1 Boring Old Man

Congress and Iraq

So all of the Iraq maneuvering was merely for show to appease the antiwar left that elected Democrats. Ms. Pelosi couldn’t even deliver a majority of her own Members for the war spending bill, and she voted "no" herself. Thus she can claim to oppose the war but also sleep easily knowing that others voted to fund it. The troops will be funded because 194 Republicans joined 86 Democrats to support it. Two Republicans and 140 Democrats opposed it.

At least Majority Leader Reid voted for the bill, which passed 80-14 in the Senate. To his credit, so did Joe Biden. But the main story in that body was the "no" votes by Presidential candidates Chris Dodd, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The vote won them praise from the likes of MoveOn.org, which threatened not to support anyone who voted for the bill. "Senators Obama, Clinton and Dodd stood up and did the right thing–voting down the President’s war policy," said Eli Pariser, MoveOn’s executive director. "They’re showing real leadership toward ending the war, and MoveOn’s members are grateful. This bold stand . . . won’t soon be forgotten."

We hope he’s right about that last part. Here are three politicians bidding to be Commander in Chief, and they vote to undermine U.S. troops in the middle of a difficult mission, albeit knowing like Ms. Pelosi that their vote won’t determine policy. Mr. Dodd and Mrs. Clinton both voted for the Iraq War resolution in October 2002, which means that they were for the war when it was popular but are against it now that public opinion has changed.

The Troop Funding Trap

A confused Wall Street Journal editorial last week seemed to be addressing this question of how an elected representative might legitimately oppose a war in our democracy. It began by accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of cowardice. They "claim to oppose the war and want it to end, yet they refused to use their power of the purse to end it."

So there is a "power of the purse," you see. Congress can cut off funds for a war that people don’t like. In this connection, older readers might recall the Iran-contra affair, in which sources of money were found to keep the contra war going in Nicaragua without Congress’s even knowing about it. This met with the enthusiastic approval of the Wall Street Journal, even though funds you do not know about are hard to cut off.

But what happens if you, as a member of Congress, do attempt to use the power of the purse? Sens. Clinton, Obama and Chris Dodd (also running for president) voted against the final Iraq funding bill because all meaningful deadlines and timetables had been stripped out so that President Bush would sign it. That Wall Street Journal editorial accuses these three Democratic senators of "vot[ing] to undermine U.S. troops in the middle of a difficult mission." If this is true of last week’s vote, it will always be true of any attempt to cut off a war by cutting off funds. Unless the Journal is in favor of undermining U.S. troops, this makes the alleged "power of the purse" unusable.

Advocates of the current war who enjoy the spectacle of war opponents caught in this trap of laws and logic had better hope that every military action a president chooses to engage in from here on out is as wonderful to them as is the war in Iraq. Because there is nothing war-specific about this line of argument. It would work just as well on an invasion of Canada or an aerial bombardment of Portugal. The president can do it if he wants to, and no one can legitimately stop him.

Of course, the president is elected, and in that sense he is acting as proxy for the citizens when he decides to take our country into a war. Right? Well, not quite. Let’s leave aside the voting anomalies of the 2000 election. When this president first ran for national office, he campaigned on a platform of criticizing his predecessor for engaging in military action (in Kosovo and Somalia) without an exit strategy. He mocked the notion of trying to establish democracy in distant lands. He denounced the use of American soldiers for "nation-building." In 2000, if you were looking for a way to express your disapproval of the policies and prejudices that later got us into Iraq, your obvious answer would have been to vote for George W. Bush.