Nancy Pelosi is the real Speaker of Washington - Getting out of Iraq

The center of power in Washingtong has shifted away from the White House, down Pennsylvania Avenue, and has rested squarely in the office of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. For proof, you need look no further than sthe spending bill she just pushed through the House. It was a time-consuming effort which wasn’t at all cost-effective, but she got it done.

The Speaker had to add about $20 billion to the bill funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to make it palatable for those members with weaker stomachs (and hungry constituents) and she had to do some serious hand-holding with the anti-war caucus in order to convince them that this was as close as they were going to get to a full, immediate withdrawal. After weeks of negotiations, she collected the 218 votes required and the bill passed — establishing a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq. In announcing the passage of the bill, the Speaker said, “proudly, this Congress has voted to bring an end to the war in Iraq,” and, “the American people have lost faith in the President’s conduct of this war. The American people see the reality of the war, the President does not.” The only problem is she missed her opportunity to re-frame the debate around our Iraq policy — in that she’s still calling it a “war.”

Language creates — and the misuse of language can create mistaken impressions. U.S. military operations in Iraq could have been called a “war” in March of 2003 when we first invaded. But after a few weeks of “shock and awe,” Saddam Hussein was in hiding, we had taken the capital, and the war (such as it was) was over. In fact, the
President himself said “major combat operations have ended” in May of that year.

Yet our military is still there, fighting and dying, to provide security in Iraq. It’s been a long time since ninth-grade social studies, but if I’m not mistaken, the correct term for the invasion, conquest, and control of a nation by foreign armed forces is “occupation,” not “war.” This misapplication of the English language is also what leads “civil war” to become “sectarian violence” and turns U.S. military “advisers” into American “targets.”

But by allowing the President to continue to refer to military operations in Iraq as a “war,” the Speaker is still playing defense, reacting to the whims of the White House, and conceding the Iraq issue to the President as commander in chief. She
cleverly avoided the predictable charge that she was endangering troops in the field by actually giving the President more money than he requested for Iraq and Afghanistan, but still left herself and her Democratic colleagues in Congress open to the charge that they are “micromanaging the war” by requiring the Iraqi government
to achieve certain goals in order for U.S. forces to stay and continue to provide security. It’s time to play offense so that as soon as the “war” becomes what it really is (an “occupation”), the President’s role as commander in chief is diminished — since Iraq wouldn’t be a military operation overseen by the Department of Defense (professional killers), it would be a political effort managed by the
Department of State (professional diplomats).

It’s safe to say that My Fellow Americans would be more agreeable to much stricter Congressional oversight of a $100 billion reconstruction project (in which Americans are being killed) than a military operation (in which they expect casualties).

If the Speaker and the Democrats in Congress really saw “the reality” of our military
operations in Iraq (over 3,200 killed, over 24,000 wounded, $80 billion spent each month, and no end in sight), they would have already begun counting votes in the Senate. They would be working on the 20 Republicans who are up for re-election nex November and getting them on the record as being opposed to an open-ended commitment in Iraq.

Norm Coleman can’t go back to Minnesota and admit he’s standing with the President and not the troops. John Cornyn of Texas, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee barely won their last elections, so you know they were paying attention when Democrats swept into power in November. This group represents the 10 votes it will take to bring our troops home. The Speaker of the House did her job. It’s now up to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to find out what it will take to get these people on board — and dare the President to veto it.