President Bush will face a very skeptical nation tonight when he gives his speech on a new plan for Iraq: A full 76 percent of Americans don’t think he has developed a clear plan for Iraq, according to a new CBS poll, and 72 percent aren’t confident of his judgment to make the right decisions about Iraq.
That’s an overwhelming vote of "no confidence" in the commander in chief’s leadership.
As our editorial today argues, Bush has his work cut out for him in making the case for troop escalation. The American public is in a grim and skeptical mood.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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32 Comments
I believe your headline is misleading.George Bush II never faced the public and/or the real world yet.They won’t let the actual public get anywhere near this guy, especially during this speech.
As Yoda would say:Born with a silver spoon, he was.
I will be listening for the president to say these words, or something very like them. In fact, it had better be nearly identical to them:
“This surge represents Iraq’s last chance. If Iraqis ae not able to take advantage of the additional US force, if Iraqi’s do not show _dramatic_, steady progress in unification, then the US will unfortunately wash its hands and withdraw from the area.”
I don’t expect to hear anything ike this, frankly, but if I do then I’ll probably support Bush’s surge efforts. Unfortunately such a surge likely won’t be sufficient for success, but it just may be sufficient to resuscitate the world’s opinion of the USA.
Frankly, I don’t think it will work in any case. Asking those Iraqis who are brave enough to present a leadership profile in civic affairs, Iraqis who almost certainly have had family members murdered or who have neighbors who’ve had family members killed, to completely drop all pretense of revenge is probably asking too much. Not of Iraqis, but of humans. We humans have too many vestigial, murderous tendencies to overcome such a herculean demand. True enough for human males, anyway, and Iraq being today’s Iraq, that’s all that matters.
Iraq will very likely go down as the saddest American foreign policy decision in all history.
No surge. No way. This seems to be an issue on which Republicans and Democrats can come to some agreement.
The larger issue is checks and balances. Yesterday, Tony Snow asserted that “the President has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way.”
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003529196
Presumably, if the Congress endorses a resolution that opposes President Bush’s plans, Bush is claiming exemption from the law.
I believe Tony Snow has fired the first shot in a Constitutional showdown with the Congress. This morning, I called the offices of Representative Tiahrt, and Senators Roberts and Brownback. If Snow’s not-so-veiled threat alarms you, I urge you to call our Congressional representatives as well.
This ’surge’ will do nothing to quell the civil war currently raging in Iraq. The only thing it may accomplish is to put off the final reckoning over Iraq to whoever succeeds George Bush in the White House.
If the President persists in this unconstitutional assertion of Executive power, I believe he may need to be removed from office. Otherwise, thousands more people, among them U.S. service personnel, will be sacrificed to Bush’s inability to admit he was wrong.
All he’s gonna’ say is that we will NOT withdraw.It’ll take him an hour to say that,but mark my words, that’s the bottom line.Didn’t you see the headlines that the 5 major OIL COMPANIES are just now BIDDING ON RIGHTS to Iraqi oil?Once again, they will provide 101 documents proving that this is not another coup by big oil, BUT….mark my words, IT IS.
My sarcastic analogy of the situation is that we haven’t won until Burger King and KFC have franchises in Baghdad!
Refute that! (with a straight face)
I am not looking forward to this evening speech. I am forming an “office pool,” however:
“How many minutes will pass in Bush’ speech tonight before he mentions 9/11?”
My bet is FOUR mintues.
I don’t think he’ll bring up Burger King until we get over the oil company take-over.
CF:
A resolution, even if by both houses, is not binding law. The president IS C-in-C; and CAN order the “surge,” even over Congressional opposition.
Congress, as Snow notes, has the authority to stop him, of course. Congress authorized this military operation, and supports it with appropriations. Congress can cut off funds, but it appears they won’t do that.
The second option is to, by law, “undo” the AUMF. That sets up a very interesting test of, among other things, the War Powers Act, which has never been constitutionaly tested. The Congress has always asserted the Act, and presidents have abided by it even as they have consistently asserted its unconstitutionality; it has simply been politically and practically expedient Presidents to do so and not directly challenge the Act.
Will we now have that test? Interesting. As the players line up on each side, before we proclaim the sky to be falling again, remember that our history is full of these sorts of constitutional clashes; in fact, the Founders created a system with these sorts of clashes built in. This kind of constitutional warfare between the branches is not new. It’s part of the system.
It will be resolved, by compromise or battle, perhaps by Supreme Court decision; the branches will sort out the constitutional landscape, and the Republic will go on.
hmmm
Kind of hard to comment on a speaker that I haven’t seen speak today.
Kind of hard to comment on a speaker that I haven’t heard today.
Never was one to figure out what someone was going to say before they say it.
I’ll give him 6 minutes WSC
The one thing that Bush fails to see, from my perspective, is that the Founding Father intended that there be three separate but equal branches of the Federal Government.
While the President may be the Commander In Chief with control of the military, the Legislative branch is EQUAL in authority to the President.
Bush can order military action over the objection of Congress, but Congress can deny him the funds to proceed, even if those funds have already been appropriated.
I would hope that this Congress would show some spine and not rollover like Congress did in the mid-sixties with Vietnam.
Why doesn’t bush go the whole nine yards this time?
He should wear a straw hat, red and white striped blazer and wave around a cane. Like the carny barker he is.
As to the second option GMC posits above, I suspect that both sides will avoid, to the extent possible, a SCOTUS battle over the constitutionality of the War Powers Act. The reason for my suspicion is that each recognizes the other may just be correct, and the answer isn’t desired. No constitutional scholar I, but, FWIW, I believe the said act is unconstitutional, at least in part, due to a violation of the separation of powers.
Congress does indeed have the “power of the purse”; but a funding cutoff has very negative political implications which most members want to avoid. By the way, this is one reason I believe the “surge” is limited to 20,000; I suspect there’s enough $$ around to fund it, irrespective of Congressional action to not fund it specifically. And, as pointed out supra, there’s not going to be a total cutoff in funding; at least not at this point, notwithstanding the polls.
Once again, VT, I suspect you’re exactly right.
Yep. We’re staying.He’s just leaving out the other two words….the course.
VT and GMC70,
I don’t deny either of your posts. But I do think that the Administration has showed its intention to force the issue of what powers the Executive does and does not have.
Against GMC70, I think the stakes of this game are real and decisive. If the Supreme Court buys the theory of the unitary executive as pushed by the Administration and its backers, we are in decidedly new territory. Even if the Supreme Court only grants some of what the Administration is asserting, the results of such alignment would be quite real and quite drastic.
Frankly, I am more optimistic about the prospects for a Congressional stonewall on Bush’s actions than I have been for some time. I think Pelosi and Reid are largely playing this thing correctly.
But as I say, I also think the coming Constitutional showdown is actually quite extraordinary. GMC70 is right that conflict in built into our Constitutional machinery. That’s the point: powers meet counterpowers, and the thing operates by tension and conflict. But I’m hard pressed to find much of a precedent for the ways in which the current Administration has sought to seize powers that traditionally have not been its own, and the way in which it has refused to be bound either by custom or legal precedent.
The instransigence we’ve seen from the Bush Administration is a real threat to the separation of powers. And they’ve shown every willingness to declare themselves the Constitutional arbiter in the very conflict they have provoked.
CF, do you realize you didn’t say fuck?Not even once?You feelin’ okay?
Somebody may want to help me with my calculations. WWII started in 1939, but we didn’t declare war on the Axis Powers until Dec. 1941. We declared VE in May 1945 and VJ in August 1945, which is to say the top persons opposing the Allies entered into binding surrender agreements that their followers accepted. War ended in Europe 3 years 5 months, and in Japan 3 years 9 months after America declared war.
We invaded Iraq in March 2003. We’re at 3 years 10 months now.
The 108th and 109th Congresses gave the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-led administration essentially carte blanche to carry out this war. The so-called “liberal” press virtually genuflected, to the Commander in Chief. Go back and read Eagle editorials of that time. There wasn’t a speck of misgiving expressed against the invasion by Phil, Randy, Rhonda et al.
The administration achieved some noteworthy goals, such as delivering trainloads of taxpayer dollars to Halliburton, Bechtel and other contractors, as well as to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop-Grumman and myriad smaller military-industrial corporations. Not to mention making billions of dollars for the major oil companies in a condition of enormous destabilization of the energy market.
We even captured the “King” of Iraq, and his chief military and civil-service lieutenants (those of the “pack of cards” members who were not killed). So, we should have been able to get Iraq’s leaders to sign peace treaties, and withdraw, leaving Iraq’s leadership in place, under binding subordination/supplication terms. In WWII, we didn’t execute the Emperor of Japan.
Instead the administration created chaos. Now it wants more money and time to putatively quell the chaos it created. Whatever the administration’s goals were, they appear to have NOT included the establishment of order, under American authority. Or if they did, the architects were totally incompetent. Now, after nearly 4 years of failure (or success in achieving personal enrichment by screwing Americans and Iraqis), who really thinks it’s appropriate to feed more money and lives to this endeavor?
If we had invaded Iraq in 2003, and the new “surge” proposal had been put on the table in 2004, or even 2005, with an admission by the administration that it made faulty calculations, and needed more resource input and time, that would have been accepted by the American populace. But we’ve seen a 4-year process of things going from bad to worse, and now, we’re supposed to believe that a meager 20,000 force-addition, largely comprised of extending exhausted and home-sick troops tours of duty, is going to reverse the debacle?
According to 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams’ statements in a recent Iraq-U.S. relations conference, most of the OPEC contracts give oil-owning countries 60% of oil production revenues for newly developed fields, and 90% for established pumping operations. For Iraq, Ms. Williams reports that the administration wants to give the Iraqis 25% and 40%. Raise your hand if you think the Iraqis will find this proposition to be equitable according to OPEC income-share standards. What do you think will happen if they do not find the proposition equitable?
I read recently a statement that the cause of most wars is people coveting other people’s property. History consistently confirms this theory. The sad, sad thing is that North America possesses vast energy resources. Granted, most are not as cheap as conventionally-produced oil. But they are more than sufficient to meet our needs, if we invest in their development, as well as in energy conservation. We’re not talking about a nearly painless inexpensive transformation. It’s going to cost big bucks. But if we give up imperialism, we can cut our military spending by 75%, we can eliminate the threat of Muslim terrorism to our country, and free ourselves of the oppression of living in chronic fear. Nearly 3,000 people died on 9/11, right? Wrong. Approximately 9000 died.We lose, on average, 6000 people a day. To put this into better context, we have lost 13 million American lives to causes other than terrorism since 9/11. Most of these deaths are in the elderly bracket. But we’ve lost 240,000 people, mostly non-elderly, in traffic accidents, mostly preventable. We’ve lost more than 100,000 infants (less than one year of Age) since 9/11. Some of these were unavoidable, but as many as half may have been due to inadequate medical care.
Maybe its time for Americans to plug in a “surge protector”.
TRACY,
Kind of you to notice! Indeed. I am feeling a bit under the weather.
FYI, I’m saving all epithets for Bush’s actual speech. It will, no doubt, provide no lack of occasions for the hurling of the foam rubber TV brick at the screen.
“Sending more Americans would undermineour strategy of encouraging Iraqis to takethe lead in this fight. And sending moreAmericans would suggest that we intendto stay forever…”– George W Bush, June 2005
Man, I gotta’ get me one of those bricks!WSC, did ya’ get your movie clip about the spider?
Ultimately, years from now, we will “win” in Iraq, as we ultimately “won” in Vietnam and China. We “won” by “losing.” Look at China and Vietnam today: strong, prosperous, independent, sovereign nations, one of which is financing our misguided misadventure in Iraq. Can we add a special tax on to those neocons and oil companies who advocated this war in the first place? To help repay China for the billions we borrowed to fight it.
Trace, I can assure you that I will NEVER become the Crack Spider’s Bitch.
But I do like the idea of a hammock.
Why don’t you have the guts to tell the truth. You would rather the Coalition led by the U.S. fail/lose in Iraq and the fight against terrorism just to ’stick it’ to George Bush and the neocons than ’stick it’ to the terrorist? Thought so.
I pray we do not have ’surge’ of terrorism in the U.S., or Tracy will have to buy a burka and walk two steps behind a man while he breaks wind in her face:)
Just to be clear about my vote against the neocons. It was because they didn’t follow Republican party platform. It was NOT a signal to cut and run. Contrary to the Pelosi cult members belief, I happen to think that we can win the war on terrorism.
It’s really too late in this process for a “surge” or anything else to work. The time for massive troop engagement was at the beginning of the war. There should have been 400,000-500,000 troops committed at the very beginning of the war. If we’d gone in with overwhelming force (Powell Doctrine) in the first place, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion now. Better yet, we should have lined up some allies in the beginning to support with troops and money, and I’m not talking about our lapdogs, the British.
Ultimately, we shouldn’t be there in the first place.
The only thing I am praying for is that whatever Bush does tonight it will not bring too much damage to what he has already done to the country.
It appears that he is determined to run his last 2 years in office like he has his first 6 years – terrible and without a clue.
Maybe I would feel better about the surge if he were to announce tonight that his two lovely daughters have enlisted and will be among the 20,000 troops. That is when I will believe him about anything. Until that happens – no way.
“I pray we do not have ’surge’ of terrorism in the U.S., or Tracy will have to buy a burka and walk two steps behind a man while he breaks wind in her face:)”
Well, that was rather stupid, ID. First of all, Tracy is male, as most know. Secondly, there is no way that anyone in the USA will be involuntarily wearing burka’s.
The war on terrorism does not include Iraq. Perhaps you were sleeping, but even Bush and Cheney admit that Itaq and Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.
Iraq is what it is – it had nothing to do with the war on terrorism – but a small number of al Qaeda fighters are in Iraq. The rest of the insurgency are native Iraqi’s fighting each other and the US occupation.
CIA and other intelligence estimate place the number of al Qaeda terrorists are between five and ten percent of the total insurgency.
No burkas here – but thanks for trying.
Dear Friend,
Tonight, President Bush is expected to adopt the McCain Doctrine and announce his plan to send up to 20,000 more troops to Iraq. That is a grave mistake.
The president’s decision is wrong for Iraq and wrong for America — and it’s time for the new Congress to stop Bush from stubbornly pursuing his failed strategy in Iraq.
Congress should make it clear to the president that he will not get any money to put more of our troops in harm’s way until he provides a plan to turn responsibility of Iraq over to the Iraqi people and to ultimately leave Iraq.
Click here to sign a petition calling on Congress to block funding for Bush’s escalation of the war in Iraq.
The situation in Iraq demands a political solution — not an escalation of the war that our generals agree won’t help.
Escalating the war in Iraq sends the wrong message to the Iraqi people, to the region, and the world.
To get the Iraqis to begin to take responsibility for their country, we must show them that we are serious about leaving. And the best way to do that is by actually starting to leave — beginning by immediately withdrawing 40,000-50,000 of our troops, not escalating the war.
George Bush wants to dig a deeper hole, but we need to climb out:
Join me in calling on Congress to block funding for Bush’s escalation in Iraq.
Only when the U.S. starts leaving will the Iraqi people and other regional powers be forced to step up and engage in the search for a political solution — and bring an end to the sectarian violence.
This president has had nearly four years to get Iraq right — and at every step, he’s gotten it wrong. Tonight, he’s more wrong than ever about what America needs to do. It’s time for Congress to act. And it’s time for America to begin leaving Iraq.
Tell Congress to stop Bush’s escalation of the war.
Thank you for taking action,
John Edwards
P.S. Please forward this email on to everyone you know — Congress needs to hear from all of us that the American people are opposed to escalating the war in Iraq.
How You Can Take ActionMake sure you receive email updates from Senator Edwards. Find out how to add john@johnedwards.com to your Address Book.
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Paid for by John Edwards for President 410 Market Street, Suite 400, Chapel Hill, NC 27516 (919) 636-3131. johnedwards.com. Contributions to John Edwards for President are not deductible for federal income tax purposes.
Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich tables his plan to bring the troops home now!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS6JyiAt0xg
The Parable Of The Old Man And The Young
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,And took the fire with him, and a knife.And as they sojourned both of them together,Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,Behold the preparations, fire and iron,But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,And builded parapets and trenches there,And stretch?®d forth the knife to slay his son.When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,Neither do anything to him, thy son.Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
——-
Wilfred Owen1893-1918
Looking at some numbers and it seems there have been about 3000 US deaths in 4 years in Iraq.
Last week there were twice as many US deaths in New Orleans as in Baghdad.
Last year there were over 16,000 murders in the US.
So it seems the US is still not “under control” after some 250 years, and New Orleans for over 300 years.
Looks like this US thing could be a long slog.
…or we could call for a complete pull out from the US.
Would pacify the Azatlan and the Indian gamers
Mr. Bill, you tried this tack once before – you were full of shit then and you are full of shit now.
BTW – did the murders in NO cost $500 billion?