Slate’s Fred Kaplan listened to the president’s press conference yesterday and heard “statements of extraordinary cynicism even by his considerable standards.”
The Democrats, he said, are “more interested in fighting political battles in Washington than providing our troops what they need”—a remarkable accusation, given his administration’s tardiness in supplying those troops with adequate armor and its scant funding for wounded veterans.
“Congress’ failure to fund our troops on the front lines,” he continued, “will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines, and others could see their loved ones headed back to the war sooner than they need to. That is unacceptable to me, and I believe it is unacceptable to the American people.”
How many jaws dropped when the president uttered these words? It is the administration’s poor planning, not any action taken or not taken by Congress, that has already accelerated troop rotations and caused precisely this heartbreaking situation, which Bush (correctly) calls “unacceptable.” And it is unacceptable, by the way, not only to military families but to the military itself, especially to the Army, which is nearly breaking under the strain.
Besides, it’s not only ironic but odd that Bush should be raising this issue, since if Congress were to get its way on the timetable, many of these troops would be coming home sooner and never going back.
That’s an excellent summary. As Dan Froomkin put it, yesterday’s nonsensical exercise was straight out of Karl Rove’s playbook. “When the president is on the defensive, Rove’s signature move is to disdain the quaint constraints of reality and attack the critics where they are strongest — ideally, by tarring them with Bush’s own weakness.” And that’s exactly what happened yesterday. The president identified his most dramatic vulnerabilities … and then projected them onto his rivals.
The good news, of course, is that there is nary a peep from congressional Dems about backing down.
One almost got the sense yesterday that Bush the Bully thought he’d growl a bit, demand the Dems’ lunch money, and watch Pelosi & Reid capitulate. As far as the president’s concerned, they always have in the past.
But Dems are wearing their majority status well. Yesterday, it seemed as if Dems on the Hill were largely unmoved by the president’s whining. They issued a few well-written responses and then, well, kind of yawned. “Yes, yes, Mr. President. We’re listening. Get back to us when you have something interesting to say.”
As Kaplan added:
[T]his president tends to believe that bargaining and persuasion are signs of weakness and appeasement, whether the foe across the table is Kim Jong-il or Nancy Pelosi. Condoleezza Rice finally got him to make a deal with Kim Jong-il. Will he do the same with Pelosi?
In the end, he may have no choice. When the House and Senate Democrats attached a timetable for troop withdrawal into the $96 billion emergency-spending bill that funds military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush threatened to veto the entire bill, thus saddling the Democrats with charges of abandoning the troops.
Such threats used to send shivers down what remained of lawmakers’ spines — but, at least so far, not this time. House Speaker Pelosi told the president to calm down, acknowledge that there’s a new Congress in town, and deal with it. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid upped the ante, saying that if Bush vetoes the bill, he will urge Congress to pass a more radical measure — sponsored by Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold — that would not only impose a timetable for withdrawal but start to cut off funding now.
There’s still time for Dems to screw this up, and they’ll probably need to be a bit more forceful in explaining to Americans how and why the president is blocking funds for our troops, but I have to admit, I kind of like their no-fear attitude.
Post Script: By the way, Cheney has a new talking point: “You cannot win a war if you tell the enemy when you’re going to quit.”
Kaplan tackled that one, too. First, Cheney does not appear to know the first thing about winning a war, so his credibility is out the window. Second, if Cheney considers al Qaeda the enemy, he should probably read the Dems’ policy: the funding package specifically allows U.S. troops involved in counterterrorism to stay in Iraq indefinitely.