Are You For or Against the Escalation: No Escaping This Vote in the House

Cross-posted at DailyKos.com [1]

The House this week is considering a resolution opposing the President's plan to escalate the conflict in Iraq.

This resolution reflects the will of the American people. Americans said at the polls last November that they wanted this war to end and for our troops to be withdrawn from the civil war that rages in Iraq.

Now that the President has submitted his budget and the House has begun work on the funding resolutions for fiscal year 2008, Democrats have turned their attention to stopping the president's push for more war. This week's resolution marks the first step in that process.

For the past several weeks, many Senate Republicans publicly criticized the President's escalation proposal. Astonishingly, they then blocked efforts to allow a vote on the Bush Iraq policy. Even Senator John Warner, the Republican author of the Iraq resolution, voted against bringing his own bill to a vote. Warner cited the need to stand with his party's leadership and the President.

Do these guys ever learn? The American people punished Republicans in November for failing to challenge the president on the war. Does the GOP expect the American public will accept parliamentary maneuvers and evasiveness as a substitute for leadership on this issue?

Speaker Pelosi is going to devote three days of House debate to allow every Member of Congress to state their position on the president's troop escalation plan. Thankfully, the rules of the House are different than the Senate and will not allow Representatives to similarly criticize the expansion of the war and then cowardly avoid voting on the issue.

Recent revelations and reports will provide plenty for Members of Congress to discuss this week. The revelations of the DoD IG report on the manipulation of intelligence, for example, as well as the most recent National Intelligence Estimate.

Referencing this NIE, former Reagan NSA Director Lt. Gen. William Odom [2] stated yesterday that "victory is not an option":

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.

For this week's resolution, I expect plenty of Republicans will hide behind complaints of process. That's what they always do when they are afraid to talk about the substance of an issue.

The truth is that House Republican leaders want to distort and distract, and wrap themselves in the courage of our men and women in uniform (the same men and women in uniform they have repeatedly declined to take care of in so many ways). We are not going to let these games be played. You are either for this escalation, or against it. Every member of the House will get the chance to stand up and be counted this week.