LA TIMES EDITORIAL: Do we really need a Gen. Pelosi?

[yurbud]

I strongly disagree with some of their reasons, but their bottom line is correct.

Frankly, any talk of benchmarks by anyone is bullshit. There is just one benchmark: if they can convince the 99% of Iraqis who want us to leave that they instead want us to stay, we could consider staying.

We wouldn't be staying to ensure democracy or end sectarian violence, but to make sure there is a stable government capable of enforcing the oil deals Bush is ramming down their throats.

And of course Bush is no Eisenhower or Lincoln. I would say that he is more like a crack-smoking retarded monkey with a machine gun, but that would be unfair to crack-smoking retarded monkeys and Bush has 10,000 nukes at his disposal.

The editorial is right in that Congress has two tools to end the war:

• cut funding
  
  
• revoke the authority to use force
  

If democrats do neither, they are just shining us on.

Do we really need a Gen. Pelosi?
Congress can cut funding for Iraq, but it shouldn't micromanage the war.
March 12, 2007

AFTER WEEKS OF internal strife, House Democrats have brought forth their proposal for forcing President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2008. The plan is an unruly mess: bad public policy, bad precedent and bad politics. If the legislation passes, Bush says he'll veto it, as well he should.

It was one thing for the House to pass a nonbinding vote of disapproval. It's quite another for it to set out a detailed timetable with specific benchmarks and conditions for the continuation of the conflict. Imagine if Dwight Eisenhower had been forced to adhere to a congressional war plan in scheduling the Normandy landings or if, in 1863, President Lincoln had been forced by Congress to conclude the Civil War the following year. This is the worst kind of congressional meddling in military strategy.

This is not to say that Congress has no constitutional leverage — only that it should exercise it responsibly. In a sense, both Bush and the more ardent opponents of the war are right. If a majority in Congress truly believes that the war is not in the national interest, then lawmakers should have the courage of their convictions and vote to stop funding U.S. involvement. They could cut the final checks in six months or so to give Bush time to manage the withdrawal. Or lawmakers could, as some Senate Democrats are proposing, revoke the authority that Congress gave Bush in 2002 to use force against Iraq.

But if Congress accepts Bush's argument that there is still hope, however faint, that the U.S. military can be effective in quelling the sectarian violence, that U.S. economic aid can yet bring about an improvement in Iraqi lives that won't be bombed away and that American diplomatic power can be harnessed to pressure Shiites and Sunnis to make peace — if Congress accepts this, then lawmakers have a duty to let the president try this "surge and leverage" strategy.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-iraq12mar12,0,492047.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail

[damntexdem]

1. Could be no worse than the current set-up.

But, yeah, the thing to do is to cut the funding now!