On Monday I wrote Why the Democrats Won’t Back Withdrawal. I laid out a bunch of possible repercussions of an American withdrawal from Iraq, and then I said this:
The Democrats do not want to take responsibility for unleashing a set of events that leads to these types of catastrophes. And that is why they won’t cut off funding for the war and open themselves up for the criticism that their lack of resolve led to the loss of Egypt or a total rift with Turkey or….
We can see this thought process nakedly on display in the following ruminations from freshman Democrat Nancy Boyda of Kansas.
Even in her conservative Kansas district, calls and letters to freshman House Democrat Nancy Boyda show a constituency overwhelmingly ready for U.S. troops to come home from Iraq.
Yet as the House nears a legislative showdown on the war, Boyda finds herself wracked with doubts. She is convinced that Congress must intervene to stop the war, but is fearful of the chaos that a quick U.S. pullout could prompt. “Congress has an obligation to do something,” Boyda said. But she is unsure what to do, worried about anything that “affects commanders on the ground.”
Courage, Ms. Boyda, courage. If your constituency overwhelmingly supports a military withdrawal from Iraq, then you need only explain to them the risks and they will understand when things get difficult. The following is true:
“It’s much easier to express an opinion to a pollster than it is to formulate effective policy on something as intractable as Iraq,” Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said.
It’s next to impossible to formulate an effective policy when Bush and Cheney are the people that will be responsible for carrying it out. That is why we really need to get serious about the impeachment and removal of Bush and Cheney from office. Their mere presence does more harm to the ‘effectiveness’ of any new policy than anything else. And, that is assuming that they can be persuaded to follow any congressionally dictated policy. It’s also why comments like this are so reprehensible.
Conservative Democrats fear the charge, still lodged by some Vietnam veterans, that that war could have been won had the politicians not intervened. More than anything else, many Democrats want to leave Bush responsible for ending the war he started.
“The war is the issue, but it’s the president’s issue, not ours,” [Dan] Boren [D-OK] said.
If that is the case then why don’t we impeach the President and his quail-hunting sidekick? If we need to end the war but cannot convince the President to end it, and if we don’t trust him to manage a withdrawal, then we should remove him.
I believe the American people will support impeachment once the case is made in hearings and through compelled testimony. But Rep. Boren’s attitude will not fly. We can’t afford to fight two more years in Iraq just to avoid any blame for ending the war. We should take responsibility for ending the war and be proud of it. And if we are worried about being irresponsible, we should do the safest thing for our future. We should make sure that Bush and Cheney have nothing to do with implementing our withdrawal plan, with all the careful diplomacy that it will require.
