Can This Washington Be Saved? Can This War? After the veto by Symposium

On Tuesday night, President Bush vetoed the supplemental war-funding bill. National Review Online asked a group of experts, who include a former senator, a former Cabinet secretary, an Iraq-war vet, a relative of an American murdered on September 11, 2001, a historian, and policy experts: How big a deal was the president’s veto Tuesday night? Can this Washington be saved? Can this war?

William J. Bennett

The question now is what comes next. The veto will be sustained, but what’s the next bill going to look like? I’m telling you right now if Republicans cave, there’s going to be a problem. And problems are on the horizon. Here’s what George Voinovich, Republican senator of Ohio, said yesterday: “Some kind of compromise has to be worked out between the administration and the Democrats. That’s how it’s done. Everybody holds their nose and maybe a couple of times vomits, but you get it done.”

 

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Comprehending the Incomprehensible 04/17

Pat Buckley, R.I.P. 04/16

What’s Money Got to Do with It? 04/03

Tehran Seizure 03/27

A Fond Farewell 03/22

 

Kaza: A Texarkana Tax Tale

Symposium: Can This Washington Be Saved? Can This War?

Nordlinger: An episode to deal with, &c.

Krikorian: Immigrants Are People, Too

Kyl: Crass-Test Dems

Interview: Bam-Zoom

Editors: Supplemental Failure

Goldberg: Between Tenet’s Lines

Malkin: Counting on the Border

Document: “Unacceptable”

Geraghty: Latin Rudy

Interview: If It’s Not Lost, How Can We Win?

Interview: Writing Thomas

Suderman: Gaming the System

No, that is not how it’s done. That’s how it was done in Vietnam. But we’re going to say “Hell No” to doing that again. President Bush is not Richard Nixon or Jerry Ford. Ted Kennedy is not in charge. We learned our lessons from Vietnam I thought: We will not collude in a bloodbath, a defeat, and our enemies’ dancing in the streets—not when our military wants to fight, is fighting, and is making a difference.

I know what the polling says. You don’t poll a war. But if you want a poll, here’s the one I’d write and we’ll see what response it gets: “Do you support pulling troops from Iraq if you know a bloodbath will follow and al Qaeda will declare victory?” Poll that question please. It’s the most accurate prognostication you can get.

Let me just remind: David Petraeus is making a difference, the new plan is making a difference, it’s only half as powerful as it will be, more troops are on the way, and it’s only two months old. Don’t quit the fight now. That is a surrender.

— William J. Bennett is host of Morning in America and author of America: The Last Best Hope, Volume 2: From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom.

Peter Brookes

The president’s veto was an important blow to the jihadists, and the likes of Iran and Syria, hoping that we’d just put our tails between our legs and go home. This war is winnable. Indeed, the quickest and surest way to lose a war is to stop fighting.

But President Bush, fortunately, realizes that there is a lot more on the line in Iraq than the war. Our credibility, our resolve — for friend and foe alike — are at stake.

And Washington will be fine. A little rough and tumble, sharp-elbow politics is good every once in awhile to keep the blood coursing through our political veins. Democracies are resilient and this great democracy of ours is no different.

— Peter Brookes is senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is author of A Devil’s Triangle: Terrorism, WMD and Rogue States, just out in paperback.

Debra Burlingame

Can this war be saved? Yes, but Republicans in Congress have to step up. Confident of Bush’s veto, they did not fight the supplemental bill hard enough, letting the Democrats’ repeated claim that the American people “support them” go unanswered.

Americans have a great deal of faith in our military. What they are not so sure about is the Iraqi people. According to a poll conducted last September, a strong majority of Iraqis support the Maliki government and trust the Iraqi security forces. When asked about their support for al Qaeda, an overwhelming majority of Shia (98 percent) and a large majority of Sunni (71 percent) firmly rejected al Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin. Increasingly, Iraqis know that foreign fighters are responsible for most of the bloodshed in their country, including attacks intended to provoke sectarian violence.

This is a p.r. war, both here and there. Americans need to be reassured that the Iraqis strongly support the U.S. mission of standing up the Iraqi army. General Petraeus called the unprecedented number of volunteers who are showing up for training a “stunning development.” Equally significant is the huge increase in intelligence from Iraqi civilians about insurgents and their activities. Americans will give the surge time, and accept casualties, if they know the Iraqis are not sitting out the fight.

— Debra Burlingame is sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11/01.

Victor Davis Hanson

The veto gave Gen. Petraeus a window of six months to stabilize Baghdad. Ultimately only positive news from the battlefield in Baghdad can stop the Democrats who have collectively decided that the war they authorized is now not worth the aggregate cost in blood and treasure.

So we are in a psychological state akin to circa July 1864 or spring 1951, in which only good news from the war can stop the blame-game and serial expressions of defeatism. What Petraeus is trying to do is to provide enough security and confidence in the future so that the Sunnis will reject al Qaeda, the Shiites will marginalize Sadr, and the general populace can trust in its government.

The more Democrats will not quite cut off funds before the verdict is in on the surge, the more vehement will be their public defeatist rhetoric as compensation. And they probably shrug that if things quiet down by autumn, they can say their pressure removed Rumsfeld, changed military leadership, increased troop levels, and forced Bush to see the light; and if the surge fails, they can say “well, they had their surge, and now it is time to leave.” So expect the final showdown not to arrive until autumn when the election cycle commences in earnest.

The unspoken danger is that if, after all this hate-filled rhetoric, the Democrats win the White House, al Qaeda won’t go away. The jihadists will probably be emboldened by a withdrawal from Iraq, and thus Democrats will have to continue the struggle in other theaters, appealing to bipartisan support and patience. In other words, once in power Democrats won’t want the continuance of the very defeatist and over-the-top political culture they themselves fostered the last four years.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Clifford D. May

President Bush had no choice but to veto a bill that would have undermined an American commander on the battlefield, a bill that would have legislated a consequential American defeat.

The hope now is that more moderate voices in the Democratic party will prevail, and that Bush will get a new bill, one that provides Gen. David Petraeus and his troops with the resources they need — if not the bipartisan support they would like — to carry out their arduous and vital mission.

Bush said on Tuesday that “it will be at least the end of summer before we can assess the impact of this operation.” That really means Petraeus has four months to make — and demonstrate — progress in a clash of arms, while Bush must simultaneously make headway in a clash of narratives.

Bush must convince Americans that the bloodshed in Iraq is not — as the far Left insists — a justified response to America’s “occupation.” Nor are we primarily intervening in a civil war, a domestic dispute that should not concern us, as other critics of the war contend.

Rather, Americans are fighting al Qaeda’s most lethal branch and thwarting the imperialist ambitions of Tehran. And we are giving decent Iraqis — the majority of Iraqis — a last chance to learn to rule themselves and defend themselves.

Bush also must communicate how costly would be an American defeat in Iraq. Years ago, we retreated from Vietnam; though millions of Asians suffered and died, Americans were able to get on with their lives and even eventually prevail in the Cold War.

Should we lose the Battle of Baghdad, we are not likely to get off so easily.

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

Bill Roggio

President Bush’s veto of the supplemental spending bill was a foregone conclusion: He promised to veto this bill months ago, when it became apparent Congress would tie the funding to troop withdrawal. The veto marks the beginning of the battle for the American public. To win this battle, President Bush must clearly and concisely articulate to the public the reasons to remain in Iraq, and why setting an absolute deadline for withdrawal would undermine U.S. interests. So far he has failed to do so. The president and his staff have been woefully inadequate in engaging and educating the American public on how the Iraq war has become central to the overall fight against al Qaeda, even if this was not the case when the U.S. first invaded.

Since the failure to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the administration has ceded the debate on every substantive issue concerning the Iraq war. The political will and public support has eroded to the point that the Democratic Congress began to declare defeat mere minutes after General Petraeus was appointed to fill the role of commander in Iraq.

The irony, as Owen West pointed out Tuesday in the New York Times, is that just when the military has righted the ship and chosen a coherent counterinsurgency plan for Iraq, and the right general to lead it, the political support for the war has bottomed out.

The outcome of the Iraq war is now in the hands of the American public. Will they understand the gravity that conceding defeat to al Qaeda in Iraq will have in the wider Middle East and for American national security? Will they approve the abandonment of Afghanistan next? We’ll soon find out.

— Bill Roggio, who served in the Army from 1991 to 1995, is a civilian military blogger.

Joseph Morrison Skelly

The answers to these three very important questions require an appreciation of political history, military affairs, and one of America’s great literary geniuses. In reply to the first query, President Bush’s veto Tuesday night was a very big deal. In constitutional terms, it was the right response to a deeply flawed bill that would have undermined his authority as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. The conduct of war is an executive responsibility enumerated in Article II of the Constitution, not a congressional mandate. Congress can defund the conflict in Iraq — and, if it was serious, would attempt to do so — but it has no authority whatsoever to wage this war, by, for example, setting arbitrary timetables for withdrawal, something unheard of, and nonsensical, in military terms. George Bush’s second veto is thus his first real opportunity to define himself in opposition to Congress by affirming, in a positive sense, a presidential prerogative fundamental to our constitutional system. In The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton describes this as “energy in the executive.” In time this new assertiveness may very well resonate with the American people, who, despite their wavering support for Operation Iraqi Freedom, understand the necessity of presidential leadership in a time of war. In a recent, compelling essay in The Claremont Review of Books, the Harvard political scientist Harvey Mansfield locates this popular endorsement of the war-time powers of the presidency in “the success of the Constitution’s invention of a strong executive in republican politics.” Thus in the coming days, as the Democratic leadership proposes similar surrender terms disguised as compromises to President Bush, he must reject all formulas that undercut his authority as commander-in-chief, a stand that will not only pay public dividends, but one that will help to preserve essential elements of our constitutional order.

But can this war be saved? Yes, it can. With the implementation of the surge into Baghdad designed by General Petraeus and his staff, the United States military is finally waging a true counterinsurgency, and with enough resources to make a difference. But the clock is ticking at home. Military history demonstrates — in the Philippines, Malaysia, Algeria, during the Tet Offensive, in Peru, Central America, and now in Colombia — that states, not insurgents, win these low-intensity wars on the battlefield, and they lose only when they lose the will to fight. Congress’s signal for retreat therefore sends exactly the wrong message to our adversaries, while President Bush’s warning that “setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure” is exactly right.

What about the remaining question: “Can this Washington be saved?” Some readers of NRO might be tempted to say, “Why bother?” They may have a point. They are also in good company. During a visit to our nation’s capital in 1868, Mark Twain wondered if its politicians were in league with the Devil himself. He opined:

I believe the Prince of Darkness could start a branch of Hell in the District of Columbia (if he has not already done it), and carry it on unimpeached by the Congress of the United States, even though the Constitution were bristling with Articles forbidding Hells in this country. And if there were moneyed offices in it, Congress would take stock in the concern, too…What a rotten, rotten, and unspeakable nasty concern this nest of Departments is, with its brainless battalions of Congressional poor-relation-clerks and their book-keeping, pencil-sharpening strumpets!

Well, it has been almost 140 years since Mark Twain’s visit, and while Washington’s salvation is not assured, with prayer, anything is possible.

— Joseph Morrison Skelly is an academic fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

W. Thomas Smith Jr.

President Bush’s vetoing of this bill, which — had he not — would have backed the White House into a corner, is apparently far more an issue of military/defense strategy for the president than politics.

Bush knows the war is unpopular. He knows his veto won’t earn him favor in the eyes of his opposition; and in the short term, may negatively impact some of his support.

For the Democrats, it’s all politics. Why else would Sen. Harry Reid — focusing on the insurgents’ isolated albeit bloody tactical gains, and dismissing our own strategic successes — declare the war “lost”? Why would Reid outrightly refute the claims of the four-star general that he (Reid) — and everyone else in his party — just confirmed to the highest military post in Iraq? Why would the Democrats continue damning with faint praise the Iraqi national elections (ignoring millions of Iraqis who risked their very lives to vote) while irresponsibly playing up U.S. casualties to the American people (without lending perspective to those casualties by considering the losses suffered by Americans in previous wars)? Why would the Democrats be willing to telegraph to our enemies the dates we might withdraw? A 19-year-old underclassman at West Point knows better than to do that.

For the president, it’s all about winning a struggle with the enemy in a key front in the War on Terror. For the Democrats, it’s all about power and winning the White House.

I personally fear that only measurable, decisive victory on the ground in Iraq — and soon — can heal the dangerous divisiveness in this country.

— W. Thomas Smith is a regular contributor to National Review Online’s military blog, “The Tank.”

Jim Talent

On Tuesday, President Bush used his veto power for the second time during his presidency on the Democrats $124 billion Iraq supplemental appropriations bill that included a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.

The president was right, for at least four reasons laid out by my colleague at the Heritage Foundation, James Carafano:

* Success is an option;

* There is a war to be won;

* Walking away will not end the war;

* Polls do not make Americans safer.

I begrudge no one their dissatisfaction with the situation in Iraq, and least of all the Left, which is uncomfortable with the use of American power even when the exercise goes smoothly. But the one worse thing than what we have gone through in Iraq would be if we go through it for nothing.

The administration is now using classic anti-insurgency tactics, accompanied by the “surge” in troops that is clearly having a positive impact on the ground. Whether it will be enough to make the mission a success remains to be seen. But the consequences of defeat — chaos in Iraq, or domination by Iran — are so serious that we should not abandon the mission as long as there is a plausible chance of success; and given that it would be wrong to walk away, it would clearly be wrong to advertise a timetable for walking away. Why give the enemy notice of exactly how long they have to continue fighting in order to win?

The war in Iraq has now become a race: Will the new tactics achieve victory on the ground before the Democratic Left achieves surrender? The administration needs to establish clear metrics for success in Iraq and then rediscover the ability to communicate effectively as those metrics are achieved; otherwise, it is quite likely that the efforts of our men and women on the ground will end up going for naught.

Congress and the president also find themselves at a crossroad where decisions must be made about the future funding of our nation’s defense budget. Will they make the necessary investment in our military to ensure the safety of the United States, not just now, but in the future when we might face such challenges as the rising power of China or a rogue missile attack? Those who say they support a strong military should openly support the Heritage Foundation’s “4 Percent for Freedom” solution — a plan that calls for spending a minimum of 4 percent of the GDP on the regular defense budget.

President Bush made the correct decision when he vetoed the supplemental funding bill yesterday. Now it is time for him to step up and support the adequate funding of our military.

— Jim Talent is a distinguished fellow in military affairs at the Heritage Foundation. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1993-2001) and the U.S. Senate (2002-2007). He was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and, for four years, chairman of the committee’s Seapower Committee.