Op-Ed: Democrat Iraq Plan is Prescription for Retreat & Defeat

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Democrat Iraq Plan is Prescription for Retreat & Defeat

wanted to drop by and give everyone an update on the latest Democrat attempts to force our troops to surrender in Iraq.

In January, President Bush outlined his plan to win the war in Iraq with a troop surge. By many accounts, it is starting to work.

Last week, however, Speaker Pelosi outlined the Democrat plan to end the war in Iraq.

Upon reading Speaker Pelosi's defeatist proposal of micromanagement and benchmarks, I was reminded of the famous words of George Orwell who wrote, "The quickest way to end a war is to lose it." I believe that the Democrat plan is a prescription for retreat and defeat.

Common sense and the Constitution teach us that Congress can declare war. A Congress can also choose to fund or not to fund war but Congress must not ever attempt to conduct war.

It turns out that I am not actually alone in my concern about the constitutionality and the common sense value of the current plan for withdrawal from Iraq being propounded by the Democrats.

I am going to do something that is not normally done on Redstate. Read on . . .

I am going to quote liberally (no pun intended) from the editorial pages of the L.A. Times and Washington Post to help me make my case. I probably don't have to tell any of you that these newspapers tend to bookend the country from the liberal viewpoint.

The newspaper of record in the home state of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the L.A. Times, gave a withering critique of her war plan this week in a lead editorial entitled, "Do we really need a General Pelosi?" Their main point? "Congress can cut funding for Iraq but it shouldn't micromanage the war."

And that's not all. The paper goes on to write:

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.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement from an editorial board that is anything but conservative. But that's because their argument, and the argument by Republicans, is based on the Constitution. See this line from their editorial as evidence: "By interfering with the discretion of the commander-in-chief and military leaders in order to fulfill domestic political needs, Congress undermines whatever prospects remain of a
successful outcome."

And the L.A. Times is not alone.

Yesterday's Washington Post, another lion of the liberal media in America, in their lead editorial, "The Pelosi Plan for Iraq," wrote the following:

In short, the Democrat proposal to be taken up this week is an attempt to impose detailed management on a war without regard to the war itself...Congress should rigorously monitor the Iraqi government's progress on those benchmarks. By Mr. Bush's own account the purpose of the troop surge in Iraq is to enable political progress. If progress does not occur, the military strategy should be reconsidered. But aggressive oversight is quite different from mandating military steps according to an inflexible timetable conforming to the need to capture votes in Congress or at the 2008
polls.

It is truly extraordinary how politics, and common sense, and the Constitution can make such strange bedfellows.

I don't think I have ever gone to the floor of the House and quoted at any length the lead editorial in the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times.

But in both cases, the newspapers have identified what I asserted in the beginning: That Democrats should heed the call of the Constitution and common sense and reject the Pelosi plan for retreat and defeat in Iraq.

It is the purview of the Congress to declare war.

It is the purview of this Congress to vote up or down on whether we should continue to fund military operations.

I would never question that right. But it is not the purview of the Congress, according to our history, and Constitution and tradition to interpose our will, our decisions, and our timetables on military commanders in the field.

In conclusion, we have one choice in Iraq: victory.

It is my hope and prayer that after much political debate here in Congress we will give our soldiers the resources they need to achieve victory in Iraq and bring home a much-deserved freedom for those good people and another victory for freedom for the American people.

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