Can Congress End the War?
Democratic Leaders May Prefer to Claim They Tried But Failed
The shortest route to ending the Iraq war (and preventing additional wars) is almost certainly through Congress.
Influencing the White House directly is unimaginable, and stopping the war through the courts unlikely. Clearly,
Congress is the way to go. But what specifically can Congress do?
How We Got Here
The peace movement lobbied a Republican Congress without success for four years. Then, on November 7, 2006, the American
public elected a Democratic Congress in a clear mandate delivered at the polls. Not a single new Republican was elected,
and 30 new Democrats were ushered in, with voters overwhelmingly telling pollsters that they were voting against the
war; and by "against the war," they meant "against the war," not "against the escalation." Remember, the President's
"surge" into Baghdad had not yet been announced.
Voters also appeared to be voting for accountability and possibly for the launching of impeachment hearings as well. Polls prior to the election found that a majority of Americans believed a Democratic Congress would impeach.
Candidates who campaigned on the theme of accountability, including Keith Ellison (Dem., Minnesota) who promised
impeachment, did well. Polls show that a majority of Americans favor impeachment or wish Bush's presidency were over. Voters in November even booted out a couple of Republicans who had turned against the war,
saying that they were voting for a Democratic majority so that the Democrats could investigate the war as well as end it
-- something a majority of Americans continue to say they want.
Prior to the election, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi had already ordered the Democrats in the House to oppose impeachment,
but she had not ordered them to support the war. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), chaired by
Congressman Rahm Emanuel, however, directed most of its financial support to candidates who did not call for ending the war. Of the 22 candidates funded by the DCCC, only 8 won. The rest of the victorious Democratic challengers, many of them strongly opposed to the war, got themselves elected
without Emanuel's help.
Halfway Steps in the House
Of course, now that the election is over and the Democratic leadership has heard the people speak so clearly, now that,
on January 27th, half a million Americans encircled the Capitol in opposition to the war, now that the new Congress has
in its hands the power that the Republicans had a year ago, surely ending the war is at the top of its agenda.
Well, not according to Emanuel's way of thinking, as reported in the Washington Post:
"For the rest of the year, Emanuel says, the leadership hopes to stress energy independence (with fuel-saving efficiency
standards for appliances and cars) and a move toward better health care for children. And here's what Emanuel doesn't
want to do: fall into the political trap of chasing overambitious or potentially unpopular measures. Ask about universal
health care, and he shakes his head... Reform of Social Security and other entitlements? Too big, too woolly, too
risky... The country is angry, and it will only get more so as the problems in Iraq deepen. Don't look to Emanuel's
Democrats for solutions on Iraq. It's Bush's war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, the Democrats are
waiting to pick up the pieces."
So, clearly the question before us is not just what Congress can do to end the war, but also how the American public can
persuade a Democratic Congress to want to end the war. Most Republican members of Congress still follow White House
orders like sheep, and leading House Democrat Emanuel is openly telling the media that he'd just as soon have the war
still going on in 2008. The war has cost an estimated 655,000 Iraqi lives and over 3,000 American ones in its first 4
years, with the death rate increasing over time, so by a safe estimate Emanuel has just written off perhaps another few
hundred thousand lives for the sake of an electoral strategy.
Prior to the recent Congressional recess, Congressman Jack Murtha proposed that he draft a new bill, agreeing to throw $93 billion or so at the war in the form of another "emergency
supplemental" outside the regular federal budget. That may not sound like an anti-war proposal, but it certainly passed
for one in Washington, D.C. In fact, Murtha was pilloried by Republicans and much of the media because he proposed
including requirements that troops be properly rested, trained, and equipped before being sent to Iraq. Murtha argued
that these requirements would force Bush to end his "surge."
In a climate in which opposition to the "surge" had become confused with opposition to the war, Murtha's plan was,
amazingly enough, treated as the near equivalent of pacifism. And no strong defense of it emerged from the Democratic leadership. Instead the
plan evolved into a proposal to require the President to inform Congress when he was deploying troops lacking adequate
rest, training, or equipment. But it is unclear how this would even curtail the present escalation, much less end the
war, and there has been no indication of what Congress would do if Bush failed to obey this reporting requirement.
Bizarrely, this whole discussion has taken place without any reference to the fact that, in November 2003, Congress
passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, which placed limits on the number of days that a
member of the Armed Forces could be deployed. Bush signed that bill into law, but added a signing statement announcing his intention to disregard that section. The U.S. Constitution gives the President the power to sign bills into law and
enforce them, or to veto them. There is no constitutional middle course. Yet Bush has routinely used signing statements to announce his plans to disregard portions of bills he signs into law. This abuse might be addressed by impeachment proceedings,
something the Democrats are not currently considering. But short of addressing this abuse, Congress Members could at
least behave as though they were aware of it.
Wholehearted House Actions
Numerous peace and justice organizations seeking to end the war are urging Congress Members to vote "no" on the $93
billion supplemental bill. At the same time, they are watching closely for possible amendments to the bill that could
require the money be spent on a rapid withdrawal. Such amendments might be introduced and voted on in the House
Appropriations Committee, on which Congresswoman Barbara Lee (Dem., California) serves, along with Murtha, or they might
be introduced and voted on in the full House.
If a bill provided billions of dollars for the war but required that it all be spent on the withdrawal of troops, and if
such a bill passed both houses of Congress, the President would be unable to veto it without denying himself a source of
funding he badly wants. And there is at least a chance that Congress would take umbrage and pay attention if he
cancelled the end of the war with another of his signing statements.
Other possibilities for ending the war in the House include not passing a supplemental bill at all, or passing one of
the four bills that have been introduced (by Representatives Lynn Woolsey, Jim McGovern, Jerrold Nadler, and Dennis
Kucinich) that would use the power of the purse to try to bring the war to an end. There are also several bills that
would instruct the President to end the war while continuing to fund it, an approach that seems more likely to pass both
houses of Congress, but far less likely to achieve anything close to their stated goal.
Senator Russ Feingold held hearings in January on the constitutional power of the Congress to end a war. One point on which there seems to be consensus:
Congress has the Constitutional power to control what money is spent on (even if that power has hardly been touched in
any meaningful way in recent years). If Congress says no more money can be spent on the war, then that is the law of the
land -- although the history of the Iran-Contra scandal, the secret beginning of the current Iraq War, and operations now underway in Iran remind us that the law of the land and the acts of the
White House can sometimes be two separate matters.
Congressman Kucinich's bill is brand new. The other three House bills have been in play for some weeks. While
Congressman Nadler's bill does not have the support among his colleagues that Woolsey's and McGovern's do (thanks to
both friendships and political alliances), Nadler has perhaps done the best job of crafting a bill in which Congress
could make use of its undisputed power to end the war. While the other two bills first instruct Bush to end the war in a
specific period of time, and only afterward forbid the use of additional funds for the war that is now theoretically
over, Nadler's bill immediately restricts the use of any money appropriated by Congress to withdrawing the troops from
Iraq.
Actually, Nadler's bill restricts the use of funds to protecting the troops and withdrawing them. He admits that the
"protecting the troops" part is a bit of nonsense, since the only way to protect them is to withdraw them. But all of
these bills have been written with a keen eye to repelling the commonplace criticism that bringing our troops safely
home somehow constitutes a failure to "support the troops."
Senate Shortcomings and Opportunities
A new sideways approach to ending the war without saying you're ending it is only now emerging in the Senate. This one
involves "reauthorizing" the war. This war was, of course, never declared but pre-authorized to be launched at the
President's discretion for the purpose of eliminating Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction and combating those
falsely alleged to have been behind the attacks of 9-11. The facts have already repealed that authorization, but it
would be useful for Congress to do so as well.
Actually reauthorizing the war, on the other hand, would undoubtedly be less useful, as it might appear to the public to
be support for the war; while any aspects of the reauthorization aimed at slowly ending the war will surely be viciously attacked by
the administration and its supporters. In fact, that's already begun. The White House is denouncing any attempts to
restrict the war as "micromanagement" and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced that Bush will probably disregard restrictions placed on the war by Congress. Rice was asked in a broadcast interview whether the President would feel
bound by legislation seeking to withdraw combat troops within 120 days. "The president is going to, as commander in
chief, need to do what the country needs done," she replied. This brazenly unconstitutional stance is another one of
those "details" -- like Bush's past signing statements -- that Congress might do well to bear in mind and cease trying
to ignore.
There are a couple of possible ways the Senate might get around this. One would simply be not to pass the Pentagon's
supplemental spending bill -- something that 41 Senators could accomplish through a filibuster. The other would be to
pass Senator Russ Feingold's bill to stop funding the war, which would obviously require a far higher voting hurdle than that filibuster. Passing a bill
would involve gathering a majority -- and overriding a veto to maintain it, a two-thirds vote in both houses. The
filibuster, however, presents another kind of hurdle in that it requires some Senator or group of Senators to find the
decency and courage to begin it, uncertain of success.
Legislating a Unitary Executive
What is lost in all of these strategy discussions, of course, is the question of whether any sort of Congressional
cut-off of funds would actually truncate either the surge or the war. Remember, the President and Vice President began
the preparations for the invasion of Iraq secretly with at least $2.5 billion illegally taken from other areas. They have promised never to end the war. They have asserted the power of a "unitary
executive." They have launched pre-war operations in Iran without any authorization or funding from Congress. They have built permanent bases in Iraq without any approval from Congress, and continued
that construction work in violation of a bill passed by Congress forbidding the use of any funding for it.
So, the question is not just whether Congress can cut off the money, but whether the Bush administration can find enough
money in other places illegally to continue a war that has never in any sense been legal. The amount of money we're
talking about is enormous, but it is a fraction of the Pentagon's budget, and it seems clear that -- given the kinds of
"black budget" moneys floating around in that world -- the war could be continued for some time (long enough at least to
gin up a new enemy to scare Congress with); that is, unless the military sides with Congress in this dispute and refuses to pursue the war with misappropriated funds.
If any of these strategies to end the war come to fruition in Congress, a more likely outcome than an actual end to the
war would be a full-scale confrontation with the "commander-in-chief" presidency of George Bush (and the vice-presidency
of Dick Cheney), leading to possible impeachment proceedings.
Here's the reality, however: None of these strategies are likely to advance very far very soon. A movement for
impeachment now might strengthen the hand of those in Congress who want to move on ending the war. During the Vietnam
War, the peace and impeachment efforts aided each other. And the Democrats then won the next elections, something they
failed to do after choosing not to pursue impeachment proceedings against Ronald Reagan for the Iran-Contra scandal.
What Could Change
Two events on the horizon might change this outlook. One is an attack on Iran. Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers have said they favor launching the impeachment process if the Bush
administration attacks Iran. Needless to say, it would be better to begin proceedings to impeach in order to prevent an
attack on Iran, but that is unlikely in the present political atmosphere.
The other event that could take us all surprising places is the completion of the trial of I. Lewis Scooter Libby. The
evidence made public by that trial points to an urgent need for impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney.
The evidence suggests that Cheney was the driving force behind the campaign of retribution against ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, including the outing of his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame. Journalist Murray Waas
has indicated some of the points that cry out for investigation. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has urged Cheney to "come clean," offer an explanation for his actions, or resign. A blogger with the
handle emptywheel has drafted a mock indictment of Cheney, and Wil S. Hylton has recently published possible articles of impeachment against the Vice President in the men's fashion magazine GQ.
It seems everyone's getting into the act, except Congress. But Congress could do so. The evidence uncovered by the Libby
trial did not exist when Pelosi ordered impeachment "off the table" a year ago. Among the public, there is a lot of fear
that impeaching Bush (and removing him from office) would give us a President Cheney. By impeaching the incredibly
unpopular Cheney first, Congress would allay these fears. Impeaching Cheney might actually unite the mood of the public
with that of Congress more easily than the impeachment of George W. Bush -- under the motto: Business Before Pleasure -- Impeach Cheney First!
In the meantime, the Democrats' strategy of letting the war continue, not thoroughly investigating the fraud that
launched it, and not holding the war-makers accountable may prove not to be the electoral winner that Party figures like
Emanuel expect. It might even prove a political equalizer and so a loser in 2008 or beyond. Every day that the Democrats
don't move to end the war in Iraq is another day in which that war, stretching ever on, can become the Democrats' war.
Only if they come to believe that the war's unpopularity will work against them in the voting booths in 2008 or
thereafter will they be strongly motivated to take the sorts of actions that might actually bring it to an end.
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David Swanson is the Washington Director of Democrats.com and co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and of the Backbone Campaign. He serves on a working
group of United for Peace and Justice. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs
including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign. His website is davidswanson.org.