When a President Owns a War
A lot of folks don't like Bush's plan, but there's risk in trying to change it
'It's a brave new world for George Bush," New York Sen. Chuck Schumer told reporters a day after the president announced he was sending 21,500 more American troops to Iraq. "For the first time, people who have the ability to change course in Iraq are asking hard questions." And yet, for all the recent developments that would have seemed to usher in a pullback from Iraq-from the sweeping Democratic gains of November, to the Iraq Study Group's damning report in December, to poll numbers earlier this month showing public support for more troops hovering around 18 percent-last week's White House announcement delivered exactly the opposite news. Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, seated next to Schumer at last week's briefing, suggested Capitol Hill might be powerless to stop the president's so-called surge: "I'm not the president, I'm not secretary of state, I'm not secretary of defense." In the short run, Congress cannot run a war.
At the same time, though, Washington's reaction to the president's speech marked an unmistakable turning point in the politics of the war. Stopping short of pursuing Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy's bill-which would withhold funding for a troop increase and give Congress authority to cap troop levels-Senate and House Democratic leadership set to work crafting a nonbinding resolution that opposed a troop increase, expecting a vote as early as this week. In a handful of committee hearings, lawmakers unloaded their anger over the president's troop plan on officials like Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A growing GOP contingent, meanwhile, expressed opposition to Bush's plan, with Reid saying he'd lined up as many as a dozen Republicans for a resolution opposing what he branded "escalation."
Caution. Even with Republicans in a tough political spot, however, the way forward for Democrats is far from clear. As Hill Democrats worked on a nonbinding resolution, leaders in the House also wrestled with whether to pursue more muscular legislation to withhold funding for prospective troops or to attach serious restrictions on funding for the White House's next defense funding request for Iraq-expected in February or March. "After the commander in chief announces his strategy, it's Congress's responsibility to step back and say, 'Is this the best use of our resources?'" says Rep. Joe Sestak, a Navy vice admiral elected last year. But Democrats, wary of the decades-long political cost of voting to cut off funding for the Vietnam War, are proceeding cautiously. Rep. Bennie Thompson, though a member of the Out of Iraq Caucus, spoke for many Democrats in warning that a cut in funds for a prospective deployment "might send the message that we're not supporting the troops." And there are constitutional questions about how far Congress can go in shaping the war policies of the commander in chief. In the weeks ahead, the question of what Democrats are willing-and able-to do to shape the president's Iraq strategy may determine whether Reid is correct in saying that his nonbinding resolution "will be the beginning of the end of the Iraq war."
Many Democrats attacked Bush's surge plan as a willful rebuff of the electorate but played down their own ability to block it. "We have one commander in chief, not 535," says a top Democratic strategist. But in a memo to Democrats last week, the liberal Center for American Progress outlined a variety of congressional options that, apart from withholding funds for current or future deployments, included the ability to "cap the size of military deployments" and to "condition, limit, or shape the timing and nature of troop deployments." The document listed historical examples of congressional troop caps, from Lebanon in 1983, to U.S. military assistance to Colombia in 2000. "There's probably a lot of confusion," says the Center for American Progress's Larry Korb, who coauthored the memo. "I don't think [Democrats] realize they can do much."
But James Thurber, a congressional and presidential scholar at American University, says Democrats are being coy in claiming the most they can do to block a troop increase is pass a nonbinding resolution expressing disapproval. "They know full well what they can do, but they don't have the votes" for a bill to cut off funding, Thurber says. For now, Democratic congressional leaders say the nonbinding vote is the key first step to responding to the White House because it will force Republican lawmakers into the uncomfortable political position of having to vote for or against the president's plan. Says GOP strategist Tony Fabrizio: "The first rule of politics is never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake." Democrats also believe that voters cast ballots for bipartisanship and moderation in the last election, so they want to avoid being seen as wild-eyed zealots. "It's not enough-it's the first step," says newly elected Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown of a nonbinding resolution. "We're building opposition to escalation of the war by talking to Republicans."
In the meantime, Hill Democrats will channel most of their Iraq war opposition into a blizzard of committee hearings scheduled over the next month or so. The House and Senate intelligence committees will examine issues from how well America's spy agencies are supporting the U.S. effort in Iraq to how the Bush administration used intelligence in the run-up to the invasion. Democrats have also resurrected the House Armed Services subcommittee on oversight, disbanded by Republicans in 1995. Subcommittee Chairman Martin Meehan of Massachusetts is hiring five investigators to look into issues like corruption among defense contractors and troop equipment shortfalls.
But oversight hearings will do little to placate the Democratic base, where pollster John Zogby says support for the war has dwindled to 7 percent. "The Democratic constituency is looking for a resolution to the war," says Zogby. Indeed, the president's Iraq speech unleashed a national wave of antiwar activism last week, with the liberal group MoveOn picking up 65,000 new members in just two days. MoveOn had planned to devote last week to applauding Democrats for passing its "first 100 hours" package of domestic legislation, but it is now E-mailing members daily-a pace typically reserved for the week before a national election-with entreaties to pressure Congress to pass legislation like Kennedy's. At the moment, however, officials at MoveOn and other liberal groups say they trust Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill who say that the endgame on funding and troop caps won't come for several weeks or even months, perhaps when the White House submits its request for supplemental war money.
The White House is betting that Democrats won't do anything in the short term. Which isn't to say the administration is resting easy. One concern is an expected spike in casualties following the troop increase. "Every time we've been more involved on the ground, casualties have gone up," says a Bush adviser. That's bound to make the antiwar drumbeat, in Congress and in the country, even louder.
With Kenneth T. Walsh
This story appears in the January 22, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.