Soccer Dad

Changing the past

The Senate Democrats readying a bill to limit the country's military options in Iraq. (Which might prompt Sen Lieberman to switch parties.)

Riehl World View doesn't expect the vote to have any real impact because of delaying tactics. What matters, he writes, is results. If the new tactics aren't successful, America will be out of Iraq by 2008 anyway.

In the No way to end a war ( or here )Charles Krauthammer takes issue with both the Congressional approach

Unfortunately for the Democrats, Murtha is not disingenuous enough to have concealed the real motives for these ostensibly pro-readiness, pro-troops conditions. He has chosen conditions he knows are impossible to meet -- "We have analyzed this and we have come to the conclusion that it can't be done'' -- in order to make the continued prosecution of the war very difficult, if not impossible, for the commanders in the field.

But think of what that entails. It leaves the existing 130,000 troops out there without the reinforcements and tactical flexibility that the commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, says he needs to win.

and the Senate approach

Levin has a different idea -- change the original October 2002 authorization. "We'll be looking at modification of that authorization in order to limit the mission of American troops to a support mission instead of a combat mission,'' says Levin. "That is very different from cutting off funds.''

While this idea is not as perverse as Murtha's, it is totally illogical. There is something exceedingly strange about authorizing the use of force -- except for combat. That is an oxymoron. Changing the language of authorization means -- if it means anything -- that Petraeus will have to surround himself with lawyers who will tell him, every time he wants to deploy a unit, whether he is ordering a legal "support'' mission or an illegal "combat'' mission.

If Levin wants to withdraw our forces from the civil war in the cities to more secure bases from which we can continue training and launching operations against al-Qaeda, he should present that to the country as an alternative to (or fallback after) the administration's troop surge. But to force it on our commanders through legalisms is simply to undermine their ability to fight the war occurring on the ground today.

There's something perverse about changing the 2002 authorization. Why? Because what if Bill Clinton had been elected to a third term? Or if Al Gore had gotten the few hundred votes he needed in Florida? Does anyone believe that neither of those Democratic administrations would at least have considered going to war with Iraq if they knew the same things that the Bush administration knew at the time? I can't believe that they wouldn't have considered a military option. The maneuvering now is being done with the benefit of (or perhaps the burden of) hindsight. Things don't look good; let's cut our losses. And if you voted for the war, well now you need a dodge to escape responsibility.

But go back to 2002 and see what was reported then. Or go back to 1998. You'll find that Iraq was a major concern. And that America's intentions and actions toward Iraq were a source of friction with the Arab world. To claim otherwise is disingenuous.

Bush chose to go to war. And any responsible Democratic President would have had to have at least considered war in 2002. Changing the authorization hides that. Perhaps that's good politically if one's goal is to escape responsibility. But as Krauthammer puts it, it's no way to end a war.

Blogdigger tags: War, Iraq, Politics.