Even though I disagree with a good deal of his analysis I am grateful to Michael Duffy for examining what a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would look like and some of the risks. Reading his lengthy piece in Time I am reminded of the inadvisability of leaving the withdrawal planning to the current administration. Duffy doesn’t discuss this…rather he repeats a meme that is all over the media today. From Fred Hiatt and Paul Kane and Shailagh Murray in the Washington Post, to Noam Levey in the Los Angeles Times, the word is that Harry Reid is to blame for the gridlock in Congress. Here’s Duffy:
On July 17, in yet another example of how unhelpful the political conversation has become, workers laid out cots and pillows in a marble cloakroom on Capitol Hill as the Senate prepared for an all-night debate on another in a line of doomed-to-fail resolutions…Many Republicans might support such a plan in private if they did not feel that the Democrats were keeping them up all night to score points at the President’s expense.
Duffy offers no evidence in support of this contention that Republicans were inclined to work across the aisle. Levey offers no evidence for this either:
Sen. Harry Reid offered his cooperation in December when the Iraq Study Group unveiled its recommendations with a plaintive call for a bipartisan effort to change the course of the war.
“Democrats will work with our Republican colleagues,” promised the Nevada Democrat and soon-to-be majority leader, just weeks after an election that swept Democrats into the congressional majority on a wave of public frustration over Iraq.
Eight bitter months and nine major Iraq-related votes later, the meaning of Reid’s pledge has come into sharp focus: Democrats will work with any GOP lawmaker willing to vote for a mandatory troop withdrawal; other Republicans need not apply.
This bellicose, uncompromising legislative strategy — on display again this week as Reid refused to allow votes on nonbinding GOP-backed Iraq proposals — has been an obstacle to any real bipartisan compromise on the war all year. And it effectively ended any chance that a significant number of Republican lawmakers critical of the war would join with Democrats this summer on any Iraq-related legislation.
Here’s Kane and Murray:
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid offered no apologies yesterday for his decision to reject compromise efforts to alter President Bush’s Iraq strategy that had the support of a growing number of Republicans…
…The Democratic leader’s unyielding stance has frustrated many lawmakers, who had hoped the Iraq debate would avoid the partisan pitfalls that have stymied so much legislation in recent years in the narrowly divided Senate…
…Reid’s insistence on the deadlines means that compromise measures with bipartisan support cannot be put to a vote.
Here’s Hiatt:
A large majority of senators from both parties favor a shift in the U.S. mission that would involve substantially reducing the number of American forces over the next year or so and rededicating those remaining to training the Iraqi army, protecting Iraq’s borders and fighting al-Qaeda. President Bush and his senior aides and generals also support this broad strategy, which was formulated by the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton commission…
The decision of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to deny rather than nourish a bipartisan agreement is, of course, irresponsible…
….For now Mr. Reid’s cynical politicking and willful blindness to the stakes in Iraq don’t matter so much. The result of his maneuvering was to postpone congressional debate until September, when Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report on results of the surge — in other words, just the outcome the White House was hoping for…
…a Democratic strategy of trying to use Iraq as a polarizing campaign issue and as a club against moderate Republicans who are up for reelection will certainly have the effect of making consensus impossible — and deepening the trouble for Iraq and for American security.
All of this hand-wringing analysis entirely misses the point that George W. Bush is in the midst of a complete constitutional meltdown and is asserting powers he has no right to assert. There is not an ounce of bipartisanship coming from the White House…not one ounce. Not on subpoenas, not on appointments, not on domestic policy (where he threatens to veto everything), and not on Iraq (where he threatens to do the same). All evidence suggests that Bush will reject any effort to withdrawal troops and will rebuff even entreaties from his own party.
Levey, at least, touches on this:
Reid and his allies, enraged by years of being brushed off and belittled by the White House, do not believe the president will respond to legislation that merely urges, rather than orders, a new course, even if it is backed by substantial numbers of congressional Republicans.
“The president doesn’t take advice,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and an architect of the current strategy.
The rest of the articles pay this analysis no heed. Duffy lays out a plan for withdrawal that focuses primarily on risk reduction. He makes a good effort to focus our minds on the logistical challenges. He mentions the time it would take to pull out tens of thousands of troops, contractors, and Iraqi refugees, and then goes on:
Slowing things down further is the sheer volume of stuff that we would have to take with us — or destroy if we couldn’t. Military officials recently told Congress that 45,000 ground-combat vehicles — a good portion of the entire U.S. inventory of tanks, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, trucks and humvees — are now in Iraq. They are spread across 15 bases, 38 supply depots, 18 fuel-supply centers and 10 ammo dumps. These items have to be taken back home or destroyed, lest they fall into the hands of one faction or another. Pentagon officials will try to bring back as much of the downtime gear as possible — dining halls, office buildings, vending machines, furniture, mobile latrines, computers, paper clips and acres of living quarters.
No doubt it will be a daunting challenge and, done incorrectly, could lead to needless loss of life and equipment. Yet, what kind of planning can we expect from a government that rejects the necessity for withdrawal in the first place?
Rather than questioning Harry Reid’s wisdom these pundits should be asking how we can put in a commander-in-chief that will truly do what Sen. Lamar Alexander correctly perceives must be done.
“We don’t need a Democrat or a Republican plan in Iraq, we need an American plan in Iraq,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), one of the leading co-sponsors of the Iraq Study Group legislation. “Now is the time to look for seeds of consensus.”
Whatever that consensus is or becomes it will never be embraced by the administration and it is unwise to entrust them with the implementation of that consensus. Given the President and Vice-President’s brazenly illegal activities, the consensus should be for double impeachment followed by a sensible withdrawal from Iraq that is carried out by a bipartisan caretaker administration that is truly committed to the plan.
