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 to 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
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