If the Constitution Allows It, Will the Democrats Finally Grow Some Balls?

a Reuters story today in the Boston Globe reported on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee meeting chair by Russ Feingold (D-MN) where several legal experts and former government lawyers testified that Congress did, in fact, have the constitutional authority to end the war if it so chose. Bradford Berenson, who was White House counsel under Bush from 2001 to 2003, said: "I think the constitutional scheme does give Congress broad authority to terminate a war."

so the question now is: what's next?

so far, I've operated under the cynical belief that the Democrats were secretly angling for President Bush to have come out as he did on their opposition, that there was nothing they could do to stop him from making all sorts of resource decisions about the war in Iraq. that way, they'd never actually have to make a decision or take a real stand with consequences. what these constitutional experts have said puts the Democratic majority in an awkward position of - imagine that! - actually doing something for once (with the exception of people like Feingold, who was going to propose a ban on Iraq funding in six months anyway).

so c'mon, Harry and Nancy. what are you waiting for? do it! pull the plug! and screw it if they tell you that you're sending a message of defeat to our troops in Iraq. our troops don't need pundits and politicians to tell them that they're losing to see that things have only gotten worse over the last four years. any butthead who thinks that there is still a remote chance of victory in Iraq doesn't understand the definition of the word. we can't "win" in Iraq; the Iraqis have to win in Iraq. if we win in Iraq, we stay in Iraq, and that's not happening. so how are you going to claim victory when you have no rightful place as the victor? hell, how do you claim to fight a war against terror when you replenish the enemy's ranks daily by merely existing?

I suppose this goes back to my embrace of the term "cut-and-run." yes. I'm cutting and running. I fully advocate fleeing the region as fast as we possibly can. the Iranians want to peddle their influence and start a branch of the Iranian National Bank in Baghdad? go for it. be my guest. let them have four years of getting their eyes gouged out and their teeth knocked in and their fathers and brothers and mothers and sisters carted off to unknowable places. then maybe they, too, will learn the lesson that you can't dictate another country's ideology or socio-political practices.