It's not Senator Reid who "Lost" the War in Iraq

While Senator Harry Reid certainly has the right to practice his freedom of speech and declare that the war in Iraq is "lost," to do so from the position of a United States Senator and as the leader of Democratic Party in the Senate has been lampooned by Republicans as both cowardly and irresponsible. They claim that such statements do nothing but demoralize our troops and strengthen the enemy, making the fight that much harder to win. In this sense, it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the U.S. believes the war is lost, then it will more than likely end on terms that could reasonably be called a defeat for the U.S.

But will such a hypothetical future "defeat" be one the United States has suffered, or will it be something that the Bush administration has suffered? For many, there is no disctinction. George W. Bush is the President after all, and that means that whatever he believes in, whatever he chooses to do, whatever the consequences, that is where American goals and policy should be headed. After all, he was elected by the people (and not a friendly Supreme Court, or anything like that, right?).

The sad truth is, the Bush administration never had a plan for "victory" in Iraq, beyond the success of the military invasion and overthrow of Saddam. Surely there was never any doubt that the most advanced fighting force in the world would defeat one lone Middle Eastern dictator with nothing but an ill-trained army outfitted with outdated Soviet technology and not even any WMD's to cheat with. In a fair fight against Saddam, the U.S. was going to come out on top (and in spectacular fashion, after only a few weeks of major combat operations).

However, if that was the only fight the Bush administration was expecting in Iraq, which it seems like it was, then I can barely express my shock and outrage at the criminal level of negligence and myopic planning that has so far proven to be the case. From Bob Woodward's book, Bush at War, it becomes shockingly clear how little planning or preparation there was for the post-war operations phase of the campaign. From administration officials refusing to heed the pleas of commanders and soldiers deployed on the ground for money or support, to Rumsfeld's decision that the Iraqi army be immediately disbanded after the war (thus releasing hundreds of thousands of young, disgruntled, unemployed men into the streets, instead of retraining or reconstituting them for reconstruction or police duties), it's obvious the adminstration didn't think Iraq would be a big deal after Saddam. Dictator gone, mission accomplished (look, a banner on an aircraft carrier that I just landed on, how cool is that!).

But you can't take apart a country's leadership and expect things to just be dandy. I am not saying the war in Iraq should not have been fought, I am saying that once the decision was made to fight this war, the amount of planning and preparation for it was absurdly inadequate. Our troops were dropped into a fractured country and left to dry, hanging in the middle of the brutal sectarian violence that was inevitably going to follow. And once it became apparent that the mission was most certainly not "accomplished," it became the Republican rallying cry to support the troops no matter what. I support the troops. I support keeping them alive. I support using them for missions for which they are fully informed, for which they have clear, accomplishable objectives.

There are those out there who would claim that by denouncing the "leadership" of President Bush (in quotes, because in truth, he has not shown anything resembling that quality, except perhaps a naive and foolish stubbornness that some mistake for "determination" and "courage"), I undermine the troops, and abet our enemies. They say that these enemies will go on fighting us, with even more resolve as we lose our stomach for the fight. And I say, why are we fighting them? To defend our freedom? To defend Iraqi freedom? They fight us because we are there, they fight us because they can easily be made to believe that we are the oppressors. The longer we stay, the more innocents will die. They are our enemies, because by being there, our presence has created them. We cannot win this war in the traditional sense, because the longer and harder we fight it, the longer and tougher the resistance to our efforts will be. Republicans happily claim now, with an "I told you so" attitude, that the growing violence in Iraq is proof positive of the extensive Al Qaeda presence there. What they fail to realize, is that Al Qaeda is there, and is stronger than ever before, ONLY BECAUSE WE ARE THERE. They were not there before the invasion, but they sure as hell had plenty of reason to jump in the fray after we did.

And that is what is lost in the senseless yelling in this "debate" on Iraq. This is not the Revolutionary War, and saying that George Washington never would have quit has nothing to do with anything. We are not fighting a just war against an imperial power who threatens to dominate our liberties and our livelihoods. This is not like any war we have ever fought before, because we have no defined enemy. The current troop surge is like trying to knock down a wall with a rubber mallet; it didn't work the first time, so now we'll just swing harder. But the harder we fight, the harder the fight will be. Instead we must be fighting smarter, and if at all possible, not engaging in physical combat at all. In that sense, Senator Reid was right, that this war will need to be won on economic, social, political, and diplomatic fronts, because it cannot be won soley by brute force.

America's Great Wall of Immigration

While plenty of attention has been given to the construction of a physical barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border designed to stem illegal immigration, the finer points of the immigration debate are often missed. Just to get it out of the way, I'll state the facts and figures and forget the wall for now: the wall costs between $1 to $10 million per mile, and it would cost several billions of dollars to cover a substantial enough part of the border to matter.

President Bush visited the border yesterday at Yuma, Arizona, to commemorate the opening of a new border guard station, and also to take the opportunity to push for his immigration reform policies. While the bill authorizing the construction of the wall along with other enforcement measures was passed with bipartisan support, Bush stressed that enforcement is only half of the problem. New, comprehensive legislation is necessary to tackle immigration reform, that not only places an emphasis on enforcement, but also on what to do with the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country.

The problem is, here is where that bipartisan support falls apart. Democrats are actually closer to the President's ideas for reform than his own Republican party-mates, which include a temporary guest worker program, and avenues to citizenship for current illegal immigrants. Conservatives vehemently oppose any plan that would allow illegal immigrants to gain citizenship, calling it an amnesty that would reward illegal activity. President Bush's response so far has been to try and sell his immigration reform to Republicans, from whom he lacks support, while counting on the same Democrat support for his plans that he received for an earlier bill that passed the Senate but stalled in the House. However, the more Bush courts GOP support, the more he may alienate his ironically Democratic base on the issue. "For instance, one plan would require illegal immigrants wishing to remain in the United States to return to their country of origin first and pay a $10,000 fine to obtain a three-year work visa. The visas would be renewable, at a cost of $3,500." Such prohibitive costs may end up meaning nothing at all, if these visas become practically impossible so as they might as well not exist.

House Speaker Pelosi has warned the President that Democratic support is uneven, and that any reform legislation cannot pass without significant GOP support. This means the Bush adminstration is going to have to find a way to negotiate over what some conservatives see as an nonnegotiable issue. In point of fact, the difficulties the White House face in brokering such legislation is more a sign of the President's ebbing political capital than anything else. Bush can't afford to have his own way, but any concessions to the right will cost him support from the left, and vice versa. In the end, odds are nothing will be done in the short time frame available, as the looming 2008 presidential elections draw legislators' attention way from the death throes of this President's adminstration. In the meantine, American tech jobs will contine to suffer as highly skilled immigrant labor remains capped at 65,000 visas a year, and legal immigrants will continue to be dissuaded from remaining in the U.S. with the difficulty and enormous backlog in processing applications for residency.

In effect, the U.S. is facing the costs while not being able to enjoy any of the benefits of immigration, legal or otherwise.

Eight U.S. Attorneys, the Fifth Amendment, and One Attorney General in the Crosshairs

While the controversy over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys has been brewing for quite some time, new developments in the case continue to stir the pot. With an aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales pleading the Fifth Amendment and refusing to testify in Congress, even more questions will be raised. Ms. Goodling, the Justic Department liason to the White House, is contesting the fairness of the panel investigating the firings, and also "cited the possibility that she might be a witness in a criminal inquiry, although there is currently no known criminal investigation into the dismissals." Of course this begs the question, what sort of future criminal investigation could Ms. Goodling be worried about?

The White House and Mr. Gonzales maintain that the firings were based solely on performance, and that the list of U.S. attorneys asked to resign was compiled solely as a list of underperforming attorneys. In a recent NBC interview, Mr. Gonzales emphasized this point repeatedly, although he also made clear that he was not directly involved in the creation of the list. Apparently, Mr. Gonzales was only involved at the end of the process, in keeping the White House up-to-speed on the progress of the review, and approving the final list submitted to him. When asked how he could be sure that the attorneys on the list were there for the proper reasons, Mr. Gonzales became evasive, instead saying, "[w]hat I can say is this: I know the reasons why I asked these United States Attorneys to leave." Well if you know, how about letting the rest of the world in on the secret?

With 3000 documents released to the investigation, it would seem that somewhere would be sufficient evidence of "underperformance" if indeed that was the reason for the firings. But the fact of the matter is, these attorneys were for the most part competent, effective U.S. attorneys. The U.S. attorney from New Mexico recently published an Op-Ed piece in the NY Times, in which he stated that according to a 2004 review, he was a "diverse up and comer." He had a 95% conviction rate, prosecuted the biggest corruption case in New Mexico state history, made a record number of overall prosecutions, and received excellent office evaluations. To say that Mr. Iglesias was underperforming would not be mere understatement, it would be a flat lie.

What many of these eight attorneys did have in common was their involvement in politically charged corruption cases. In both New Mexico and Washington state, Republicans were dismayed that the U.S. attorney did not proceed to prosecute corruption cases against Democrats, due to a lack of sufficient evidentiary support.

The White House and the Justice Department led by Mr. Gonzales have both been far from forthcoming with the process, rationale, and motivations behind the firings of these U.S. attorneys. To allow the judicial branch to be co-opted by partisan politics and White House/Republican influence is to start down a very slippery slope.

Thank God (or Someone) for Freedom of Speech

At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, Ann Coulter decided to exercise her constitutional right to make a fool of herself:

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards..."

While we're all certainly entitled to our own opinions about the sexual orientations of presidential candidates, it is apparently a fetish of the conservative right-wing to speculate publicly about the matter. Calling John Edwards a "faggot" may surprise some people, but really this is nothing new from the right-wing publicity machine. There was Ed Klein's book The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President, and then there was Rush Limbaugh raving about Ed Klein's book (back in June 2005):

"'I've got some interesting, juicy details on this book on Hillary by Ed Klein, but I'm not going to be the first to mention them,' Limbaugh told his listeners the other day. 'It will come out eventually. It has to do with sexual orientation, and I'm not going to be the one.'"

(apparently Klein was insinuating that Hillary was surrounded by lesbians and lesbian culture in college, which then rubbed off on her)

So maybe Rush was a little more subtle in calling Hillary a lesbian, but could someone explain to me why the conservatives have such a fascination with this subject? Last time I checked, both John Edwards and Hillary Clinton were married to members of the opposite sex, right? If this is the sort of strategy that conservatives feel they need to pursue in order to win, then I can only place my faith in the American people to realize that a party that starts accusing everyone it feels threatened by of being a homosexual is seriously in need of a good lesson at the polls... and therapy.

If it weren't for freedom of speech, I'd never hear how absurd, fanatical, and downright bigoted these people were. So thank you Mr. Bill of Rights. Without you, these people might actually have been forced to keep themselves quiet, by law if not by sheer prudence.

Why Even a Democratic Congress Can't Stop President Bush on Iraq

Despite the failure of a non-binding Congressional resolution that opposes President's Bush's plan to send over 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, Democrats say they will find new ways to challenge the troop increase. The House of Representatives passed the measure, but Senate Republicans succeeded in blocking the resolution using procedural rules. Now Democrats are considering other Congressional measures, including modifying the original war authorization Congress (overwhelmingly) passed in 2002. Specifically, Democrats want American troops to be limited to support missions, taking them out of active combat roles; they claim that the U.S. military was never intended to intercede in a civil war. Other proposals include cutting funding for the Iraq war - effectively preventing President Bush from sending more troops or prolonging operations in Iraq, attaching conditions to future military operations (as Congress did for the first Persian Gulf War, for Clinton's deployment of Marines to Haiti in 1994, and for the U.S. bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999), or, ironically, capping troop levels.

Historically however, Congress has never been able to effectively halt a war, especially one which it has previously sanctioned (such as Vietnam and Iraq). For every measure Congress has tried to adopt to limit U.S. involvement, loopholes have been found and exploited. In 1970 the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, originally passed in 1964 authorizing Kennedy to escalate the war in Vietnam, was repealed; that move obviously did not end the war. In another example of the executive branch dodging the legislative, the Reagan administration used profits from arms sales to Iran to illegally fund Nicaraguan Contras, circumventing a Congressional ban on official U.S. funding in 1984. When Marines were sent to Haiti in 1994, Congress passed a non-binding resolution (hey, sound familiar?) that called for their return "as soon as possible"; Clinton shrugged this off, and U.S. troops stayed for another five years under U.N. provisions.

So, has the founding principle of checks and balances in the American political system just gone out the window? Well, Congress learned its lesson from Vietnam and in 1973 passed the War Powers Resolution, which "requires the President to report to Congress whenever he introduces U.S. armed forces abroad [for combat operations]."

[S]ection 5(b) requires the President to terminate the use of U.S. Armed Forces after [60-90] days unless Congress (1) has declared war or authorized the action; (2) has extended the period by law; or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack on the United States.

Section 5(c) also requires the President to remove the forces at any time if Congress so directs by concurrent resolution.

While the original authorization for the Iraq war remains in effect, the War Powers Resolution is not applicable. Thus, Democrats are trying to modify that resolution, and possibly force a withdrawal. However, such a tactic is unlikely to succeed even if attempted, as the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution has always been questioned. A 1983 Supreme Court ruling also cast doubt on the Congressional power to demand a troop withdrawal pursuant to section 5(c) (see the "Legislative Veto" section of the linked article for more information).

As for other options, cutting funding is unattractive among politicians because such a vote could be construed as trying to undercut the troops and put them in additional harm (though even the Republican Congress back in 2002-2003 could not provide adequate body armor for the troops). Proposing a cap on troop levels would be more of a symbolic gesture than anything substantive (like a sham Republican counterproposal in 2005 that literally called for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq, after Democrats first proposed setting a six-month timetable). And given President Bush's single-minded determination up to this point, it's unreasonable to expect that any Congressional conditions on future military operations would have much effect.

Simply put, President Bush is effectively on a one-man crusade in Iraq as his administration faces record-low approval ratings, and a Democratic Congress arrayed against him. But the scariest thing is, even at this point it doesn't seem that anyone or anything is going to stop him.