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February 15, 2007

Fish or Cut Bait

I've talked about why the Democratic Party has a bad reputation among the troops before. Sadly, it appears that they're planning on reinforcing, rather than overcoming, that image. It appears that, since they cannot get the votes for a resolution to end the Iraq war (although they have managed to burn two weeks on a nonbinding resolution), the Democrats are going to try to end the war via the back door.

The Democratic concept seems to be making it harder and harder for the President to fight the war, which will eventually force him to give up. Representative John Murtha, perhaps best known for his innovative plan to redeploy American troops to somewhere close to Iraq, like Okinawa, wants to prevent the military from deploying troops to Iraq unless they are properly trained and equipped. This sounds like a reasonable restriction, but the devil is in the details. Murtha seems to think that no Army units meet this criteria, and it's a safe bet the legislation he crafts will be designed to make sure that few, if any, units can meet it. Presumably the Democrats think they will be able to have their cake and eat it this way, 'supporting' the troops while preventing the Army from relieving any of the troops in country.

The result, however, while it may be great for troops who aren't in Iraq when the legislation is passed, means that those troops still over there will suffer higher casualties and longer tours. Not the kind of support I'd ask for. If these requirements are tacked onto deployments, the Army will have little choice but to attempt to meet them, which will mean that units currently in Iraq will have to stay longer because it now requires more work to get their replacements into country. Further, whatever hope there is for defeating the insurgency depends on getting additional boots on the ground. By preventing that, the Democrats will establish a worst-of-both-worlds situation where we won't send additional troops to improve the situation, but we won't bite the bullet and pull those we have out.

If the Democrats believe we've lost in Iraq, they should vote to pull the troops out. Yes, it would probably be vetoed, but at least they would have made a stand for their principles, and come the fall they could end the war the hard way by refusing to provide funds for the troops in Iraq. If they really believe that the only good option is to get out of Iraq, then they have no excuse for not doing everything in their power to make that happen. Every day they choose to pussyfoot around the issue is another day when American troops are killed or maimed in performance of their duties in Iraq. John Kerry infamously asked how you ask a man to be the last person to die for a mistake. If the Democrats really believe remaining in Iraq is a mistake, how can they reconcile that with asking more American soldiers to die because ending the war is politically inconvenient for them?

The Democrats own Congress now. That means they can't just carp from the sidelines anymore. They bear equal responsibility with the President for what happens in Iraq from now on. They need to make a decision to stay or go in Iraq, and if the answer is go, then they need to make it happen. Otherwise there is little difference between them and the Republicans who started the war. Actually, there is one key difference: the Republicans who started the war believed it could be won. They didn't ask troops to stay in harm's way because it might damage their reelection chances.