The next legislative fight over funding the war was supposed to follow a predictable pattern that we’ve seen before. The House will pass a funding bill with a withdrawal timeline, the Senate will have the votes to pass a similar bill, but it will draw a Republican filibuster (on the Hill) or a Republican veto (from the White House). Unwilling to cut off funding, Dems will grudgingly give the president the money he wants.
The good news is, Dems have decided not to bother with this painful game. The bad news is, they’ve also decided to skip the aggressive policy measures the public wants to see.
Democratic leaders in Congress have decided to shift course and pursue modest bipartisan measures to alter U.S. military strategy in Iraq, hoping to use incremental changes instead of aggressive legislation to break the grip Republicans have held over the direction of war policy.
Standing against them will be President Bush, who intends to use a prime-time address tonight to try to ease concerns that his Iraq strategy will lead to an open-ended military commitment.
Both efforts share a single target: a handful of Republican moderates in the Senate whose votes the Democrats need to overcome the threat of a GOP filibuster. Should enough Republican moderates sign on to a compromise measure, Democrats could finally pass legislation aimed at changing direction of the war.
The idea, apparently, is that many Senate Republicans vowed months ago to demand a course correction in September. Harry Reid & Co. are looking at this as an opportunity to test the Republicans’ commitment to following through on their own rhetoric.
The problem, of course, is that looking ahead to the result of this “compromise” is far from encouraging.
[T]he battle lines in the House and Senate over the war have begun to shift, with moderate members of both parties building new momentum behind initiatives that would force the White House to make modest changes to the military mission but not require a substantial drawdown of troops by a set date. Democratic leaders, who have blessed the new approach, now believe that passing compromise legislation is the first step toward more ambitious measures aimed at ending the war, although that tactic is likely to result in stiff opposition from Democratic activists who want a rapid troop withdrawal.
I think I understand the plan — Dems can’t get what they want, so they’ll take what they can get. So, instead of fighting for the withdrawal timelines embraced by a majority of the House, a majority of the Senate, and a majority of the electorate, leaders will strike a deal with some Republicans to nibble around the edges.
What might that include? There are a handful of proposals on the table.
One of the first will be a revised version of legislation that would ensure that troops returning from Iraq are granted a home leave at least as long as their last deployment before returning to the battlefield, said Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), the amendment’s author.
The amendment garnered 56 votes in July, and with Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) back on the job after suffering a brain hemorrhage, the measure should be within three votes of victory. Webb said yesterday that he was in talks with at least two more Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and George V. Voinovich (Ohio).
Another amendment in bipartisan talks is a revised withdrawal measure that would probably include timelines to start troop drawdowns but would leave a final pullout date as a goal rather than a deadline.
And an amendment by Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) to mandate a change of strategy in Iraq is gaining currency with Democratic leaders, according to leadership aides. The amendment would order missions to shift immediately from combat to counterterrorism, border security and the training of Iraqi security forces. It would not mandate troop withdrawals, but Collins said such withdrawals would be inevitable, because the remaining missions could be accomplished with 50,000 to 60,000 troops.
Some of these measures, most notably the Webb amendment, have merit, but the broader strategy strikes me as fundamentally flawed. First, Bush may very well veto any effort that ties his hands in any way. Without the votes to override, there’s still no actual change in policy.
Second, the Bush administration’s underlying policy, which doesn’t work, would remain largely the same.
And third, if Dems are able to make modest changes, they get ownership of an ineffective policy that Americans hate, all at a time when Dems should be increasing the heat on GOP lawmakers, not offering them a way out.
To borrow a phrase, I have a bad feeling about this.