The Democrats' Iraq Civil War
David Corn
February 22, 2007
David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation and the co-author, along with Michael Isikoff, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. He is covering the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial for The Nation.
A few days ago , a senior Capitol Hill Democratic aide called to tell me he was worried. The aide feared that his party would soon find itself split over the Iraq war.
Progressive House Democrats are pushing for a cutoff in funding, he said, not caring that such legislation would put their colleagues from less-liberal districts in a bind. Moderate Democrats, the aide said, will not likely want to vote against military spending for Iraq and face the criticism (justified or not) that they are not supporting the troops. Even though the war is unpopular and Bush and the Republicans are on the run, we’ll be dividing ourselves, said the aide, who works for a legislator who favors a funding cutoff.
The following day, a prominent liberal thinker in Washington told me he was concerned that Democratic leaders and antiwar activists are swinging behind Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Jack Murtha’s plan to attach restrictions to Iraq war funding. Murtha’s proposal would prohibit money from being used to deploy troops to Iraq who are not fully equipped, fully trained and fully rested. That plan cannot win a majority, this thinker said; putting it up to a vote would only rip apart the party. The Democrats, consequently, would look weak and not achieve anything, but they still would give the Republicans the chance to accuse them of undermining the soldiers in the field. Couldn’t antiwar Democrats and activists, this liberal asked, find a more mature and sophisticated strategy?
A civil war may be brewing in the Democratic Party over Iraq. There are Democrats who want to take immediate and concrete steps to end the war. They want to force withdrawal through legislation. And there are Democrats who essentially do not want to go first. They want to push President George W. Bush to clean up the mess he made so that he, not the Democrats, will bear responsibility for how the war ends (which could be nastily). Both sides were able to agree on a nonbinding resolution decrying Bush’s surge and declaring support for the troops. But now that such a resolution has passed in the House and died in the Senate, the issue is, what’s next?
In the House, the main Democratic action at the moment centers on the Murtha plan, which would attach his severely limiting conditions to the newest round of funding for the Iraq war. “We’re gonna stop this surge,” Murtha said during a recent interview with MoveCongress.org, an antiwar group.
Republicans have gleefully dubbed this approach a “slow bleed”—as in wounding the troops. And it is a way of ending—or limiting—the war without calling for withdrawal. Since the Pentagon could not meet the standards Murtha would set—for instance, there are not sufficient numbers of armored trucks for the troops being deployed to Iraq as part of the surge—the surge could not go forward.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has endorsed Murtha’s proposal, but it is far from clear that she can steer the entire Democratic caucus behind Murtha, who chairs the defense appropriations subcommittee. Thus, there will be a debate among House Democrats—and it may be a hot one—when Congress in a few weeks considers Bush’s $93 billion funding request for Iraq. (Murtha also intends to attach a condition to the appropriations legislation that would prevent the president from attacking Iran without congressional authorization.) And as the Murtha fight ensues, there will be House Democrats who will be pushing for a more direct and total cutoff of funding—a position Murtha does not support.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats have their own divisions. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has called for initiating a withdrawal but has rejected a cutoff in funding. “I think that sends the wrong message to our troops,” he said a few days ago. “We're going to support our troops, and one way to support them is to find a way out of Iraq earlier, rather than later."
Levin and Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., D-Del., who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee and who is running for president, are considering modifying the authorization for the invasion of Iraq Congress granted Bush in October 2002 to limit American troop missions there to supporting and training activities, not combat. Levin noted that such an approach would avoid a constitutional showdown with the Bush about presidential war powers and would be more politically palatable than turning off the funding tap.
So the Democratic leaders of the key committees in the Senate are opposed to the plan Pelosi is backing. That certainly is a good start for an intraparty mud wrestle. And Republicans—who were scared by the apparent antiwar message of last November’s elections—are now enthusiastically preparing to exploit this split and attack the Democrats for “bleeding” American GIs in the field. The GOPers have an obvious political strategy: Make the issue not the war but the Democrats’ response to the war.
And there’s another political dynamic at work: Democratic presidential politics. There is no matter more important for most Democratic primary voters than ending the war. So each of the party’s presidential wannabes is compelled to distinguish him- or herself from the others on the war. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., explaining that nonbinding resolutions are not enough, proposed setting a legislative cap on the number of troops in Iraq to block the surge. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., last month introduced legislation that would commence a phased withdrawal from Iraq on May 1. Former senator John Edwards, trying to elbow his way into the Hillary & Barack Show, has suggested that current legislators in Congress ought to defund the war. All this positioning will shape how the public perceives the Democrats’ approach to the war—and make it all the tougher for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to lead his troops. It’s difficult for a colonel to order captains who are trying to become generals.
The GOP does have its own splits. Seventeen Republican House members voted with the Democrats in favor of the nonbinding resolution, and seven Republican senators sided with the Democrats in a losing effort to pass an identical measure. (Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who is considering a presidential bid, has said that he is “open” to the Murtha plan.) But since the Republicans no longer control Congress and the numbers of their Iraq defectors are not great, their internal divisions at this point are not as consequential as those within the party in charge of Congress.
It will be nearly impossible for the Democratic Party to derive a unified position regarding what to do in Iraq—mature or not—with so many moving pieces, competing views and different needs. There is, in a way, a race against the clock—and that clock is the ground reality in Iraq. If the situation in Iraq does not improve and the surge does not succeed, there will be even more public disenchantment with the war and more political opportunity for a tougher stance, such as direct defunding. But that opportunity will likely not present itself before Democrats have to consider the new funds for the war. Can they have an internal disagreement over what to do without it becoming ugly, without alienating grassroots Democrats who want the party to pass binding legislation to stop the war now, and without handing Republicans potent political ammo to use against them now and in the future? Ending a war—even an unpopular one—is not easy work for politicians. |
