Meme watch: The ‘stay the course’ resolution

February 2, 2007

So, what are we going to call the new compromise resolution in the Senate criticizing the president’s strategy in Iraq? The far-right Washington Times has a suggestion.

A bipartisan majority in the Senate yesterday united behind a firm “stay the course” resolution on the war in Iraq, despite searing public criticism from both sides in Congress over President Bush’s handling of the war.

The resolution is critical of the war’s execution and condemns any effort by Mr. Bush to send reinforcements to the region. In the measure, the Senate also promises not to cut off funding for the increasingly unpopular war.

“Congress should not take any action that will endanger United States military forces in the field, including the elimination or reduction of funds for troops in the field, as such an action with respect to funding would undermine their safety or harm their effectiveness in pursuing their assigned missions,” says the resolution, authored mainly by Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican.

Although backers say they are deeply dissatisfied with the execution of the war, the resolution says that the United States “should continue vigorous operations” in parts of Iraq and that early withdrawal “would present a threat to regional and world peace.”

Well, this probably isn’t what Chuck Hagel and Senate Dems had in mind. To hear the Washington Times tell it, their critical resolution is now, all of a sudden, the “stay the course” resolution.

In other words, if (when) the Senate passes the non-binding measure, far-right media outlets will characterize it as a victory for the president. It’s a fairly clever idea: the White House has been struggling behind the scenes for weeks to derail this resolution, knowing that it would be a high-profile slap in the president’s face. But now that the resolution appears likely to pass, with bi-partisan support, the new strategy is to turn the whole thing on its head: “Oh, that? That resolution is practically a vote of confidence in the administration’s strategy and is just what the president wanted to see.”

Clever? Probably. True? Not really.

To be sure, the resolution has been severely watered down. Negotiators didn’t appear to have much of a choice — the solid Biden-Hagel-Levin measure couldn’t clear the GOP’s obstructionist hurdles, and the Senate would have been left passing a) Warner’s weaker measure; or b) nothing.

As it stands, the negotiations moved Warner at least a few steps in the right direction. The resolution is now 11 pages long, and includes all kinds of provisions to annoy the reality-based community, but the measure is nevertheless a statement that expresses Senate disapproval of the White House approach and “urges Bush to instead consider all other options for achieving his strategic goals.”

Indeed, MoveOn.org, which is not exactly tepid in its criticism of the war, offered a fairly enthusiastic endorsement of the compromise resolution.

We are pleased the Senate is headed to a bipartisan vote disagreeing with President Bush’s escalation in Iraq. This is an important first step towards Congress blocking the escalation and stopping the war.

The compromise language would not constrain the Congress from using all of its powers to stop the escalation and force President Bush to implement an exit plan. The “power of the purse” has been wrongly caricatured as “cutting off the troops.” That has never happened in U.S. history nor should it. However, Congress has several times used its powers to stop a president’s use of military force.

If, after the vote, the president fails to respond to the will of a bipartisan majority in Congress, the American people and the Iraq Study Group then the Congress must without hesitation use all of its powers to stop President Bush and get America out of Iraq. Opposition is a good first step but Congress must stop President Bush.

Nevertheless, the new pitch from the right is that this is the “stay the course” resolution. Watch for this meme to make the conservative rounds quickly.

Jesus Christ. How in the hell is Warner driving this issue? The Dems are getting played again in some sort of search for a non-existent bi-partisanisship.

  • yesterday i was beginning to think that getting any resolution passed would be a good thing. and if it had been passed in a hurry that might have been okay. but now the more i learn about this bill, and now that we can see the spin coming, i think i’m changing my mind. i’m more inclined to share feingolds opinion, and i think maybe no bill would be better. but then the spin machine would also say they won. DAMN!

  • as a follow up, echoing dale……when the hell are the democrats going to get some backbone and stand up for themselves?

  • Wrongo Washington Times. Bush stayed the course for too long and now wants to embark on an even worse course. The resolution is a means for this nation to support our troops by giving the diplomats (that’s you Condi) a kick in the butt to do their damn job and quit leaving the task of achieving peace to an 18 year old with a gun in a strange land where he doesn’t speak the language.

    War is supposed to be the continuation of policy by other means. So why in this administration is war the primary means and diplomacy is now the “other means?”

  • In other words, if (when) the Senate passes the non-binding measure, far-right media outlets will characterize it as a victory for the president. It’s a fairly clever idea: the White House has been

    See, this is what I meant with
    this comment. Since it’s a non-binding resolution, literally nothing’s at stake. All that matters is how the resolution looks. Anything in the resolution, and how you act regarding it, should be judged only by that standard.

    If the compromise resolution is passed, the media outlets aren’t going to say “Congress roundly criticizes. . .” in their headlines and it’s definitely
    not going to say “Democrats pass…” It’s either going to say “Bipartisan” so-and-so, or it’s going to say “Republican measure was passed” if they can spin the Republican contribution.

    If the Democrats ended up dragging it out, that’s not necessarily a defeat. They already earned the bi-partisan support, right? They can always come back to that. If they don’t give it up so quickly, they have the choice to be talking about this measure and be talking about the Iraq war in the media for a week. That way the media sure can’t mistake what it was about because the Democrats were all over every show telling the American people what it was about in the week prior. The media would look like liars.

    The only problem is the Defeatocrats. You really can’t recommend, I guess, that the Democrats take advantage of some parliamentary chaos, because they really don’t know how to do that. Every time they’re in a confrontational situation they just turn into deer in headlights, get more and more confused, say the wrong things, or don’t say anything at all. Hence, for the Democrats, it’s not even an option to let things spin out of control for a week, but to keep it a controlled out-of-control, because the idea is so uncomfortable that they’d never consider it. Thinking outside of the box.

  • Echoing #2 just bill – this is really frustrating – if Dems can’t strip the language about funding, with the argument that that is not the point of this resolution, then Harry Reid will prove to be much weaker than Warner… and I hope Feingold, Dodd etc stand firm in NOT signing onto any bill that says you can never look at funding. Ridiculous.

  • That the resolution calls for not cutting off funding does not have to mean that this has to be a “stay the course” endorsement. The funds currently appropriated can be used to bring the troops home, without endangering them, and no one is even mentioning that as an option. This administration, and the lapdog media with their steno pads, have limited all of the discussion to either/or, to the point where they are virtually deaf, dumb and blind to anything that falls outside that narrow little box.

  • Anne – but Bush won’t bring the troops home, unless the Senate refuses to vote on the upcoming appropriations request (aka ‘cut the funding’). The argument to be made is that ‘cutting the funding’ = ‘bringing the troops home safely’. This is what the upcoming Feingold resolution will elaborate…

    But look at the kind of crap we have to put up with from the media EVEN with the Warner-Levin resolution, let alone a Feingold one:

    From CNN:

    BLITZER: On the right, though, a lot of your critics are saying, “You know what you’re doing, Senator? You’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and you’re undermining the U.S. military in Iraq, who are serving there right now.” I want you to listen to the White House press secretary, Tony Snow.

    SNOW [video clip]: Osama bin Laden thought the lack of American resolve was a key reason why he could inspire people to come after us on September 11th. I am not accusing members of the Senate of inviting carnage on the United States of America. I’m simply saying, you think about what impact it may have.

    BLITZER: All right, have you thought about the impact your resolution will have?

    LEVIN: We sure have. We sure have. Our troops deserve everything.

  • Somebody has to explain to me how the Senate can UNANIMOUSLY vote to confirm Gen. Petraeus (who was part of the development of the “new” war plan with the surge), yet then quickly turn around and pass a resolution against his war plan. Why didn’t anyone step up and vote against his confirmation when they had the chance???

    This non-binding resolution is is all about bullshit politics and people straddling the line… The reality is that very few folks beyond Feingold are willing to stick their neck out and truely call for an end to this war.

  • Yes, we know Bush will not bring them home – but my point is that there is money there to do that – ar at least there was; the same dollars being used to keep them there can be used for re-deployment.

    Is there any way the Congress can specify what the dollars appropriated can be used for? I know the Pentagon comes to the Congress with a request for funding – but can the Congress take that request and fashion it into something that would set out how and for what purposes the money could be spent?

    I don’t know the answer to that – maybe someone else does.

  • Unfortunately, people are looking at this resolution through the wrong lens. it is a not a resolution about the war in general or its past conduct. it is a reaction to the President’s support of a “surge.” and looked at in that regard, it is a resounding rebuke. looked at as a statement on Iraq as a whole, it is tepid. part of shaping what lens the post-passage headlines are written through will happen in floor speeches, so they need to start polishing up their rhetorical skills.

  • “His” war plan? I think you mean the guy Bush has chosen to carry out Bush’s war plan, don’t you? There’s a difference, and while I know Petraeus “wrote the book” on counter-insurgency, and some have started referring to the escalation as Petraeus’ plan, I think that is a tactic designed to make it look like less like a Bush plan and more like this is the military’s plan.

    I heard someone in the Senate respond to the disconnect between the unanimous vote and the opposition to the escalation by saying that it’s Bush’s plan – and he’s entitled to the personnel he wants to implement it.

  • Well, the silver lining is, I guess, we still have control of both houses of Congress (albeit in a Liebermanish kind of way) and they passed a lot of their first 100 hours measures. Going forward I guess they can still make the resolution sound as good as possible in the saner media and learn a lesson from the experience.

  • Is there any way the Congress can specify what the dollars appropriated can be used for?

    Yes, but Bush doesn’t believe he has to follow the law, as long as the money for the military-industrial complex keeps flowing in. And the reason for that is nobody is threatening to hold him accountable for crimes he has already committed….

  • What are the people at the Washington Times smoking? This resolution may not have been a forceful as many would have liked and may not amount to Bush doing anything, but I don’t think it is in the neighborhood of “stay the course.”

  • “I heard someone in the Senate respond to the disconnect between the unanimous vote and the opposition to the escalation by saying that it’s Bush’s plan – and he’s entitled to the personnel he wants to implement it.”

    Sounds like something Hillary would say!

  • …when the hell are the democrats going to get some backbone and stand up for themselves?

    when they get a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.

  • I’d say the Washington Time got itr exactly right. The Democrats bent over so far that only three Republicans couldn’t go along, then they voted unanimously for a “stay the course” resolution. They should be ashamed.

  • In point of fact, if it doesn’t specify how funds are to be used differently in a binding way, it’s “stay the course.” The Washington Times is right.

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