Back Where We Were
“Chef, we’re in a repeat.” - Stan Marsh
“A repeat?” - Chef
“Cartman was visited by aliens again last night, and now it’s like we’re living a repeat of a previous day.” - Kyle Broflovski
“Ah dude, I hate repeats.” - Eric Cartman
What a difference a couple of weeks can make. We went from certain Democratic capitulation (which could still happen), to a possible muddled compromise (which could also still happen), back to stalemate (which is untenable). Bodies are still coming home from the land between the rivers though, so something needs to be done. The onus is on the Legislature because given his druthers the Executive would gladly stay until we’re reduced to sending Cub Scouts to patrol Haifa Street. The smart money and conventional wisdom are on some kind of mild Democratic capitulation that allows the war to continue with some strings attached, but the field of possibilities is wide open.
The best case scenario for Bush the Younger is unfettered funding passed in both houses by a small majority comprised of the Republicans plus a few useful-idiot type Democrats. The key variable here is time relative to next November. The less time the funds will last the more palatable it will be to those Democrats who haven’t totally given up on the war. Four months would put us through January, more or less the anniversary of the, ahem, surge. (That’s also going to be the height of primary season for the Presidential candidates, some of whom would find an expiration of funding at that moment useful, some of whom would not.) Six months would get us through March, which would coincide with the fifth anniversary of the war and the April troop withdrawals that are basically mandated by the rotation schedule. A Democratic Congress, even a divided one, funding the war for more than six months just doesn’t seem plausible.
The problem with this scenario is that it amounts to little more than kicking the can down the road. Worse yet, the exact same Congress (minus the odd scandal plagued Senator or Representative) will have to take it up again - in an election year. In effect both sides would be doubling down on the wager they made this spring. The pro-war side hopes for some kind of improvement while anxiously watching the calendar flip closer to January ‘09; the anti-war side hopes that a few more months of the grim realities of Iraq might finally provide enough Congressional support to pass something that mandates an end to the war.
Meanwhile, the best case scenario for the Democrats is that someone of influence on the Republican side firmly and publicly breaks with the Administration and takes enough votes with him to pass war funding with meaningful limits. After a round or three of vetoes the Administration caves (or declares some insignificant legislative or military change a victory and then caves). The war doesn’t end overnight, but is put on a firm track to ending sometime in ‘08 or early ‘09.
The problem with this scenario is that it depends on a serious Republican defection which at this point seems about as likely as Reagan rising from the grave to denounce Bush the Younger. Nevertheless it is possible. Republicans can read poll numbers like these just as well as anyone else and they have to be nervous. Efforts to pass restrictions on the war stalled in the Senate this week but the pressure on Congress to act decisively won’t fully bear on either side until the money actually runs out.
Politics being the art of the possible I have to believe there’s some kind of compromise here. Maybe it’s another war progress report, with some kind of bite, due in January. General Petraeus’ credibility is shot with the left so it would have to be outside the current military. Perhaps a panel of retired generals under the auspices of the Government Accountability Office? How about passing funding for eight months with the last four being voided if certain, ahem, benchmarks aren’t met? I don’t know, I’m not a legislator, but there has to be something that’s politically palatable in that it a) pays for the war and b) gives the anti-war crowd a more concrete assurance that the end is coming.
Otherwise neither side budges and that’s bad for everybody. If the growing number of Republican retirements is anything to go by, they may be willing to fight to the last bullet between now and next November, dump the mess on the newly elected Democrats in ‘09, and come storming back in 2010. On a purely tactical level I find that admirably cynical, but it’s an awfully big risk. The fact that the Blues screwed the pooch ‘93-94 is no guarantee that they’ll do it again. In the meantime they’d be signing their own electoral death warrants in exchange for…what exactly? A few more months of awkward posturing from Democrats and the schadenfreude of seeing anti-war liberals tear out a little more of their hair? Seems like a bad deal.
Personally, I don’t think the Republicans are that stupid. They know that the public is done with the war and that we’re not likely to change our mind anytime soon. Iraq may be on the front burner right now, but the knob is still set to simmer. It will point closer and closer to boil as the money runs out and we get through September and into October. My hunch is that a compromise exists in there somewhere, though we’re a long way from it at the moment.
