Meetings On Endless War

The President abruptly summoned Congressional leaders in both parties to the White House for a meeting tomorrow about Afghanistan. This is the first bipartisan White House meeting in months, and considering that Republicans support the war far more strongly than Democrats, that stands to reason.

The White House does want everyone to know that they're not leaving, however.

Obama may take weeks to decide whether to add more troops, but the idea of pulling out isn't on the table as a way to deal with a war nearing its ninth year, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

"I don't think we have the option to leave. That's quite clear," Gibbs said.

Of course we can't leave. We can't seem to leave anywhere. US troops still live in Germany and Japan and Korea. America is the house guest that overstays its welcome by 50-60 years.

Maybe instead of the Congresscritters, Obama could invite Peter Galbraith to the meeting. He was the UN official who witnessed the fraudulent Afghan election and got fired for having the temerity to want to address the situation realistically instead of handing the country to Hamid Karzai. Maybe lawmakers could benefit from his experience in the country. He certainly has some settled views:

GALBRAITH: In the absence of having a credible Afghan partner…it makes no sense to ramp up. On the other hand we cannot afford to pull out. … At this point, no surge. … [W]e also don’t have unlimited resources and unless those troops can secure an area in a way that then Afghan partners, the government, the Afghan army, the Afghan police can come in and fill in after them, we’re going to be there as an occupying force for a very long time and that to me doesn’t make sense [...]

Unfortunately, there is no analogy between what happened in Iraq and what’s going on in Afghanistan. In Iraq in the Sunni areas of the country, the al Qaeda element, the fundamentalists, moved from attacking the Shiites to attacking the tribal sheiks themselves so this was a matter of their self-defense.

In Afghanistan the tribal elders, many of them are supporting the Taliban, they are the Taliban or and this is the more common situation, they are neutral. They see no reason to choose a government which they experience as inexperienced, corrupted and abusing power.

Galbraith isn't advocating an immediate withdrawal, but his logic inevitably leads you to the conclusion that we cannot have an open-ended commitment to fight a war where we have no partner to defend.

Rep. Barbara Lee has introduced a bill to block the escalation. It's HR 3699. There's one problem, however:

However, something she told me at the meeting yesterday put me on DefCon-5 alert. The House has already passed (with Lee in opposition of course)-- and the Senate is considering-- a bill that will exempt Department of Defense from coming under the budgetary pay-go strictures. Let me explain why that is so dangerous for those eager to end the deadly and catastrophic U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.

Bush funded his wars with supplemental budgets which meant he just printed money-- trillions of dollars-- to pay for them without having to worry about raising taxes (on current voters) or about cutting services directly. One result has been the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. Obama campaigned on a promise not use supplemental budgets but to ask Congress for money through established budgetary procedures. That would kick in pay-go and a member of Congress voting for funds to escalate expensive occupations of other countries would have to agree to either raise taxes on his or her constituents-- what do you think Boehner, Cantor, Pence, Ryan and other leading GOP warmongers will think of that?-- or cut back on social programs, a prospect none too attractive to many of the conservative and moderate Democrats who have gone along with Bush's outrageous supplemental budgeting and are thereby complicit in the economic disaster that has ensued.

I really thought "pay-go" was our ace-in-the-hole to stop the war in Afghanistan. Not even a political thug like Rahm Emanuel could bully and bribe enough Democrats and Republicans to go for this, especially not at a point when the war is as increasingly unpopular as it is. If the Senate doesn't kill the legislation that the House passed, it is, in effect, a vote for a war that will last until Obama is voted out of office.

It's not surprising that Congress would willingly constrain itself when it comes to helping provide health care to all or strengthen the social safety net for the needy, but has no problem waiving those constraints when it comes to permanent war and occupation. This is just dangerous. The money will inevitably flow to war as a kind of stimulus package. It's got to be stopped.

Sistani Offers Fatwas Allowing For Armed Resistance To US Troops

We have the potential for a major problem in Iraq. As Shiites jockey for power, the most prestigious cleric in the country is sensing the value among the population of fighting the US-led occupation, and very quietly permitting the targeting of US troops. It may have as much to do with internal politics as anything else, but it makes Iraq incredibly dangerous for any American, and reinforces the need to take our men and women off the front lines and out of gun sights and back home where they belong.

The AP story, based on information from Shiite officials, suggests that the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has been out of the spotlight of late, is issuing under-the-radar fatwas to his followers:

Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance against U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible - a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.

The edicts, or fatwas, by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suggest he seeks to sharpen his long-held opposition to American troops and counter the populist appeal of his main rivals, firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

So far, al-Sistani’s fatwas have been limited to a handful of people. They also were issued verbally and in private - rather than a blanket proclamation to the general Shiite population - according to three prominent Shiite officials in regular contact with al-Sistani as well as two followers who received the edicts in Najaf.

There is a lot at work here.

• Sistani is ill and has been out of the public spotlight for many years. In the meantime, popular resistance to the occupation from the Shiite community has been led by Muqtada al-Sadr. So there may be some reassertion of control here in the wake of attacks on Sadrist strongholds in Basra and Sadr City. However, Sadr and Sistani are essentially on the same side here, and this may be a signal to top deputies of the Sadrist movement that Sistani is behind them and just waiting for the right moment to call for, as Sadr put it, "open war."

• It would be hard for Prime Minister Maliki to continue to legitimately work with the US government if such a fatwa were made more public. After the 2006 sectarian violence it was Sistani who was most instrumental in keeping order and turning the situation around from the Shiite perspective. It would be hard for US troops to maintain safe havens inside Iraq under a Sistani edict to leave, and much harder for them to have any kind of visible role in maintaining security. This is already being shown to be the case - in the Sadr City offensive, US troops were put to the sidelines and even the Sadrists appreciated it. This begs the question of how, in such an environment, there could possibly be a role for US troops at all.

• However, this could be more like a "sense of the Senate" resolution than a call to murder - essentially putting a nail in the coffin of the idea that any permanent bases would be tolerated by the Iraqi population. I think this is ultimately about the SOFA agreement that Iraq and the US are currently negotiating. Today Barbara Lee (D-CA) got her amendment demanding Congressional authorization over any agreement passed the House, and basically Sistani just vetoed the whole thing.

• Maliki is acknowledging, through aides, that there's nothing he can do about this, and in the end he'll side with the will of the Iraq people:

A senior aide to the prime minister, al-Maliki, said he was not aware of the fatwas, but added that the “rejection of the occupation is a legal and religious principle” and that top Shiite clerics were free to make their own decisions. The aide also spoke on condition of anonymity.

As Cernig says, "Sadr now has a free hand from Sistani as long as he plays nice with Maliki. He won't shoot himself in the foot by openly opposing Sadr." Conservative gasbags may be gloating about Sadr's imminent demise, but he still holds all the cards and the support of a substantial part of the Shiite community. Maliki knows this and will not get in the way of resistance against Americans. That's because he understands that the occupation is massively unpopular and opposing resistance to it would be a death sentence.

This makes me extremely uneasy. I feel like there's a Beirut bombing in the future if we don't start planning an exit. We don't have much time:

“(Al-Sistani) rejects the American presence,” he told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment to media. “He believes they (the Americans) will at the end pay a heavy price for the damage they inflicted on Iraq.”

Juan Cole, a U.S. expert on Shiites in the Middle East, speculated that “al-Sistani clearly will give a fatwa against the occupation by a year or two.” But he said it would be “premature” for the cleric to do so now [...]

“Changing the tyrannical (Saddam Hussein) regime by invasion and occupation was not what we wished for because of the many tragedies they have created,” al-Sistani said in reply to a question on his Web site.

“We are extremely worried about their intentions,” he wrote in response to another question on his views about the U.S. military presence.

Matthew Duss, Eric Martin and Kevin Drum have more. The occupation has always been unsustainable. But Sistani's rulings appear to make that even more obvious. If he acts soon, our troops could be in a horrible situation over there. And I certainly don't think the White House is paying nearly enough attention to this growing crisis.

P.S. Pushing elections as the answer to all of our problems is really a mistake. Maliki's operations in Basra and Sadr City were political in nature - he wanted to crush the Sadrists and make it easier for his groups to win the elections - but it's taking too long, and elections already have been postponed until after our Election Day in November, we learned today in Senate hearings. If Bush pushes them to coincide with our political cycle, the Sadrists will win. The only way they don't is if Maliki rigs the election, and the result of that would be chaos.

More on Bush's Iraq Treaty

Some have questioned whether or not the locking in of a status of forces agreement (SOFA) would create a situation that would make it difficult for a future President to halt military activities in Iraq. I just got off a conference call with legal scholars Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway, and Rep. Barbara Lee, who has introduced a nonbinding resolution expressing the sense of the Congress that the Administration must go to them to get authorization for a bilateral treaty of this type. The issue is that the UN mandate for American troops in Iraq expires at the end of this year, and without anything to supplant it, US troops would be operating in the country illegally, in violation of international law. The two ways to remedy this are to extend the mandate (which will be the subject of an upcoming House bill from the leadership) for a short period of time until the next President sets the policy, or to create this bilateral status of forces agreement, which is binding on the US government. In addition to the standard SOFA arrangements - protection for military personnel, postal and banking services, criminal exemption for military members - this agreement as it is being negotiated by the Bush Administration would include, in a completely unprecedented fashion:

1) an "authority to fight" giving US troops the legal authority to operate inside Iraq beyond the UN mandate;

and

2) legal immunity for private military contractors like Blackwater who are operating in accordance with the US government.

One can easily see why this is problematic. The precedent would be that the President can dictate the terms of military involvement unilaterally and without the expressed consent of the Congress. The authority to fight is completely beyond what has ever been in a SOFA before, and could be used as a precedent for all sorts of additional military actions (for example, would the authority to fight include Iranian troops across the border accused of "meddling"?). So for that reason alone we should never allow this for one second. Even regular strategic framework arrangements like we saw in Japan or Germany received Congressional approval first. These go further and the Administration claims no need to involve Congress.

As far as tying the hands of the next President, there are legal considerations and political considerations. It is a fact that this agreement would If a Democrat wins and seeks a new course in Iraq, he or she would be obliged to break an international commitment, which they can do but not without some difficulty. Dana Perino today pushed back against this idea that this would commit the next President to staying in Iraq, but note the spin:

"It's important to note what this agreement will not do. It will not tie the hands of the next President. It will not say how many troops should be there. It will not establish permanent bases. What it does is it provides for a secure environment for our troops to work, in a legal framework," she said [...]

Perino sharply criticized Bush's Democratic critics -- some of whom have raised the alarm over the agreement, saying it would commit his successors to an open-ended commitment to a vastly unpopular war.

"The Iraqis want it. Iraq's Arab neighbors want it. It appears that the only ones who are agitated about it, and in fact demagoging about it, are a subset of Democrats," she said. "I don't that their concern is merited."

This obviously plays into the Dolschstosslegende. Now you have this setup where only these rogue America-hating Democrats want to take Iraqi's freedom away. Let's get real. Bush is unilaterally making this deal with Maliki, who was installed by the Americans and in no way speaks for the Iraqi people. Having to break an international commitment to move forward on leaving Iraq will renew calls of stabbing the country - and the Iraqis - in the back.

So on several fronts, we don't want the President to have the power to negotiate the terms of permanent military deployments all over the world, especially in Iraq, where this occupation remains a disaster. This is absolutely an effort to, in the words of Prof. Ackerman, to "commit the next Administration as explicitly as possible to the policies of this Administration."

Iraq Insider has more.

Antiwar Caucus United; Actual Filibusters To Come?

It's hard to separate the good legislation from the good words when it comes to Iraq, but the news that the Out Of Iraq Caucus is on board with the latest bill helps me make my decision.

Three leading House anti-war Democrats said they now back a $50 billion bill that funds the war but calls for most troops to come home by December 2008. Their support paves the way for the bill's passage Wednesday.

The trio, California Reps. Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters, represent a liberal anti-war caucus that last week expressed opposition to the measure on the grounds it was too soft and did not demand an end to combat.

The bill requires that President Bush initiate troop withdrawals within 30 days of its passage with the goal of bringing home most soldiers and Marines by Dec. 15, 2008 [...]

A provision added to the bill, to satisfy liberal caucus members, states that the primary purpose of the $50 billion included in the bill "should be to transition the mission" and redeploy troops in Iraq, "not to extend or prolong the war."

The measure is largely a symbolic jab at Bush, who has already begun withdrawing some troops but fiercely rejects the notion of setting a timetable for the war.

"While this bill is not perfect, it is the strongest Iraq bill to date," the Democratic trio wrote in a joint statement. "This is the first time that this Congress has put forth a bill that ties funding to the responsible redeployment of our troops, and it also includes language mandating a start date for the president to begin the redeployment of our brave men and women."

Versions of this legislation have passed over and over again, only to falter in the Senate. Again, Harry Reid is SOUNDING tough, saying that "the president won't get his $50 billion" if he rejects the bill, but the proof is in the action. And forcing a real-deal filibuster would be a good place to start.

Senate Democrats might force Republicans to wage a filibuster if the GOP wants to block the latest Iraq withdrawal bill, aides and senators said Tuesday.

That could set the stage for a dramatic end-of-the-year partisan showdown, which Democrats hope will help them turn voter frustration with Congress and the stalemate over Iraq into anger with the Republican Party.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), the number two Democrat in the chamber, said a forced filibuster is “possible” and would “generate attention.”

“We want to go to the bill, and [Republicans] have to decide initially whether they want us to go to the bill,” Durbin said. “I wouldn’t call it theatrics.”

Everyone needs to know exactly who is holding up the end of this occupation and an overall shift in strategy. Huckleberry Graham can start reading the dictionary and Mitch McConnell can sing a capella, for all I care.

Not One Dollar, Not One Dime

We're now up to 87 Congresscritters that will not vote for any funding for the Iraq occupation other than for a fully funded redeployment, including deep South members like Artur Davis (D-AL) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS). That's only 25% of the House, but out in the country, the numbers for de-funding are much higher.

Asked what Congress should do with President Bush's pending Iraq supplemental request, the poll found that 70 percent of respondents want Congress to either vote against the President's request or require that funds can only be used for my plan to protect troops and bring them home. And by a two to one margin, respondents favored requiring that funds be spent on redeployment instead of providing the administration funds without conditions.

The polling memo is at Rep. Barbara Lee's One Voice PAC site.

We know that no supplemental will be coming out of the House until next year, so this is an opportunity for the Out Of Iraq caucus to get from 87 to 218 and force the hand of the leadership. The purse strings are really the only way to truly end this war, and it's going to be a long road which will not end with the election of the next President, as we know. So electing more and better Democrats to the House, and growing this movement over the next weeks and months, is crucial.

Rep. Lee On Iraq

Since we're at the outset of Magical September and Congress is back in session, I thought it would be a good time to hear some straight talk from one of California's finest progressive legislators about the occupation of Iraq:

If you believe the Beltway hype, members of Congress will return today to a fiery debate about whether or not the president's so-called "surge" has produced military progress in Iraq. Beltway pundits are breathlessly predicting Democrats will be thrown into disarray by claims that the increased troop levels in Iraq may have produced security results.

Don't believe the hype. First off, the data are suspect. The Pentagon refuses to share the methodology by which it arrived at the metrics used to claim success. Even if the progress is real, it is hardly encouraging when put in perspective. When discussing the alleged gains he has overseen, Gen. David H. Petraeus stated that they put us on a course to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq sometime nine or 10 years from now.

What the debate about military progress really does is serve as a distraction - a smokescreen - put forth by an administration that finds it rhetorically convenient to speak in terms of "victory" and "defeat."

Read the whole thing. And ask your representative if they're on the list of those who will not give one more dime to this tragic effort without a redeployment of troops.

Why The California Majority Report Should be Sold For Scrap

If you read Calitics you would know that, after much introspection, liberal House members from California - Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters - have relented and voiced their support for the Iraq appropriation which would set an end date for the conflict.

Steve Maviglio reads Calitics but didn't before he clicked send about twenty minutes ago and slathered the egg upon his face, especially considering that the California progressives' shift to support of the bill was only the single biggest political story going on since this afternoon. And the article is a doozy. It shows a knee-jerk hatred of liberalism (and principles, for that matter), a defend-the-leadership-at-all-costs mentality, a thuddingly poor understanding of the fact that you might want to check Google News before you blog, and... wait for it... a hat tip to Ellen Tauscher for her work on helping whip the bill.

We all write things we'd rather take back, but I get the sense that this is the norm and not the exception over there.

I would say that the progressives' move on this bill mirrored mine. I think that too much enforcement has been stripped from this and too much of an argument given to the President to defy the resolution for my comfort. I also can't stand the fact that the House leadership larded it up with pork to buy votes, a disgraceful tactic that threatens to turn Democrats into an inverted fun-house mirror version of Republicans. And yet, this is the first bill which actually attaches an end date to our disastrous occupation in Iraq. The votes aren't there for much more, and yet progressives were decisive in this debate, ensuring that the end date reached the final bill. No war in American history has ended with one vote. This is a way to continue to build public support while really trying to end the war. And while progressives came around to understanding that and unifying the caucus, they showed their muscle to get the best bill that could possibly be done right now.

For some reason, Maviglio decides that any opinion other than that which has been given the imprimatur of the leadership is necessarily invalid. That's a positively Republican argument.

U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey, Diane Watson and Barbara Lee have announced they will vote against the carefully crafted compromise of the Iraq spending bill being pushed by Pelosi. More embarrassing: Waters and Woolsey are both part of Pelosi's leadership team.

Why are these four Californians throwing Pelosi and the overwhelming majority of their fellow Democrats under the bus?

They're not, but if they were, according to you, they would be doing so to stop 18 year-olds from dying. I know, it's really awful to rhetorically throw someone under a bus than do the equivalent of actually throwing hundreds of kids under a series of buses, causing them to die.

I don't know if this entire post was an attempt to name-check Tauscher and call her a "smart Democrat" or what, but even if it wasn't 100% wrong, it'd be embarrassing.

Fully Funded Withdrawal

This is the new buzzword of the Out of Iraq caucus in the House. The leadership has claimed that they are constrained by the 44 Blue Dog Democrts, but the truth is that there are more members in the Progressive Caucus, the largest caucus in the House. The leadership is constrained because the want to be constrained, particularly people like Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel. Maybe they don't particularly want to see the war end. But Barbara Lee does:

By framing their discussion of the war in terms of winning and losing, the Bush administration seeks to portray critics of their policies as opposed to victory, or supportive of defeat.

The fact is that you cannot "win" an occupation, just as there is no way for the United States to "win" an Iraqi civil war.

The Bush administration understands this, just as they understand that there are no pretty or clean options for bringing a responsible end to our policy there. They are content to mouth the words of victory while they try to run out the clock, playing a cynical game of political "chicken," where whoever acts to bring a responsible end to their failed policy will be accused of having lost Iraq.

We are spending $8 billion a month occupying Iraq, with an average of 67 U.S. troops being killed and 500 being wounded. The cost to our security of having our military bogged down in Iraq indefinitely is unsustainable, and is not only sapping vital funds from efforts to fight global terrorism, but is strengthening jihadist recruitment efforts internationally. The longer we allow the administration to delay meaningful movement, and the longer we fail to extract ourselves from this quagmire, the more dangerous this failed foreign policy becomes to America and the rest of the world [...]

Fully funding withdrawal is not micromanagement, it is macromanagement - the Bush administration has so badly managed this effort that they have forced Congress to intervene.

Fully funding withdrawal is not cutting off funding - we are going to fully fund a rational alternative to the administration's attempt to run out the clock on their failed policy.

There is ample precedent of both Republican and Democratic Congresses acting to restrict or direct funds during wartime and the time has come to consider such action again.

We have a responsibility to challenge the administration's efforts to run out the clock, and by proposing to intervene by fully funding a policy that actually fulfills our nation's long term strategic security objectives, we force them to defend their track record on the war, which is a debate that Democrats win every time.

I excerpted a lot of that letter because it really sums it up. This is an occupation, and furthermore it's an occupation during a civil war in which the US military has no role other than policeman. The surge is woefully undermanned, to the extent that the Defense Department now wants to surge the surge with another 2,200 troops. That will not be the end, and it's already being revealed that the money and troop strength was lowballed by the President. This counterinsurency strategy will take 10 years and only has a small chance at success by the admission of the general carrying it out.

It looks like Progressive Caucus pressure has brought around the leadership to earmark all new money for Iraq in terms of a phased withdrawal.

In a direct challenge to President Bush, House Democrats are advancing legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the fall of next year.

Democratic officials who described the measure said the timetable would be accelerated — to the end of 2007 — if the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki does not meet goals for providing Iraq's security.

The conditions, described as tentative until presented to the Democratic rank and file Thursday, would be added to legislation providing nearly $100 billion the Bush administration has requested for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If the White House vetoes this, they don't get their $100 billion in funding. It's that simple. And it's that simple in the Senate as well, and Democrats should use the same tactics of "you don't support the troops in the field" if the Republicans act to block the funding. I don't realy know why it took so long to settle on this, but I'm gald it has. Now it's time to call every member of Congress and ask them where they stand.

I'm cautiously optimistic about where the Democrats are going with this debate.

The Meaningless Nonbinding Self-Satisfactory Bill Lives!

The big story this morning was that Republicans were desperate to stop the Senate's nonbinding resolution on Iraq, and were scrambling to come up with their own resolutions to divide the caucus and ensure nothing too divisive would pass. Sure, there were the usual quotes of Senators acting "concerned" and "worried" and "troubled," but really that's what the story was about. For some reason the Bush Administration really doesn't want a nonbinding resolution to pass. Probably because the press, who is as silly as they are, would treat something with no real power as a "stinging rebuke." I understand that sometimes you have to work within the system, but this is ridiculous.

And it gets even more ridiculous, as Sens. Levin and Warner have agreed to compromise on their competing nonbinding resolutions, virtually ensuring that they will get enough votes to break a filibuster and pass it. I agree with putting up a vote both to see where people stand, forcing Republicans to choose between party and country, and as part of a "kitchen sink" strategy with more and more bills coming down the pike. But on its own merits, this nonbinding thing is crap, and that two nonbinding resolutions put together represents some sort of "breakthrough" is baffling. 0 + 0 = 0.

Now the only competing measure will be one pushed by McCain and Graham, calling for specific benchmarks the Iraqis have already shown they can't handle.

The kind of thinking in the Senate that believes a nonbinding resolution will end the Iraq war must be the same kind of thinking that believes Iraq won't be an issue in the 2008 election. I don't know what country these Senators are living in sometimes.

There are actual ways to stop the war; they've been well-documented. There's something almost poetic in the fact that, on the day after Sen. Feingold runs a classroom seminar on the powers of the legislative branch during wartime, the same legislators make a "breakthrough" on what amounts to a strongly worded letter to the most obstinate man in the history of politics.

There are actual ways to stop the war; they've been well-documented. There's something almost poetic in the fact that, on the day after Sen. Feingold runs a classroom seminar on the powers of the legislative branch during wartime, the same legislators make a "breakthrough" on what amounts to a strongly worded letter to the most obstinate man in the history of politics. Sen. Obama figured it out. Reps. like Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters Jack Murtha have figured it out. Netroots heroes like Patrick Murphy and Jerry McNerney, who signed on as co-sponsors to the bills from the aforementioned Representatives, have figured it out. They're either strong-willed people or those who haven't caught DC disease yet.

Levin and Warner are, well, the opposite.

Nonbinding to victory!