Let's get some real work done

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

By Richard Anderson

So I guess there’s a $124 billion appropriation bill sitting on George Bush’s desk that would pay to continue our disastrous War in Iraq but that also sets an Oct. 1 date to begin pulling our troops. The President has been saying for weeks – maybe even months – that if presented with such legislation, he would veto it. I would do the same.

I would veto it not because I am a die-hard fan of the Bush administration. Far from it. This veto cannot possibly be misconstrued as a victory for Bush, but is the culmination of yet another monumental failure of leadership.

I would veto it not because pulling out is a cowardly “cut-and-run” policy. I don’t think it’s motivated by cowardice, but by a desperate desire to disentangle ourselves from an ill-conceived and poorly executed get-rich scheme perpetrated by power-crazed politicians.

I would veto it not because I fear that if we don’t win the fight in Baghdad, it’s inevitable that we’ll have to continue the fight here on American soil. That is just more of the same kind of fear-mongering the administration has been using since the beginning of this tragic venture.

No, I’d veto it because pulling out of the country where we have created such a desperate situation would be irresponsible. I’d like to think I would not have voted for the legislation in the first place.

While I understand the power of political theater, and I appreciate the fact that Democrats are now in the position of accusing Bush of single-handedly preventing the end of this four-plus-year-old conflict, that’s about all they have accomplished.

It seems like an awful lot of time and energy wasted on a rude gesture at the White House.

But, now that Act I, Scene One, of this drama is over, I hope Congress and the President can come up with the sort of innovative solution for which the United States once was known. By innovative, I don’t mean leaving the mess for others to deal with, and I don’t mean allowing it to drag on interminably. I mean something else.

There’s got to be something else, don’t you think? How about separate zones in Iraq, one for each of the conflicting tribes? That would require continued security assistance from the United States and its Coalition of the Increasingly Dubious, but it might at least serve as a time-out so that hot-headed Sunnis and their estranged Shi’a brethren could take a couple of deep breaths. Look how the Kurds seem to be thriving up in Northern Iraq, far from the factional infighting.

Sure, it’s not a perfect plan. I have no doubt there are flaws in it we can’t even begin to predict. But the point is, there have to be other options aside from this slow-motion decimation of our troops or a dereliction of our duty to the millions of Iraqis who thought that, just maybe, the United States came to their country to make things right.

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Let's get some real work done | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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