As the anti-war drum beat grows louder in Congress with an anti-troop-surge resolution passing in the House this week, it is increasingly obvious that the ultimate losers in this national debate over Iraq will be the Democrats and anti-Iraq icons like Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Penn.
Last Friday, the House passed a nonbinding resolution rejecting the president's plan for a troop surge in Iraq, a military strategy designed to better combat sectarian violence around Baghdad. The resolution garnered a vote of 246-182, with seventeen Republicans joining the Democratic majority. Senate Democrats have been working on a similar measure, but failed to bring the measure to a vote this week. Immediately after the successful House vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., proclaimed bipartisan support for the measure, with the speaker saying the vote "will signal a change in direction in Iraq that will end the fighting and bring our troops home." Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi failed to recognize that this resolution is neither bipartisan nor effective.
The seventeen Republicans that voted for the resolution compose just more than 8 percent of GOP House members, rendering this resolution a largely partisan maneuver. Yet when the Democrats declared "bipartisan" support for the resolution, they lost credibility as honest participants in the debate on Iraq. By disingenuously painting the vote in opposition to the president's troop surge as a consensus position, the Democrats were trying to deceive the American public into rejecting the surge without considering its merit. The Democrats' motivation was to bolster their chances to take back the White House in two years by further crushing American prospects for success in Iraq.
Before we reject the Bush administration's plans to send an additional 21,000 troops to Iraq over the next few months, let's consider this: Why did the Senate unanimously confirm Gen. David Petraeus as the top military man in Iraq only to attempt to reject his request for a troop surge? Gen. Petraeus made no secret of his support for this measure during confirmation hearings. Now that the Democrats seek to politically and publicly undermine the president's new military commander, it is obvious that the Democrats' intentions are to lose the Iraq War politically and as quickly as possible.
The main advocate for precipitous loss in Iraq is none other than Speaker Pelosi's good friend and ex-Marine, Rep. Jack Murtha. As chairman of the defense subcommittee of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, Congressman Murtha has threatened to follow the useless nonbinding resolution with a "slow bleed" plan in which funding would be cut off indirectly by imposing restrictions on the authority of the commander-in-chief and attaching the restrictions to the $93 billion supplemental spending bill. Congressman Murtha's explicit strategy is to hobble the president's constitutional authority as commander-in-chief, an unprecedented attempt to usurp legitimate constitutional power vested in the president in wartime, which dangerously undermines our troops and their mission.
The Democrats cannot have their cake and eat it too. They claim to support the troops, and that they will not do anything to undermine troop safety, yet actively threaten to cut off funding. There are only two explanations for this anti-troop ultimatum by Democratic leadership: genuine anti-Americanism or political posturing. I'll give Congressman Murtha & Co. the benefit of the doubt that they are not anti-American, leaving slimy political posturing as the only reasonable explanation for their desire to bring about immediate failure in Iraq.
The Democrats' hatred for our president has blinded them to the point where their only raison d'etre is to defeat his legacy and the Republican Party in 2008. To advance their narrow agenda, the Democrats are attempting to force an American loss, bequeathing to the Democratic Party an unlimited supply of political ammunition against Republicans. If America is still engaged in combat during the 2008 election cycle, Democrats will run on a "withdraw from Iraq" platform; it is lose the war in 2007 or lose the presidency in 2008. The only unwanted result is a successful surge leading to a more stable Iraq, for that will expose the Democratic leadership for what they are: cowards who play politics with the lives of American soldiers. Republicans do not like the mess in Iraq any more than Democrats, but the president and his allies understand that the cost of failure is far worse than the current toll and that winning should not be a partisan issue.
In the coming months, we'll see whether the Democrats have the political will to gamble the safety of our troops in a pathetic game of opportunistic Schadenfreude. The troop surge has by no means widespread bipartisan support and is the only viable option on the table to stabilize Iraq. Hopefully, the Democrats will restrict themselves to pointless nonbinding resolutions but — if Congressman Jack Murtha gets his way — don't expect success in Iraq any time soon. The Democrats intend to sink the ship to get the captain, and damn the consequences.
Will Smith ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in political science and religious studies.
