Wake me when it's over

The clear signs are now that the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives will give Bush his war money with no strings attached, unless you count waivable, non-binding, precatory suggestions that Bush pretty please tell Congress how things are going in his vanity war. Is the Iraqi parliament passing stuff? The Iraqi army, are they still training to take over? How many people are getting blown to smithereens on a daily basis over there?

One must wonder what Frisco Nancy had in mind in her "negotiations" with Bush over funding. As I suggested in my poker game jape, Nancy has a rather obvious tell in her poker playing. She kept saying the troops would get funded, that we would "support our troops." She kept using the word "accountable" in myriad and bewildering ways, until there was no accounting for how she was using it. In truth, against a president whose veto cannot be overridden, Congress has but one real power, and that is the power not to appropriate the money for the war. Bush cannot compel Congress to do so, and without money his war is over. Frisco Nancy and Harry Mumbles could have announced that Bush would receive, e.g., $20 billion with which to extract the troops, period. If he vetoed such an appropriation, then he could extract the troops with money from the White House groundskeeping budget. However he chose to do it, but Congress was not going to give him any money to continue, let alone escalate, the Iraq war. At the same time they announced this strategy, they would have hammered home the elementary point that Bush, as Commander in Chief, is responsible for the safety of the American military in a theatre of war; as such, he must operate with the available resources to ensure their security. Even Bush, The Great Maroon, would have figured that one out. Indeed, it's the way Bugs Bunny would have played it (after making Bush first set fire to himself, shoot himself out of a cannon, and fall down a manhole, of course).

These points are fundamental. Let us then follow the deductive principle of another fictional character, Sherlock Holmes, who said that when one had eliminated all other possibilities, whatever was left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Ah, what a fine, rigorous, disciplined mind! So unlike...everyone in public office today. Holmes would tell us, of course, that Frisco Nancy and Harry Mumbles do not want the war to end, at least not because of anything they do. This becomes obvious, when you think about it. It is a delicate, exquisitely daunting balancing act. Frisco Nancy must appear to righteously vindicate the anti-war left, a large bloc in the Democratic Party while at the same time taking no effective action to end the war. Thus: waivable timelines, incomprehensible benchmarks, "reporting" duties and the rest of the gobbledegook. Bush has his eye on the prize: gimme the money. Why? Why ask why anymore? At a secondary level of reality, one hidden from the view of the public, behind closed doors at the Capitol, the Democrats want the carnage and destruction to proceed ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Bush is sending more and more troops into his abattoir arabesque. About three a day are blown up, which means in the remaining seven months of 2007, the total dead will top 4,000. And the Iraqi dead, raped and mutilated? The number is literally uncounted. The middle class is heading for the exits while the parliament dithers over giving the Bush administration the oil confiscation law Cheney & Co. so desperately want.

One is reminded, as de Toqueville told us, we live in a republic, not a democracy. The elected officials have their own agendas, their own set of priorities, the first of which is job security. They get elected not on the basis of their ideas, but because of name recognition purchased through advertising, like deodorant and toothpaste. Or through preexisting notoriety, such as the President of the United States or the Governor of California. They see their jobs as placating an unruly, mostly irrelevant electorate while feathering their own nests. Sometimes, just because the stakes can get so high, it is more obvious than at other times. The Democrats recognize there was a shift in 2006 from Republican to Democrat. And if the voters become frustrated with the Democrats, the Democrats also recognize, there is nowhere left to go.