goal."
On top of all that--or as the foundation of all that--we have a quagmire of a war that is getting worse and more complicated by the minute.
Politics in the U.S. government is all about building consensus. Building consensus means you have to compromise. Compromise means you give up some of what you want, in order to get some of what you want. In a time when even the two parties are ideologically split amongst themselves, that means very little is actually going to get done. Would you want to be the Senator to vote against sending more funds to the troops in Iraq? Even if you are opposed to the war, the fact is the troops are there, and they need support. However, cutting off the funds would mean the troops would have to come home sooner, right? So we could effectively stop the war by stopping the funds. But, that would only further endarger our troops. Do you see the ideological conundrum?
One thing few people fail to realize (or perhaps they do, but no one talks about) is that the constitution grants control over the military solely to the president, as the Commander-in-Chief, precisely to avoid these kinds of political squabbles. Congress must formally declare war (which has been overridden in a few cases) and must authorize certain funds. Otherwise, Bush is in charge.
What's going to happen?
What this all means is the U.S. is not pulling its troops out of Iraq until Bush is gone. I doubt there will even be a phased withdrawal. Basically, I believe Hillary Clinton will be elected president and make a push for some kind of phased withdrawal. This may or may not get mired down in strategic and political gamesmanship, and it will not be a complete pull out. I believe she will manage to get a good deal of them out, but believe me, we will have troops in Iraqi for a long, long time. Hopefully, in the meantime, she will be able to get some international support for a carve-up of Iraqi into seperate nations, or a joint-peacekeeping effort, so that Iraq does not decend into apocalyptic chaos and/or Iran doesn't end up moving in and starting the whole dictator/genocide process all over again.
This, folks, is politics at its absolute worst. This is that ugly territory where literally life-and-death issues are decided by people have one goal and one goal alone: to get elected.
You have the Democrats promoting a phased, pull-out plan, the same week as U.S. General Petraeus (the Julius Caesar of this campaign) saying that the U.S. needs to put more troops there, and for a longer period of time.
You also have an un-popular president of a bruised and battered party on his way out, who has no plans of changing his course and will almost certainly pass the buck onto whoever replaces him. Meanwhile, he's trying to increase the Iraq war budget with another $100 billion (good for about 50 days, at $2 billion per day). The Democrats are determined to squash that bill, but probably won't succeed because they can't gather enough support within their own party. Technically, they aren't even 100% behind a phased pull-out, and Hillary Clinton even softballed the whole thing, saying "this is not a hard deadline, but a goal."
On top of all that--or as the foundation of all that--we have a quagmire of a war that is getting worse and more complicated by the minute.
Politics in the U.S. government is all about building consensus. Building consensus means you have to compromise. Compromise means you give up some of what you want, in order to get some of what you want. In a time when even the two parties are ideologically split amongst themselves, that means very little is actually going to get done. Would you want to be the Senator to vote against sending more funds to the troops in Iraq? Even if you are opposed to the war, the fact is the troops are there, and they need support. However, cutting off the funds would mean the troops would have to come home sooner, right? So we could effectively stop the war by stopping the funds. But, that would only further endarger our troops. Do you see the ideological conundrum?
One thing few people fail to realize (or perhaps they do, but no one talks about) is that the constitution grants control over the military solely to the president, as the Commander-in-Chief, precisely to avoid these kinds of political squabbles. Congress must formally declare war (which has been overridden in a few cases) and must authorize certain funds. Otherwise, Bush is in charge.
What's going to happen?
What this all means is the U.S. is not pulling its troops out of Iraq until Bush is gone. I doubt there will even be a phased withdrawal. Basically, I believe Hillary Clinton will be elected president and make a push for some kind of phased withdrawal. This may or may not get mired down in strategic and political gamesmanship, and it will not be a complete pull out. I believe she will manage to get a good deal of them out, but believe me, we will have troops in Iraqi for a long, long time. Hopefully, in the meantime, she will be able to get some international support for a carve-up of Iraqi into seperate nations, or a joint-peacekeeping effort, so that Iraq does not decend into apocalyptic chaos and/or Iran doesn't end up moving in and starting the whole dictator/genocide process all over again.
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