The Strange Moral Calculus of the Democratic Leadership

In essence, this is the oft-cited "power of the purse" in Article I of the United States Constitution:

Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Without money, George W. Bush cannot prosecute his war in Iraq. He's asked for another $100 billion or so for Iraq and Afghanistan for the coming year. Only Congress can give it to him. If Congress says no, the war will soon be over.

Senator Russ Feingold sees this issue clearly. So do Representatives Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters of California. It is not really a complicated issue at all. It takes close to $2 billion a week to run the Iraq war. Unless Congress exercises another Article I power and borrows the money from the Chinese and Japanese and then gives the money under Section 8 to Bush, the President will have to close down his failed war once and for all and bring the troops home.

Either house of Congress can shut Bush down on this point. All they have to do is say no. Nonbinding resolutions opposing the "surge," bombast and thundering oratory, even of the over-the-top Joe Biden variety, will not make the slightest difference, will not dissuade Bush for a moment, so long as Congress writes the check Bush is asking for. He will take the money and go about his gruesome business, oblivious to the meretricious outrage of the Democratic leadership.

The Democrats prefer to make the issue bewilderingly complex, speaking of "benchmarks" or "performance standards," or "reporting schedules" on progress in Iraq. This micromanagement is probably indeed violative of the President's powers as Commander in Chief, and the timidity of the Democrats in forgoing their real power sets them up for this telling objection from the other side.

Or they engage in the duplicity of buying into Republican talking points about "abandoning the troops in the field," even though they know this makes no sense. The Democratic leadership insults the intelligence of the Americans who restored their majority by pretending the cash-flush Pentagon cannot possibly fly the American military out of Iraq with the billions already on hand.

Considering only the Americans in theatre, and leaving aside the Iraqi casualties which the presence of American soldiers enhances and exacerbates, there are over 150,000 American soldiers currently in danger of being shot, blown up, captured and mutilated, or grievously wounded in ways which will make their future lives an awful ordeal. These soldiers constitute one side of the equation we are considering. The other side of the equation is comprised of the political calculations by which Democrats determine which of their modes of evasion will make them look good in '08, will allow them to escape responsibility for a bloody aftermath in Iraq, or will serve some other, strictly political end.

And while they play these political games, tomorrow and every day that this war goes on, American soldiers will have to suit up, mount their vehicles and roll down bomb-infested streets, or walk the neighborhoods of Baghdad and Anbar province door to door, and wonder if this is the last day on Earth they will see the sun in the sky. Their calculations are primal and basic: will I survive this war for as long as they keep sending the money that makes me stay here?