Harry Reid stepped on a banana peel the other day. He doesn’t
know it yet and it may take some time for its slippery properties
to take over, but make no mistake, in due course he will end up on
his keister and so will a lot of his colleagues on Capitol Hill. As
soon as she returns from Syria, et al., Nancy Pelosi will step on
the same banana peel.
It has a name: Defunding the troops in Iraq. Having misread the
mood of the public in last November’s election as
out-of-Iraq-the-sooner-the-better, the Democratic leaders in
Congress have set about to appease the noisy and dyspeptic far-left
wing of their party (important in primaries, but about 15 percent
of the electorate in a general election).
Some Congressional Democrats want to reconcile the recent
troop-funding bills in both houses into one that funds without
withdrawal schedules. Others want one that includes both Iraqi
government performance “benchmarks” and U.S. troop withdrawal
deadlines. If the bill that emerges has deadlines and
impossible-to-attach benchmarks, it will be vetoed by President
Bush. His veto will be sustained. The Democrats will not have the
votes to override it because even its ardent supporters know that
if it becomes law, their party will have taken on full
responsibility for the consequences.
The last time a Democratically-controlled Congress tried to
micromanage a war was in Vietnam. Their final pulling of the
funding plug on aid to the South Vietnamese government resulted in
its quick collapse, tens of thousands of refugees, and a very bad
taste in the mouths of Americans. The war was unpopular (in part
because we had the draft and many young men wanted no part of it),
but Americans do not like to feel badly about themselves or their
country.
The Vietnam micromanagement was the Democrats’ banana peel then.
It took time and the feckless Carter Administration to make for a
collective longing to feel better again. Ronald Reagan came along
at just the right moment for that. In 1980, Carter and the most
liberal members of Congress all slipped on the banana peel.
Even today, despite the passage of years, there is an unspoken
lingering suspicion that Democrats are wanting when it comes to
supporting American interests abroad. The determined support for
what might be called “terrorist rights” by left-leaning groups in
this country only adds to the unease.
While the polls show that Americans are weary of the war, what
really bothers them is its uncertainty and the apparent lack of
positive news. That is where General Petraeus’s new strategy comes
in (remember that the Democratic Senate unanimously confirmed him
for the job). Despite war-weariness, polls also show that most
Americans want us to succeed in Iraq. General Petraeus says we’ll
know by late summer if the new approach is truly working.
Meanwhile, a Bush veto of the funding-with-deadlines legislation
will lead to the activation of Harry Reid’s latest gambit, a bill
to defund the war by March of next year. This is designed to keep
the far-left bloggers and shouters mollified. It will have just the
opposite effect. They will increase their decibel level. A
deepening chasm will develop in the Democratic Congressional
caucuses. Harry’s banana peel will quickly multiply (like those
wire coat hangers in your closet) until virtually every Hill
Democrat will be standing on one.
A total defunding bill will require Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama to stop their minuet and declare which side they are on.
Anger and division will mount. The far-left will insist on nothing
less than total defunding by a date-certain. In the course of the
debate, the American people will see that the Democrats’
we-support-our-trooops talk was lip service and that defunding
means undermining those troops — all of whom are volunteers. They
will not want to cut funds during a war being fought bravely by
those volunteers who are their sons, daughters, siblings, and
grandchildren.
All Bush need do is hold his ground and continue to use the
veto. He has nothing to lose by doing so, but the Congressional
Democrats and their presidential candidates have everything to lose
in 2008 by pursuing the “deadlines” and “defunding” goals. If they
slip on the banana peel, they’ll be saying more than “Oops.”
