The Road toWithdrawal

By Kenneth R.Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com |November 9, 2006

Democrats areunderstandably exhilarated by their decisive takeover of the House onTuesday. But once the champagne bubbles go flat, they are going tofind that their ability to carry out their most prominent campaignpromise is limited.

The president was quickto acknowledge the obvious message the Republican defeat carried byfiring Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday. No one candeny that this election was a referendum on the administration’sconduct of the war in Iraq, and in particular, the president’srefusal to set a date certain for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
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But incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and likely ArmedServices Committee chairman Ike Skelton are going to find it easiersaid than done to simply set a date for the “phased withdrawal”of U.S. troops to begin, as they promised American voters.
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First, the obvious. The House of Representatives has the power of thepurse, but not the power to command. They cannot order the presidentor the Secretary of Defense to withdraw U.S. troops or even set adate for that withdrawal to begin. All they can do, shouldnegotiations with the White House break down, is to cut off funds forthe war.
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It’s not hard to imagine how Republicans will respond shouldNancy Pelosi and the Democrat leadership chose to go down that road.Rush Limbaugh will have a field day. Democrats have abandoned ourtroops in combat, left them without bullets or billets? Not evenChris Matthews or Dan Rather could spin Pelosi a way out of thatpolitical minefield.
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So, now that the hype of the election campaign is behind us, whatwill the Dems do?
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We know that Bush has already been meeting with Pelosi quietly in theWhite House. This president is someone who has shown he cares littleabout personal popularity or publicperception,
as my colleague at Newsmax Ron Kesslerremarked recently.
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But he cares deeply about doing what he believes is right, and thatis leading our nation in a just, global war against the forces ofdarkness that attacked us on September 11, after five earlier attacksby al-Qaeda and its allies that went unanswered during the Clintonadministration
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Bush has shown he can quickly back down from what he previouslypainted as an absolute position of principle, if he become convincedhe has no other choice. (One example: after saying he thoughtcampaign finance reform was unconstitutional as passed by Congress,he signed the McCain-Feingold bill into law).
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In the coming weeks and months, we are going to hear new weasel-termscoming out of the White House to describe what Pelosi and theDemocrat leadership have called “phased withdrawal” fromIraq. The fig leaf for this policy strip tease will be provided bythe bipartisan Iraq Policy Group, headed by former Secretary of StateJames Baker and former Congressman and 9/11 Commission member, LeeHamilton.
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Prospective Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has caught the tune. OnWednesday, he called for an “Iraq Summit” to draft abi-partisan “new direction” for the Iraq war.
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Before all the clothes come off, the Pentagon will have to workovertime to train Iraqi security forces so they have the numbers (ifnot the determination) to carry out most security tasks bythemselves.
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But even the most partisan Democrats (at least, those who haveretained their faculties) understand that the United States cannotsimply pull out of Iraq tomorrow. To do so would have the effect ofturning over the country to our enemies: al-Qaeda, Iran, Syria, andthe remnants of Saddam’s regime.
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So there is the first constraint. Democrats will simply be unable todeliver on the main campaign promise, because 1) they do not have thepower to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, and 2) because any effort todefund the U.S. war effort would be political suicide.
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Call it a Wake up Call.
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Former McCain advisor Marshall Wittmann, who is now an advisor to theDemocratic Leadership Council and runs the
“BullMoose” blogspot, believesthe Democrats are slowly recognizing these realities. He argues thatone key was the re-election of Joe Lieberman to the United StatesSenate as an Independent.
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Lieberman’s victory was a “massive repudiation” ofthe party’s dominant left wing, that should “send apowerful message to the '08 wannabees that winning the affections ofthe nutroots and the activists does not translate into victory in thegeneral election - even in a state as blue as Connecticut,”Wittmann said.
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The real limiting factor on the new Democratic Party majority,however, will not be the White House, its own left-wing, or the Iraqigovernment of Prime Minister al-Malaki.
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It will be Iran, and Iran’s allies in Europe and the UnitedNations.
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We cannot defeat the insurgency in Iraq and bring U.S. troops homewithout defeating the regime in Iran, because Iran has been funding,training, and supplying the weapons to the Iraqi insurgents.
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And we cannot defeat the Tehran regime without a comprehensive policyto do so - which neither the White House, the Pentagon, norCongressional Democrats have been willing to craft.
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That is the real challenge facing us in the coming weeks andmonths.
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The questions I have as I look forward are these:
   ‚Ä¢    WillNancy Pelosi chose to commit political suicide and cut off funds toU.S. troops in Iraq? (I doubt it.)
   ‚Ä¢    Willincoming Secretary of Defense Robert Gates seek an accommodation withIran and Syria to cut off their support for the insurgents? (I fear,yes.)
Pelosi will be limited in her options by political realities. But BobGates, as Secretary of Defense nominated by the president with theblessing of the new Democrat majority, will not. He will be able tocarry out the dramatic shift in policies the Democrats and theirallies in the Brent Scowcroft wing of the Republican Party have beenclamoring for, behind the fig leaf of bipartisanship.
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I have a great deal of respect for Bob Gates. Not only is hepersonally brilliant; he understands the way government works andspecifically, how to cut through huge bureaucracies to accomplish hisgoals.
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And that is precisely my fear.
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The last thing we need to do is turn Iraq over to financial,military, and intelligence controllers sitting in Tehran, as theprice of bringing the troops back home.
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But that a deal I believe Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are prepared tomake, as long as the proposal comes from Republicans or from abipartisan commission that gives them political cover.
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Kenneth R. Timmerman isthe author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdownwith Iran (Crown Forum, New York), and Executive Director of theFoundation forDemocracy in Iran.

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