The headline was splashed all over the Huffington Post Sunday evening, "Congress should be the decider", which linked to the WSJ survey that said most Americans are not in favor of the surge.
All well and good, but Arianna's headline writers should remember that if all issues were decided by polls we'd probably have a 40 foot high wall along the Mexican border by now and same-sex marriage would be punishable by jail time. That same document they used to justify leaking state secrets to the press is also the one that stipulates the power of the Commander-in-Chief.
So, while some citizens and the leftist blogosphere might believe the people should be the decider on the Iraq issue that's not what the Constitution says, per se. 'Per se' because the people do have the power to change things by lobbying their elected Representatives to impeach and remove the leadership.
It's doubtful the Democrats would push that button (barring anything unforeseen) simply because impeachment trials would get in the way of their 2008 campaign attack plan. Better to turn Waxman loose to run interference and keep the media chewing on petty investigations than actually run the risk of a public backlash the likes of what was seen in the Clinton impeachment.
Besides, if they were to impeach Bush and we were simultaneously attacked or lost badly in Iraq it might make them look somewhat culpable. And I really don't believe they want to weaken America on the whole, per se.
Despite all the rancor it's likely the liberals are right about one thing--Iraq was about more than ousting Saddam. It was likely about killing several birds with one stone by getting rid of the unpredictable tyrant and his WMD deterrence while showing Saudi Arabia and Iran their eventual fate should they push the envelope too far. As a side benefit it would also show the international jihadis we weren't the Soviets.
In a post 9/11 world a holistic approach was probably better than playing cat and mouse, since the jihadis are ultimately dependent on states for their survival. That's a concept not easily articulated--for obvious reasons--so they went after the slam dunk case. When the WMDs failed to turn up Bush's credibility vanished along with them, making it next to impossible for him to convince the public of just how important this is.
Mr. Gates might yet have something to say about the outcome. Are we now seeing the carrot and stick strategy suggested in his Iraq Study Group? Whatever the case, the Democrats can squawk all they want about us being the deciders but until they tell us deciders how a humiliating exit from Iraq is in the nation's best interest (not just theirs) they're talking with their mouths closed while trying to punt on third down.
MORE 1/22/07
Needed: more carrot, more stick, more resolve. It's hard to disagree with the ideas presented here by Christopher Hitchens, even if he is a liberal.
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