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While some in the media are holding out hope that the White House will sit down like adults and work with the congressional conference committee to agree on language that Bush will actually sign, it must be said that this is deluded and wishful thinking. Because Bush wants to veto this bill -- for several political reasons.
The first part of the legislation is a brilliant idea championed by Jack Murtha. It is a masterful bit of legislative jiujitsu that turns the tables on Republicans (which is why they've been so terrified of it, and why right-wing pundits have been personally attacking Murtha ever since he came up with the idea). Murtha's idea is to tie Bush's hands by requiring any soldiers deployed to Iraq to be (1) fully trained, (2) fully equipped, and (3) have had the adequate rest time off the battlefield which Pentagon regulations require. You can see why Republicans are terrified of the prospect of voting against such an idea -- how can you say you "support the troops" if you vote against any of these common-sense ideas which actually do support the troops instead of just paying lip service to the idea? But since the Republicans have been making such a stink, Pelosi has seemingly softened the language a bit, by adding a loophole whereby Bush could send untrained, unequipped and unrested soldiers into Iraq by personally signing off a waiver for them to go, no matter what the Pentagon said. Although the mainstream media is painting this as somehow "backing down" from Murtha's original stance, it is also a brilliant way to paint Bush into a corner. If troops were demonstrably not ready to go, and Bush signed off on them anyway, then he will be the one to pay the political price with the military families and the public at large.
That adds up to 57 votes. And that is three votes short of the 60 which are needed. Can the Democrats convince three Republican senators (most likely, three who are up for reelection in 2008) to vote against their party in the hopes of keeping their jobs?
I certainly hope so, but I wouldn't bet money on it at this point. Especially since Harry Reid is not only holding a Saturday vote at the beginning of a holiday weekend, but he is also hinting that if they do get the 60 votes to go forward, he will hold sessions all next week to debate the resolution and have a floor vote on it. Congress gets all of next week off, so a vote for the resolution is a vote to deny yourself a week of vacation. Not exactly an enticement for those sitting on the fence. Or maybe Reid is being crafty, and will back down from his threat to take away the Senate's vacation in return for those three votes? That would be a brilliant piece of political hardball, if he could pull it off.
We have lost more helicopters in Iraq during the past three weeks than during any period of the war. Details are sketchy, but we've lost either six or seven helicopters in the past few weeks (sources disagree on the total number, and on how many of these were military choppers and how many were civilian contractors'). Nobody seems to be sure if this is due to: (a) new tactics by insurgents with conventional weapons (heavy machine guns); (b) insurgents getting new weapons such as shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles (SAMs, or MANPADs); or (c) just a statistical anomaly.
So you can expect a lot of teeth-gnashing, and rending of garments in frustration from the Republicans in the House floor debates this week. But take it all with a grain of salt. The right-wing blogosphere, as I mentioned, is going to reach new heights of high dudgeon, but in the end there will only be one vote. And only one bill will pass over to the Senate, giving Harry Reid the opening he needs to pressure Senate Republicans: the House has already passed a bill, if Republicans stop debate on the House measure, then you are the obstructionists, and we're going to make damn sure American voters are aware of that fact, all the way up to Election Day 2008.
So while a few Republicans are jumping ship now on legally meaningless concurrent resolutions, by summertime it will be a full-scale rout. Republicans will have the time and distance from Bush to say, "Well, we tried the surge, but it obviously didn't work. It's time to bring the troops home." Some of them are already saying this publicly in one way or another: "If the surge isn't working by summer or fall, I won't support it any more." As time goes by this summer, more and more of them will abandon Bush, publicly.
Yossarian marveled at the logic involved. If you thought the plan was crazy, you were obviously sane and had to fight. If you thought the plan was a good one, you were obviously crazy and could go home, but since you thought the plan was good you'd never want to go home (which was crazy). By pointing out that the president's plan was crazy, you proved you were sane and had to fight, even though you knew the plan (crazy or not) was doomed to failure. The only people who had confidence in the plan were obviously as crazy as the president, and didn't have to fight, but did anyway.
That's right -- the most damning evidence of the Iraqi Army's incompetence comes from the US military itself. Lt. Col. Grunow wrote the article titled "Advising the Iraqis: Building the Iraq Army" after completing a year as a senior Iraq Army training officer. In other words, this is a first-hand view of the Iraq Army's capabilities by one of the key men responsible for training them. He writes the article as advice for other trainers heading to Iraq.
But don't squander the opportunity. If Democrats prove they can't achieve consensus, and the whole exercise devolves into intra-party squabbles about whose plan is best, then the American people are going to (quite rightly) conclude that it was a mistake to give the Democrats control over Congress in the first place, and will vote accordingly next time around. This is a big test, and I hope the Democrats can manage to pass it with flying colors.
But as depressing as these outcomes are, they are still better than the worst-case scenario. If Iraq in essence ceases to be a nation, and dissolves into the miasma of warlordism (much like Afghanistan before the rule of the Taliban), then the entire world will see America's adventurism in Iraq as a colossal and embarrassing failure. This will diminish us even further in the sight of the world, and will once again prove that even if you have the biggest, bestest military ever -- some things are just beyond your abilities. This does not bode well for our ability to deal with (and intimidate) such states as Iran and North Korea in the future.
I mean, it is somewhat satisfying to see the oft-mocked "reality-based" world so resoundingly bludgeon into submission the shameless neo-conservative hucksterism that got us into this war; but we have to be careful to consider the future standing of the United States in world politics at the same time.