The NYT’s Paul Krugman got shrill today and nailed a must-read column. The subject: the fight over how to fund the war in Iraq. The conclusion: this isn’t a debate, it’s a hostage situation.
There are two ways to describe the confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration over funding for the Iraq surge. You can pretend that it’s a normal political dispute. Or you can see it for what it really is: a hostage situation, in which a beleaguered President Bush, barricaded in the White House, is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders — the troops — if his demands aren’t met.
If this were a normal political dispute, Democrats in Congress would clearly hold the upper hand: by a huge margin, Americans say they want a timetable for withdrawal, and by a large margin they also say they trust Congress, not Mr. Bush, to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq.
But this isn’t a normal political dispute. Mr. Bush isn’t really trying to win the argument on the merits. He’s just betting that the people outside the barricade care more than he does about the fate of those innocent bystanders.
Krugman emphasizes a point that routinely gets overlooked because it’s so, well, routine — this is a funding “supplemental,” which is supposed to be for emergencies. Instead, the White House treats these spending measures as a habitual way of governing. Bush has always refused to include funding for the war in his federal budgets, preferring, as Krugman put it, to keep returning to Congress saying: “Whoops! Whaddya know, we’re running out of money. Give us another $87 billion.”
But this is far more than just irresponsible budget policy; it reflects a “disdain… for the welfare of the troops.”
What I haven’t seen sufficiently emphasized, however, is the disdain this practice shows for the welfare of the troops, whom the administration puts in harm’s way without first ensuring that they’ll have the necessary resources.
As long as a G.O.P.-controlled Congress could be counted on to rubber-stamp the administration’s requests, you could say that this wasn’t a real problem, that the administration’s refusal to put Iraq funding in the regular budget was just part of its usual reliance on fiscal smoke and mirrors. But this time Mr. Bush decided to surge additional troops into Iraq after an election in which the public overwhelmingly rejected his war — and then dared Congress to deny him the necessary funds. As I said, it’s an act of hostage-taking.
Actually, it’s even worse than that. According to reports, the final version of the funding bill Congress will send won’t even set a hard deadline for withdrawal. It will include only an “advisory,” nonbinding date. Yet Mr. Bush plans to veto the bill all the same — and will then accuse Congress of failing to support the troops.
A suggested date is too big a burden for this president. He wants all the money he refused to budget for, he wants no restrictions, and no recommendations. Disagree? You’re aiding and abetting the enemy.
Krugman concludes Congress has no choice but to stand firm against the White House: “Confronting Mr. Bush on Iraq has become a patriotic duty.”
The fact is that Mr. Bush’s refusal to face up to the failure of his Iraq adventure, his apparent determination to spend the rest of his term in denial, has become a clear and present danger to national security. Thanks to the demands of the Iraq war, we’re already a superpower without a strategic reserve, unable to respond to crises that might erupt elsewhere in the world. And more and more military experts warn that repeated deployments in Iraq — now extended to 15 months — are breaking the back of our volunteer military.
If nothing is done to wind down this war during the 21 months — 21 months! — Mr. Bush has left, the damage may be irreparable.
We can only hope it’s not too late.