From Today’s e-Mail

Greg W. wrote me an e-mail about my column from a week back. I pointed out that Congressional Democrats are lying when they claim they need a filibuster- or veto-proof majority, which would necessitate Republican support, to end the war in Iraq.

I have read several of your columns recently and find them to be generally informative and insightful.
Several of these recent columns have addressed the US
Congress and the fact that Nancy Pelosi allowed measures funding the Iraq war to be voted on and ultimately approved. You (and several others) have suggested that if the Democrat-controlled Congress made it clear that no Iraq War spending bill without a timeline would be forthcoming, not only would this not be ‘abandoning the troops’ but it would also result in our troops being withdrawn from Iraq. In the interests of completeness, I think that those (like
you) who support this position should provide response to a couple of points that (in my opinion) are serious issues with this premise.

1. If Ms. Pelosi were to simply not send the Senate or President an Iraq appropriations bill without timelines, wouldn’t she essentially be ‘shutting down the government’? The last Speaker of the House who tried this (Newt Gingrich) was removed as speaker of the house shortly thereafter. While there were other reasons for Gingrich to lose his speakership, Gingrich’s failure in his stand-off with Clinton always seemed (at least to me) to be the beginning of the end for him. Since you support Ms. Pelosi ultimately doing the same thing, you should at least explain why you think she would not lose her speakership over this, or, if you believe she would lose the speakership but should anyway, why she should throw away the speakership of the house over this issue. Note: I don’t necessarily think that it would be the wrong choice for her to sacrifice her speakership position to end the war, however, if this is the cost, proponents of this strategy (like you) should acknowledge this cost.

I did quote “Extra!” magazine in stating that there might be a political price to pay by Democrats, who would surely be accused by Republicans of abandoning the troops. (With the war unpopular, however, we don’t know if this argument would resonate with voters.) In essence, yes, Pelosi and Reid would be “shutting down the government”—or, more accurately, the part of the government that runs the occupation of Iraq. The Pentagon would continue to receive appropriations for non-Iraq activities, of course. But the failure of Congress to allow an appropriations bill to come up for debate, and pass, would force the DOD to withdraw troops.

The parallel with Gingrich ends here, however. Republicans ousted Gingrich after “shutting down the government” lost them points at the polls. Truth be told, many GOP members of Congress had tired of Gingrich’s imperious manner and were jockeying to replace him long beforehand. If Democrats were united behind Pelosi, and they appear to be, there would be no reason for them to replace her as speaker. Remember, that would be a choice.

2. Lets assume that Ms. Pelosi had agreed to your recommendation, and that of the four out of five constitutional experts (in the interest of completeness you should have mentioned what the fifth said), and simply kept sending the same bill with timelines to the President. What would stop the “Blue Dog” democrats (of whom I understand there are 40-70) from caucusing with the remaining Republicans and electing a new Speaker of the House? (at the same time destroying the Democratic Party) This is the main issue that you should be addressing. In this scenario Ms. Pelosi would have thrown away her speakership and we would still be in Iraq.

The fifth expert said that the president is The Decider, and that conducting the war was pretty much his sole prerogative.

The scenario you describe is theoretically possible. But it would depend on the Blue Dog Democrats actively deciding to decimate their own party, thus reducing their own chances of retaining their offices in the next election (due to lack of funding and coordination by a national party) against the deep-pocketed Republicans. Anything can happen, but that’s a remote possibility at best. Moreover, the support of the Blue Dogs for the war is sketchy at best.

I understand and appreciate the effort that you put into your columns and certainly do not expect you to cover everything in every column. However, the points that I have raised are very crucial to the issue and are what (I think) is keeping Ms. Pelosi from doing what you suggest. We all are suffering from cherry-picked intelligence on Iraq (actually cherry-picking of information in general is not only a serious issue in our country, it has its own college major – Marketing, or as I like to call it: lying) and we know that those in favor of invading Iraq only presented information which supported the case to go to war. I would hope that in your pursuit of ending the war, you present all the facts, including those that do not support your argument, lest you become the evil you so despise.

As you say, one can’t put everything into a column. Moreover, there are always things I don’t think of (like the possibility of the Blue Dogs allying themselves with the GOP). But I always try to give the devil his due in every argument, never dismissing blithely but trying to counter with logic and common sense. I may not always succeed, but that’s my goal