The President likes to talk about ‘victory’ in Iraq. There will be no victory in Iraq. It’s not yet clear what there will be in Iraq, but we can be sure that we will not ‘win’ anything. Even if we take the President at his word, the surge of 21,500 troops is intended not to bring victory but to limit the fallout of defeat. Perhaps he would get more support for his plan if he got his rhetoric right. We are surging into Baghdad to try to prevent a total collapse of the capital when we pull our troops out. Whether we have a reasonable chance of succeeding in this limited goal is open to debate, but we aren’t having this debate.
Instead, we are having a faux debate. Frank Luntz makes a partisan point about this situation.
…Senator Barack Obama’s assertion that “We’re not going to babysit a civil war” is itself a childish sound-bite that ignores widespread American concern that a civil war today could spin into a regional war with worldwide consequences tomorrow. The image of “babysitting” lacks the seriousness befitting a conflict in which we’ve lost 3,000 American men and women, and shows a lack of gravitas in a presidential aspirant.
The list goes on. Speaker Pelosi callously suggesting that President Bush is moving quickly to “put troops in harms way” is a short jump away from suggesting that the President is deliberately trying to get our soldiers killed. Likewise, Senator Kennedy saying that U.S. troops are like “police officers in a shooting gallery” smacks of sound-bite flippancy and expediency of the worst kind. We need an intelligent debate, not a sound-bite contest.
To be sure, Luntz’s column is little more than a disingenuous effort to avoid retribution from Democrats. After punching Democrats repeatedly around the head and neck he calls out, ‘Not in the face…not in the face.’ But he’s right about one thing. Withdrawing our troops from Iraq is not the end of our problems in the Middle East. We are at a dangerous point in our nation’s history. And to deal with this danger we should look to history.
No President has ever started a war, lost that war, and presided over the repercussions of defeat. Harry S Truman put American troops into the Korean peninsula. When China invaded we were left with an unwinnable stalemate. Truman could have sought re-election in 1952. But after losing the New Hampshire primary Truman dropped out. Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected and quickly negotiated a cease-fire than ended the Korean War.
Likewise, Lyndon Baines Johnson put our troops into Indochina, but quickly discovered that we could not successfully defeat the nationalist insurgency there. He could have sought re-election, but after doing worse than expected in the New Hampshire primary, he dropped out. Richard Nixon won a narrow victory promising that he had a secret plan to end the war. He did not have a plan. After five years of failure in Vietnam, Nixon was forced out of office. It was left to Gerald Ford to preside over the fall of Saigon.
This is as it should be. We should never allow a President to embroil us in foreign entanglements and then to preside over extracting us from those foreign entanglements. We don’t have a parliamentary system. We have elections and we have impeachment. Impeachment is reserved for high crimes and misdemeanors. There can be no higher crime than starting a war of choice under false pretenses that brings defeat to our nation’s armed forces.
Frank Luntz asks us:
If Democrats believe so passionately that President Bush has made it wrong – and you can’t really blame them – why don’t they tell us how to make it right? It’s as simple as that. And getting it right might actually save some lives and political careers in the effort.
I am telling you right now…if we want to make things right we have no choice but to impeach the President and Vice-President. The country is prepared for this. Seventy-one percent of the people think the country is on the wrong track and the President has a higher disapproval rating than any post-war President other than Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal. Luntz thinks we should move on.
The Republicans are a party in peril, but all is not milk and cookies in Democrat land. The Democrats – flush with majority status – have a crucial choice right now. They can use their newly-won mandate to settle some old scores…or they can get responsibly (sic) and move ahead. They would be wise to opt for the latter.
Actually, we would not be wise to ‘move ahead’. At least, we would not be wise to move ahead without dealing with our nation’s single greatest problem. Our biggest problem is not Iraq. Our biggest problem is our administration. This is an administration that failed to act prior to or on September 11, 2001 to protect the country. They failed to hunt down and capture Usama bin-Laden. They failed to get international support for regime change in Iraq. They failed to plan for the occupation of Iraq. They failed to protect the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. We the people have a right to expect better governance. We are simply not safe with this administation in charge. They have not earned the right to preside over the end of the war in Iraq. The 2004 election is irrelevant to our present circumstances.
Removing this administration from power is not about vindictiveness. It’s just common sense.
you’ve got it exactly right. unless we’ve resigned ourselves to simply letting events continue to spiral for at least another two years, any plan to actually address all these problems has to begin with the immediate removal of bush and cheney. there is no other conclusion.
So Obama is “childish,” Pelosi is “callous’ & Kennedy is the “worst kind” of flippant… sounds pretty “sound bitey” to me Frank. Why would anyone opposed to this war worry about saving the political career of those who perpetrated it?
As far as I’m concerned you can string the whole administration up with Frank Luntz’s massive intestines.
You keep suggesting this idea. It’s not popular, it’s not practical, and it gets in the way of actual solutions.
We have Bush and the republicans squarely on the ownership of this issue. By doing impeachment, we convert “incompetence in running a war” into “being persecuted by the Dems for natural mistakes”
Impeachment, in short, would be a clear winner for Bush and the repukes.
We need to concentrate on forcing them to come up with an answer, and ensuring that whatever answer they come up with is considered to be wrong. We’re in this now, and we need to use it in the most partisan manner that is possible, while concealing our use of the war as a partisan tool.
Smear that war tar all over the Repukes, and attach the chicken feathers.
I would support impeachment of Gonzales. The guy is the worst example of the misuse of the law, and every time he speaks he demostrates his vast incompetence and total lack of knowledge of the law.
Let’s impeach Alberto.
Impeaching Alberto would also be the object lesson.
The only problem, of course, is that he is Hispanic.
Are there any white men who could be impeached?
How about Gates?
why would we want to force the President to make a policy change only to oppose that policy change?
That is not responsible governance. Scoring political points by assuring the failure of US policy over the next two years is too high a price to pay and it will rightly be seen for what it is, which is a totally bankrupt strategy.
And, you keep saying impeachment is unpopular. You know what is unpopular? This administration is unpopular. It is exactly as unpopular as Richard Nixon was when he resigned.
At last! The potential Constitutional Crisis I’ve been looking for. The problem is it will be the Democrats who create it (feeling quite reasonably compelled) if they proceed with impeachment for policy, not crimes. Impeachment because of failed policy is obviously a bit of a slippery slope (where does one draw the line?). I have no doubt that Democratic ‘constitutional scholars,’ including Senator Byrd and others who have consistently put preservation of our founding documents above political expedience, would fight against such impeachment grounds. So, we are put in the position of finding the high crime among all the misdeeds and lies. Unfortunately lying (unless under oath) can’t be a high crime or we’d have near perpetual impeachments. So what are the specific charges for high crimes (I’m sure they are there)? How do you get to Cheney? Do you swear him in as President and then immediately impeach him?
I think there may be a much better chance of success if there is Republican pressure for resignations (which may require the threat of impeachment).
You cannot impeach for incompetence.
6 years ago, Cheney hosted a conference to look at energy policy. He did not release the attendees. Various open-meetings and good-government groups sued to get this list. He took it to the SC, and won on executive priveledge grounds.
So, if he would take a list of attendees on a minor conference to the SC, how is it again that we are going to get the evidence to convict anyone in this Administration about anything?
you must be kidding.
All that is required is the will to remove them. Check John Warner’s move today. They will is obviously growing. They could be impeached for the NSA program, or for refusing to respond to subpoenas, or for a number of other things. Their removal is dictated by national necessity, but it still requires articles of impeachment that spell out crimes or misdemeanors. A case can be built in fairly short order. But, before we even start we need to talk to people like Lugar, Warner etc. to make sure they are prepared to convict. And we should not expect to put Nancy Pelosi in office. We must negotiate some other solution.
We can’t wait two years to solve this crisis of leadership.
That is we must get Republicans on board to start.
That’s essential.
I have seen some lists that include John Thune, Jim DeMint and whatshisname from NV. Myself, I cannot imagine any of these guys under any circumstances voting to convict Bush.
If you had to come up with a list of 17 to approach, who would be on your list?
Well, start with John Warner.
Think about his decision to introduce the non-binding resolution. He obviously talked to the White House and came away totally discouraged. He knows they have to go.
Along with Warner you have Susan Collins, who is co-sponsoring the resolution. Now, Collins and Warner were the chairs of Homeland Security and Armed Forces in the last Congress. They are important voices.
The most likely defectors are allies of Warner and Collins. Dick Lugar is ranking member on Foreign Relations. He knows they need to go. I think you could see defections from Snowe, Specter, Coleman, Gordon Smith, Thune, Graham, Hagel, and, ultimately, McCain.
Beyond that, I don’t see the numbers yet, but it is hard to say because there are others that are quiet like Domenici, Shelby, Stevens. The older the Senator the more likely they are to put the country ahead of the party. After age there is self-interest. Those up for re-election in 2008 are likely to consider it…especially those most vulnerable. But if we continue on this course, every Republican will be vulnerable.
We don’t have a parliamentary system.
Increasingly, I am convinced that we ought to combine a British-style parliamentary democracy with an American-style written constitution with clearly delimited executive powers. The Brits might want to try the same mixture.
As for Frank Lutz, fuck him and the horse he rode in on. If this whole mess plays out without any ranking GOP officials in front of a domestic firing squad or on trial at the Hague, they will have gotten off far, far more easily than they deserve.
Let’s not move on. Let’s keep pounding these fuckers until no one can say “conservative” without turning their heads and spitting. What’s been going on for the past twenty years or so goes well beyond what can be considered forgivable. GOP politicians need to be stuffed into sandbags to shore up the next seawall breach when our coastal cities are being destroyed by rising sea levels.
I watched Hardball last Friday night and it was really interesting. Matthews has been zeroing in on the possible invasion of Iran ever since the Bush speech a couple of weeks ago. He kept trying to get guests to address the question of whether or not Bush could invade Iran without the approval of Congress. No one would give a difinitive answer. Matthews kept talking about how much that scared him. He even went so far as to ask whether or not we live in a dictatorship!
As I watch all of this, its clear that on many of these questions the Constitution is not completely clear. So what it comes down to is that we have to have a basic level or trust in the President. What I would have liked to say to Matthews as his anxiety over this continued to grow is that we have lost this basic level or trust in the White House. And that alone creates a consitutional crisis.
And all we got out of it so far is a change in the SecDef and apparently a new set of lies in the State of the Union speech.
No lousy T-shirt, even.