A step toward ending the war
March 23rd, 2007,The U.S. House just passed a budget bill creating a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by September 1, 2008. It’s clearly the strongest Congressional challenge ever to President Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. It doesn’t satisfy those who want the war to end as soon as possible, but it does indicate that the Democratic party has been emboldened to change course regarding the war in Iraq.
Here is what the New York Times reported:
The withdrawal timetable provision, which calls for most American troops to be out of Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008, is part of a bill to provide about $100 billion to finance the war [sic] in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill would also impose a series of performance benchmarks, for Baghdad and for Washington, to show progress in the new Iraq. Withdrawal would be required even sooner if progress on those benchmarks could not be demonstrated.
Passage of the legislation in the House by no means signals that it will emerge from the full Congress: the Senate is about to debate its own Iraq-pullout measure, which differs in substantial ways.
Still, the House legislation is hugely significant as a gauge of political support for the Bush administration’s war strategy.
So it’s not likely that there will be a withdrawal even by fall 2008, particularly given the fact that President Bush immediately announced that he would veto the bill if it came across his desk in its present form.
The Minnesota delegation voted along party lines: 5 Democrats in favor, 3 Republicans opposed.
March 23rd, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Bill,
What an odd idea of “challenge” is practiced by the Democrats, who keep finding ways to prolong the war they claim to want to end.
From the party’s deeds rather than its words, we can see that their real complaint–the war’s management–is miles away from the loathing and regret felt by a majority of Americans who now see that invasion was a grave mistake. A growing number realize it was also a monumental crime.
The fiction that another eighteen months of occupation will lead to anything useful is mocked by every reasonable accounting of the situation, now in ghastly metastasis (see, e.g., Andrew Cockburn’s excellent reporting in The Independent of London, much of it reprinted at Counterpunch.com).
What this $100 billion will buy: its weight in murder and tears. And some cover for the Democrats in 2008 against the accusation they cut and ran. Why is that remotely good return on those billions, let alone on the dearer coin of human life?