Non-Binding Congress
Sen. Richard Lugar yesterday commented on the recent non-binding resolution on the Bush troop surge in Iraq passed by the senate. As one of the few Republican leaders that I feel has the qualities to actually run for president of the United States, his opinion seems to me to be shared by most people who are against the idea of increasing the troop numbers in Iraq but not politically invested in the Democratically controlled Congress. Is the idea to stop the troop surge or just make political points?
"It is unclear to me how passing a nonbinding resolution that the president has already said he will ignore will contribute to any improvement or modification in our Iraq policy,"
I wondered this same thing when I heard about the resolutions being offered by the Democrats. Is this what the Democratic Party was elected for? Did they win control of the Senate and House of Representatives so that they issue non-binding resolutions, basically saying that they don't approve? They have been doing this for years, why did they need to be in charge of our congress to do that?
There are any number of things that this congress could do to not only stop the troop surge but end the US management of the Iraqi Civil War. From passing resolutions taking away the power they originally gave the president to be in this war to blocking any funding of the military action the congress has many ways to ensure that a change in the direction in the Iraq war is taken.
But they won't.
The reality is that instead of doing what they were elected to do and use their power to end this war they are more concerned in making sure that they retain the power that they have taken back and expand upon it. In order to do this they have to make sure that they use political forces at their disposal to not anger anyone, appeal to the masses and walk the line of rhetoric for their supporters against keeping a contentious debate topic in place that they can use to their political advantage.
Simply put, if they were to end the war in Iraq tomorrow, what would they run on during the presidential election in 2008?
This is just another example of how both parties are not above playing politics with our troops and their lives. And now every new death of an American Soldier can be placed not just upon the shoulders of President Bush but also on the leadership of the Democratic Party, specifically Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. While the Democrats were not in power they were free to criticize and point out failures. Now, however, they are in power, they have what they were after. And they get to shoulder the blame. Perhaps even more so since they ran on the failures of President Bush in Iraq as the reason to vote for them. Bush, while running in 2004, never once wavered in his position on Iraq, so it comes as no surprise that since then he has kept to his agenda, but these current Democrats were elected to do something, to resolve it.
Instead, we get lip service. Did we expect any less from a group of politicians, really?