The
shortest route to ending the Iraq war (and preventing additional wars)
is almost certainly through Congress. Influencing the White House
directly is unimaginable, and stopping the war through the courts
unlikely. Clearly, Congress is the way to go. But what specifically can
Congress do?
How We Got Here
The peace movement
lobbied a Republican Congress without success for four years. Then, on
November 7, 2006, the American public elected a Democratic Congress in
a clear mandate delivered at the polls. Not a single new Republican was
elected, and 30 new Democrats were ushered in, with voters
overwhelmingly telling pollsters that they were voting against the war;
and by "against the war," they meant "against the war," not "against
the escalation." Remember, the President's "surge" into Baghdad had not
yet been announced.
Voters also appeared to be voting for
accountability and possibly for the
launching of impeachment hearings
as well. Polls prior to the election found that a majority of Americans
believed a Democratic Congress would impeach. Candidates who campaigned
on the theme of accountability, including Keith Ellison (Dem.,
Minnesota) who promised impeachment, did well. Polls show that a
majority of Americans favor impeachment or
wish Bush's presidency were
over. Voters in November even booted out a couple of Republicans who
had turned against the war, saying that they were voting for a
Democratic majority so that the Democrats could investigate the war as
well as end it -- something a majority of
Americans continue to say
they want.
Prior to the election, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi
had already ordered the Democrats in the House to oppose impeachment,
but she had not ordered them to support the war. The Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), chaired by Congressman Rahm
Emanuel, however, directed most of its
financial support to candidates
who did not call for ending the war. Of the 22 candidates funded by the
DCCC,
only 8 won. The rest of the victorious Democratic challengers,
many of them strongly opposed to the war, got themselves elected
without Emanuel's help.
Halfway Steps in the House
Of
course, now that the election is over and the Democratic leadership has
heard the people speak so clearly, now that, on January 27th, half a
million Americans encircled the Capitol in opposition to the war, now
that the new Congress has in its hands the power that the Republicans
had a year ago, surely ending the war is at the top of its agenda.
Well, not according to Emanuel's way of thinking, as reported in the
Washington Post:
"For
the rest of the year, Emanuel says, the leadership hopes to stress
energy independence (with fuel-saving efficiency standards for
appliances and cars) and a move toward better health care for children.
And here's what Emanuel doesn't want to do: fall into the political
trap of chasing overambitious or potentially unpopular measures. Ask
about universal health care, and he shakes his head... Reform of Social
Security and other entitlements? Too big, too woolly, too risky... The
country is angry, and it will only get more so as the problems in Iraq
deepen. Don't look to Emanuel's Democrats for solutions on Iraq. It's
Bush's war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, the
Democrats are waiting to pick up the pieces."
So, clearly the
question before us is not just what Congress can do to end the war, but
also how the American public can persuade a Democratic Congress to want
to end the war. Most Republican members of Congress still follow White
House orders like sheep, and leading House Democrat Emanuel is openly
telling the media that he'd just as soon have the war still going on in
2008. The war has cost an estimated 655,000 Iraqi lives and over 3,000
American ones in its first 4 years, with the death rate increasing over
time, so by a safe estimate Emanuel has just written off perhaps
another few hundred thousand lives for the sake of an electoral
strategy.
Prior to the recent Congressional recess,
Congressman
Jack Murtha proposed that he draft a new bill, agreeing to
throw $93 billion or so at the war in the form of another "emergency
supplemental" outside the regular federal budget. That may not sound
like an anti-war proposal, but it certainly passed for one in
Washington, D.C. In fact, Murtha was pilloried by Republicans and much
of the media because he proposed including requirements that troops be
properly rested, trained, and equipped before being sent to Iraq.
Murtha argued that these requirements would force Bush to end his
"surge."
In a climate in which opposition to the "surge" had
become confused with opposition to the war, Murtha's plan was,
amazingly enough, treated as the
near equivalent of pacifism. And no
strong defense of it emerged from the Democratic leadership. Instead
the plan evolved into a proposal to require the President to inform
Congress when he was deploying troops lacking adequate rest, training,
or equipment. But it is unclear how this would even curtail the present
escalation, much less end the war, and there has been no indication of
what Congress would do if Bush failed to obey this reporting
requirement.
Bizarrely, this whole discussion has taken place
without any reference to the fact that, in November 2003, Congress
passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004,
which placed limits on the number of days that a member of the Armed
Forces could be deployed. Bush signed that bill into law, but added a
signing statement announcing his intention to disregard that section.
The U.S. Constitution gives the President the power to sign bills into
law and enforce them, or to veto them. There is no constitutional
middle course. Yet Bush has routinely used signing statements to
announce his plans to
disregard portions of bills he signs into law.
This abuse might be addressed by impeachment proceedings, something the
Democrats are not currently considering. But short of addressing this
abuse, Congress Members could at least behave as though they were aware
of it.
Wholehearted House Actions
Numerous peace and
justice organizations seeking to end the war are urging Congress
Members to vote "no" on the $93 billion supplemental bill. At the same
time, they are watching closely for possible amendments to the bill
that could require the money be spent on a rapid withdrawal. Such
amendments might be introduced and voted on in the House Appropriations
Committee, on which Congresswoman Barbara Lee (Dem., California)
serves, along with Murtha, or they might be introduced and voted on in
the full House.
If a bill provided billions of dollars for the
war but required that it all be spent on the withdrawal of troops, and
if such a bill passed both houses of Congress, the President would be
unable to veto it without denying himself a source of funding he badly
wants. And there is at least a chance that Congress would take umbrage
and pay attention if he cancelled the end of the war with another of
his signing statements.
Other possibilities for ending the war
in the House include not passing a supplemental bill at all, or passing
one of the four bills that have been introduced (by Representatives
Lynn Woolsey, Jim McGovern, Jerrold Nadler, and Dennis Kucinich) that
would use the power of the purse to try to bring the war to an end.
There are also several bills that would instruct the President to end
the war while continuing to fund it, an approach that seems more likely
to pass both houses of Congress, but far less likely to achieve
anything close to their stated goal.
Senator Russ Feingold
held hearings in January on the constitutional power of the Congress to
end a war. One point on which there seems to be consensus: Congress has
the Constitutional power to control what money is spent on (even if
that power has hardly been touched in any meaningful way in recent
years). If Congress says no more money can be spent on the war, then
that is the law of the land -- although the history of the
Iran-Contra
scandal, the
secret beginning of the current Iraq War, and operations
now underway in Iran remind us that the law of the land and the acts of
the White House can sometimes be two separate matters.
Congressman
Kucinich's bill is brand new. The other three House bills have been in
play for some weeks. While Congressman Nadler's bill does not have the
support among his colleagues that Woolsey's and McGovern's do (thanks
to both friendships and political alliances), Nadler has perhaps done
the best job of crafting a bill in which Congress could make use of its
undisputed power to end the war. While the other two bills first
instruct Bush to end the war in a specific period of time, and only
afterward forbid the use of additional funds for the war that is now
theoretically over, Nadler's bill immediately restricts the use of any
money appropriated by Congress to withdrawing the troops from Iraq.
Actually,
Nadler's bill restricts the use of funds to protecting the troops and
withdrawing them. He admits that the "protecting the troops" part is a
bit of nonsense, since the only way to protect them is to withdraw
them. But all of these bills have been written with a keen eye to
repelling the commonplace criticism that bringing our troops safely
home somehow constitutes a failure to "support the troops."
Senate Shortcomings and Opportunities
A
new sideways approach to ending the war without saying you're ending it
is only now emerging in the Senate. This one involves "reauthorizing"
the war. This war was, of course, never declared but pre-authorized to
be launched at the President's discretion for the purpose of
eliminating Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction and combating
those falsely alleged to have been behind the attacks of 9-11. The
facts have already repealed that authorization, but it would be useful
for Congress to do so as well.
Actually reauthorizing the war,
on the other hand, would undoubtedly be less useful, as it might appear
to the public to be support for the war; while any aspects of the
reauthorization aimed at slowly ending the war will surely be viciously
attacked by the administration and its supporters. In fact, that's
already begun. The White House is denouncing any attempts to restrict
the war as "micromanagement" and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
has announced that
Bush will probably disregard restrictions placed on
the war by Congress. Rice was asked in a broadcast interview whether
the President would feel bound by legislation seeking to withdraw
combat troops within 120 days. "The president is going to, as commander
in chief, need to do what the country needs done," she replied. This
brazenly unconstitutional stance is another one of those "details" --
like Bush's past signing statements -- that Congress might do well to
bear in mind and cease trying to ignore.
There are a couple of
possible ways the Senate might get around this. One would simply be not
to pass the Pentagon's supplemental spending bill -- something that 41
Senators could accomplish through a filibuster. The other would be to
pass
Senator Russ Feingold's bill to stop funding the war, which would
obviously require a far higher voting hurdle than that filibuster.
Passing a bill would involve gathering a majority -- and overriding a
veto to maintain it, a two-thirds vote in both houses. The filibuster,
however, presents another kind of hurdle in that it requires some
Senator or group of Senators to find the decency and courage to begin
it, uncertain of success.
Legislating a Unitary Executive
What
is lost in all of these strategy discussions, of course, is the
question of whether any sort of Congressional cut-off of funds would
actually truncate either the surge or the war. Remember, the President
and Vice President began the preparations for the invasion of Iraq
secretly with
at least $2.5 billion illegally taken from other areas.
They have promised never to end the war. They have asserted the power
of a "unitary executive." They have launched pre-war operations in Iran
without any authorization or funding from Congress. They have built
permanent bases in Iraq without any approval from Congress, and
continued that construction work
in violation of a bill passed by
Congress forbidding the use of any funding for it.
So, the
question is not just whether Congress can cut off the money, but
whether the Bush administration can find enough money in other places
illegally to continue a war that has never in any sense been legal. The
amount of money we're talking about is enormous, but it is a fraction
of the Pentagon's budget, and it seems clear that -- given the kinds of
"black budget" moneys floating around in that world -- the war could be
continued for some time (long enough at least to gin up a new enemy to
scare Congress with); that is, unless the military sides with Congress
in this dispute and
refuses to pursue the war with misappropriated
funds.
If any of these strategies to end the war come to
fruition in Congress, a more likely outcome than an actual end to the
war would be a full-scale confrontation with the "commander-in-chief"
presidency of George Bush (and the vice-presidency of Dick Cheney),
leading to possible impeachment proceedings.
Here's the
reality, however: None of these strategies are likely to advance very
far very soon. A movement for impeachment now might strengthen the hand
of those in Congress who want to move on ending the war. During the
Vietnam War, the peace and impeachment efforts aided each other. And
the Democrats then won the next elections, something they failed to do
after choosing not to pursue impeachment proceedings against Ronald
Reagan for the Iran-Contra scandal.
What Could Change
Two
events on the horizon might change this outlook. One is an
attack on
Iran. Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers have said they favor
launching the impeachment process if the Bush administration attacks
Iran. Needless to say, it would be better to begin proceedings to
impeach in order to prevent an attack on Iran, but that is unlikely in
the present political atmosphere.
The other event that could
take us all surprising places is the completion of the trial of I.
Lewis Scooter Libby. The evidence made public by that trial points to
an urgent need for impeachment proceedings against Vice President
Cheney. The evidence suggests that Cheney was the driving force behind
the
campaign of retribution against ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson,
including the outing of his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame. Journalist
Murray Waas has indicated some of the points that cry out for
investigation. New York Times columnist
Nicholas Kristof has urged
Cheney to "come clean," offer an explanation for his actions, or
resign. A blogger with the handle emptywheel has drafted
a mock
indictment of Cheney, and
Wil S. Hylton has recently published possible
articles of impeachment against the Vice President in the men's fashion
magazine GQ.
It seems everyone's getting into the act, except
Congress. But Congress could do so. The evidence uncovered by the Libby
trial did not exist when Pelosi ordered impeachment "off the table" a
year ago. Among the public, there is a lot of fear that impeaching Bush
(and removing him from office) would give us a President Cheney. By
impeaching the incredibly unpopular Cheney first, Congress would allay
these fears. Impeaching Cheney might actually unite the mood of the
public with that of Congress more easily than the impeachment of George
W. Bush -- under the motto:
Business Before Pleasure -- Impeach Cheney
First!
In the meantime, the Democrats' strategy of letting the
war continue, not thoroughly investigating the fraud that launched it,
and not holding the war-makers accountable may prove not to be the
electoral winner that Party figures like Emanuel expect. It might even
prove a political equalizer and so a loser in 2008 or beyond. Every day
that the Democrats don't move to end the war in Iraq is another day in
which that war, stretching ever on, can become the Democrats' war. Only
if they come to believe that the war's unpopularity will work against
them in the voting booths in 2008 or thereafter will they be strongly
motivated to take the sorts of actions that might actually bring it to
an end.
Writings 
Nothing reminds us more of how much the American constitutional system has been transformed, of just how extreme the "imperial presidency" has become, than Congress's generally woeful record in the second half of the last century and in the first years of this one to exert any 
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