Hollowed Out

I've been following the twists and turns from Democrats in the House in coming up with something to attach to the Iraq funding appropriation. I was hopeful that they would put together a firm, binding resolution that would set a definitive end date to end the occupation and bring our involvement in Iraq to a rapid close. I was disappointed at almost every level of the debate.

The House took a perfectly good strategy from Rep. Murtha, mandating readiness for our troops before they are sent to the field, and emasculated it, allowing the President to get a waiver and essentially eliminating any consequence from sending in troops without the proper equipment or training. On the Fall 2008 deadline, the House talked a decent game but then backed off in an attempt to hold their coalition together. The leadership threatened the Progressive Caucus by saying they would rather fund the war whole than force language prohibiting an attack on Iran; eventually that was taken out of the bill. They didn't mind larding up the bill, however, with more remotely related objectives like flu preparedness and money for farmers and repairing the levees in New Orleans. These may be worthwhile causes, but they have no place in this bill, and it would drive me mental when Republicans did the same kind of thing.

The final result of all of this is this half-measure of a bill.

First, though the bill mandates withdrawal by Fall 2008 at the latest, it's going to be at least partly a disappointment to some House liberals. That's because language that was in earlier drafts that would have clipped funding after the deadline -- as opposed to merely declaring the war illegal -- has been taken out.

House leaders will argue that the bill does do its job, because it declares the war illegal beyond a certain date. But liberal House sources say this removed language was critical in ending the war in practice, because it would enforce the war's end with the power of the purse rather than requiring a trip to court to force an end to the war should Bush insist on keeping it going in defiance of the legislation.

Second, in another disappointment to House liberals, key language mandating that Bush get Congressional approval before going to war with Iran has been taken out. This was a concession to Blue Dog Dems who fear that if they vote for any measure tying the Commander in Chief's hands in any way, it will make them vulnerable in their moderate districts, a House staffer says.

Despite these two disappointments, a liberal House Dem says that the bill is nonetheless a positive. "It's a positive thing that the Dem caucus has set a date to end the Bush administration's failed policy," this source says. "That said, the political sausage making, the calculations that are required to keep more moderates on board, could make this ultimately less enforceable, and that would be unfortunate."

The only power that the Congress has to end war is the power of the purse. I'm not certain they'd even win that legal battle, and at the very least the executive branch would have an argument that the commander-in-chief cannot be overridden on war policy. You can't shame this President into doing anything. You have to actually make it fully enforceable.

What the Democrats still don't seem to understand, even though they clearly did this on purpose, is that the bill is veto-proof, because if Bush vetoes it he doesn't get the money to fund the war. The only way you're going to get the war to end is by provoking a Constitutional showdown. The public hates Bush and hates the war, and getting them involved in this debate will only strengthen the Democrats' hand. But instead, the leadership gets afraid of trash-talking by the likes of Dick Cheney and puts out a watered-down bill.

I know that the votes aren't there for drastic action, and getting anything with an actual end date through the Congress would be a major accomplishment. But I would rather than it wasn't something that actually gives the White House a legal argument to ignore it.

You can read the text of the bill here and draw your own conclusions.