President Bush has taken the war in Iraq too far. Without any
checks on his power, he has simply thrown troops at a bad situation
that isn’t improving. Now Congress is finally moving to take
back the control that the president has abused.
The Senate Judiciary Committee met Tuesday to consider cutting
funding for the war. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said he would
seek to stop funding the war after six months, except for limited
funding that would go to counterterrorism and training Iraqi
police.
Basically, Congress would take back control from the president
with an ultimatum: Be out in six months. Period.
This power grab makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons.
First, the 2006 midterm elections ““ in which candidates could
win Senate seats simply by being against the war ““ served as
a strong message that America wants out of Iraq.
In addition, the president has a dismal 30 percent approval
rating (according to a Newsweek poll), 70 percent of Americans
disapprove of the president’s handling of the war (ABC
News/Washington Post poll), only 35 percent of military members
approve of Bush’s handling of the war (Military Times poll),
and about 80 percent of the Senate disagrees with a troop surge
(Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman).
Clearly the president does not have much support. It’s
time for Congress, with the clear support of the American public
and the soldiers in Iraq ““ not to mention the Iraqis, who
also don’t want us there ““ to rein in the
president.
While getting some representative government involved in the
Iraq war is the right way to go, the six-month deadline might be
too optimistic. The U.S. has been the main force trying to keep
order in Iraq for the last four years, and to expect a smooth exit
in six months is unrealistic.
Instead, Congress should give the president a deadline of one
year to give the military enough time to enact a more orderly
transfer of power. The idea shouldn’t be to cut and run, but
to transfer the responsibility onto the Iraqi government, where it
belongs.
The few supporters of a troop surge in the Senate have said that
cutting funding would make the wrong statement.
“The message to our troops is that we no longer support
them,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told The New York Times.
But when the troops want the war to be over, supporting them
should be getting them out ““ not entrenching them
further.
Congress has done little more than announce its opposition until
now, despite having bipartisan support from a large majority of the
Senate. Recently, a group of senators announced a nonbinding
resolution against the troop surge that called for more diplomacy.
But a nonbinding resolution is not going to deter the president
from his chosen course.
Congress has a responsibility to the American people to
represent their will, and it has a right, according to many legal
experts, to intervene in times of war.
“The same duty commanders have to the president, the
president has to elected representatives,” Louis Fisher, an
expert in constitutional law for the Library of Congress, told the
Times.
The meaning of this statement is something the president has
continually ignored: He is bound by the will of the American
people. He has shown time and again that he doesn’t care
about the people’s will, and it’s about time Congress
set him straight.