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Ask House Democrats

By absentee Posted in Congress | Defeatocrats | Democrats | General Petraeus | War — Comments (26) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The appearances before Congress by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker this week were marked less by the sober forthrightness of the two men than by Democrat grandstanding. Tuesday’s Senate hearings were best summed up by Sen. Joseph Lieberman: "As I hear the questions and the statements today, it seems to me that there's a kind of 'hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq, and most of all, speak of no progress in Iraq.'"

On Wednesday the hearings were before the House Armed Services Committee. Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) set the Democrat tone in his opening remarks. "We should not begin this hearing without recalling how we got here," he said. "Iraq was invaded on incorrect information. The turbulent aftermath following the initial military victory was not considered, despite warnings of the aftermath, including two such warnings from me. Now we're in our sixth year of attempting to quell this horrendous aftermath." The remainder of his opening speech was heavy on the horrendous, as he invoked failures and Bin Laden to paint a bleak picture of an impotent America, an intransigent Iraq, a neglected Afghanistan, and a stubborn President.

"Things haven't changed that much in Iraq," was the ever-present message. House Democrats piled on a theme of "No Hope, No Change" in contrast to their leading Democrat candidate, who for his part on Tuesday was keen on pointing out that there is “still violence in Iraq.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) took the hopelessness theme in a different direction by outlining how defeat should necessarily follow from success. She started with a little show-and-tell display of her souvenir photos from her visit to Iraq, during which she made the opaque observation that Iraqi children didn't wear American military uniforms, carry weapons, or generally do other army guy stuff, and also that there was a lot of trash in Iraq. Eventually she happened upon a line of questions which made it clear that she somehow thought the pictures would lead up to a "gotcha" moment. The exchange that followed was a painful bit of theater:

This was not the only messenger assignment for our top Iraq officials that day. Ambassador Crocker was asked to warn the Iraqi Parliament that after December, America really wouldn't have any authority to remain in country any longer.

The question on nearly every Democrat's lips, and in fact a few Republicans, was how to identify success in Iraq. General Petraeus answered this question again and again in the same way, suggesting there was a complex calculus involved in determining when and how troops can be withdrawn from particular areas.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) was particularly irritated when pressing the General for an itemized list and future minute-by-minute screenplay of withdrawal from Iraq. The General was again providing his vague process overview when Woolsey interrupted, saying, "But then, General, I mean you've told us this, so I've heard it, and we've all heard this. You must be basing it on some numbers of what would it take to be safe in bringing our troops home, what it’s going to cost to bring our troops home, what it'll cost to be involved in reconciliation and capacity-building within Iraq. Where do we get those numbers? Is it available to the public?"
The General replied that "It's not arithmetic, Congresswoman. As I mentioned yesterday, this is more akin to calculus than it is to arithmetic. It's more akin to the political-military calculus that the ambassador described earlier, I think, in this hearing today, and it is the battlefield geometry."

The General was acutely aware of frustration from the Committee, whether real or theatrical. "Look, again, we very much hear the frustration," he said. "Those of who have been at this for a long time obviously want the war to end as much anybody else, perhaps maybe more. It's sometimes said the biggest peace activists are those who, of course, are actually down-range risking it all; But what we want to do is come home the right way without jeopardizing the gains we've fought to achieve and achieving the important national interest that we have."

In his militarily forthright way, the General identifies the clearest line of demarcation between his point of view and those who would have us withdraw immediately. The surge, as Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) pointed out in his opening remarks, has "by all metrics" been a success. Violence is down and security is up. Iraqi troops and government have had to "face bullets," and haven’t run. The General and the Ambassador testified that taking America away from the Iraqis too soon will jeopardize those gains, and our own national interest.

Out on the House floor Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) summed up the Democrat talking points. "The President's representative from the military is on Capitol Hill urging us to continue to stay in Iraq. Telling us to wait, don't leave. What are we waiting for? Until the cost of the war reaches six trillion dollars? So that our American economy goes totally bust? So that we don't have any more money for education or health care or housing? What are we waiting for, for the casualties to get to ten thousand, twenty thousand deaths of our service men and women. What are we waiting for, for American to stand alone against the world?"

The Democrat question of the day was one they were answering themselves. How do you define success, they ask. There is no success, they answer.

It seems the Democrats’ question is rhetorical. Perhaps they should instead ponder a very real question: How do you define defeat? General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, and the Iraqi people know the answer to that one. So does Iran. House Democrats ought to be intimately familiar with the definition … they’ve been announcing American defeat for six years.