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January 11, 2007

A Proposal for the Democrats

I will begin by noting that I am in complete agreement with hilzoy's proposal. And I sympathize with the Democrats who are gun shy about being unfairly accused of being against the troops because they want to end America's involvement in the Iraq war to a limited extent. It's never any fun being the guy who points out that the party's over and you can see the flashing blue lights from the front yard already, and even less fun when someone wrongfully claims you were the one who called the cops. So, to bolster the Democrats' credentials on national security, I have a suggestion.

To minimize the surge and get U.S. troops out of Iraq, Congress needs to pass funding bills that deny the President to spend the money on troops in Iraq above a certain, downward-trending number. Setting this number would be done best by holding hearings (real ones, not made-for-TV ones) at which the Democrats ask a number of military experts for help developing a reasonable timeline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. This will help to undermine claims the Democrats are trying to tell the President how to fight the war by establishing a glide path vetted by military experts. I do like Abrams' proposal as well, although that might be one to hold until after the White House has attempted to get around the initial restrictions Congress has set. This is what hilzoy has already laid out, of course, I'm just embellishing it a bit.

The next step is to get on the airwaves to establish why the Democrats are doing this: because the President doesn't have a plan to win the war in Iraq, and the Democrats aren't willing to allow American troops to continue to die just because the President isn't willing to fish or cut bait. The President's plan includes no metrics to measure success, no end state that tells us what we want to see as a result of this surge, and no alternatives if it fails (doubtless in part because there's no way to actually measure the plan on its own merits). Given the President's failure, the Democrats have no choice but to insist on the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq to end America's never-ending stream of casualties without result.

The Democrats then need to make the defense budget for 2008 their first priority, and pack it full of the spending required to rebuild the military. That includes money for maintenance, for new vehicles like the Cougar and the M1117, other new equipment that would be of use in a future Iraq-style operation, money for medical care (physical and mental), and funds to train the force on its new equipment and doctrine. I realize that a lot of people won't like the idea of buying the military better counterinsurgency tools, but by doing so the Democrats will be able to demonstrate their seriousness about national security, and that they are backing up their complaints about the shortfalls in equipment during the war by acting to resolve those problems. Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid ought to be able to go on national television and tell the American people that 'Hopefully American soldiers will never again have to fight this kind of battle. But if they do, the Democratic Party is making sure that they will be properly equipped and trained and that no American soldier will have to go into combat with body armor they purchased themselves or with scrap metal bolted onto their vehicles in lieu of vehicles built for the purpose of protecting them from IEDs.' They shouldn't do this all at once and break the budget, I'll note, but they need to do enough of it to demonstrate their seriousness about the issue. This will severely undercut any claims on the right that the Democrats are trying to undercut the troops, as they will have very concrete proof of just what they have done to support the troops.

This is not to suggest that this will make things easy for the Democrats. We leave in a demagogocracy, so the fact remains that people will make claims about each side regardless of the facts. But this plan puts the facts firmly in the Democrats' corner, particularly if they sell this issue as one of doing this because the President has not offered a plan for victory rather than a pullout because it's the best available option (although it may be). Democrats need to be sad that the President has pushed them to this move, and they need to at least look like they mean it. Americans don't like losing wars, and while I believe that by selling the plan in this manner they will garner reasonable respect for their plan, how it is handled will have a major effect on how people view it.

I provide this advice (which, like most advice, is worth precisely what you paid for it) not because I want us to leave Iraq right now. I shudder to think what will happen in Iraq when we leave, and there's no doubt in my mind it will be bad and it is our fault. But the President has failed in his duty to offer a plan that has any reasonable chance at victory. That leaves the Democrats with two unpalatable choices: allow the President to continue an aimless war, or cut it off. (I may be accused of creating a false choice here, but I think this is legitimate. Congress has only blunt instruments for adjusting how we fight a war.) It is not difficult for me to choose between those options.