All we are saying, is give war a chance

	Geov Parrish WorkingForChange.com 01.26.07	Printer-friendly version Email this item to a friend Most e-mailed stories
All we are saying, is give war a chance Politically irrelevant Bush still wields very real foreign policy power -- unless Dems cut him off

All you need to know about George Bush's 2007 State of the Union address -- by far, in six years, the Bush SOTU speech most divorced from the actual state of our union -- is that after making the central point of his speech a plea to balky senators to give his escalation of the war in Iraq "a chance," the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 12-9 the very next day to pass a resolution calling his plan "not in the national interest." And that many of the nine Republicans voting against the Senate measure said they, too, had reservations about the escalation. In the words of Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the ranking Republican on the committee, ""I am not confident that President Bush's plan will succeed... [but] it is unclear to me how passing a nonbinding resolution that the president has already said he will ignore will contribute to any improvement or modification of our Iraq policy." Next week, the full Senate will vote on the resolution, followed shortly by the House. In case they've forgotten, between now and then legislators will get plenty of reminders of how the vast majority of Americans feel about Bush's war. Protesters are descending on Washington (as well as convening in other cities across the country) for what looks to be the largest anti-war demonstration since 2003, and numerous groups have scheduling lobbying days against the war before and after the weekend events. Bush and his increasingly isolated cronies are planning to ignore them, too. And, so, the Commander-in-Chief stood before Congress Tuesday night, an army of one. The overwhelming sense of this year's SOTU is that Bush has become -- not irrelevant, exactly, because he is still trying to run Washington as though his and only his word mattered -- but diminished, far more so than his lame duck status alone would suggest. Except for the wary respect for the executive power he still wields, nobody would take Dubya seriously any longer. Nobody. Not McCain, not Cheney, not Laura, not Barney. Bush has lost all credibility with the public, and once that's gone for a politician, there is no recovering it. Those Republicans not directly working for Bush are distancing themselves from him as fast as they can. (Insert "rats" cliché here.) Democrats, meanwhile, the same tepid bunch who almost all meekly went along with Bush's atrocities for years, have declared open season on the President. And so nobody really cared what Bush said Tuesday night. Nobody cared about the various pieces of his domestic agenda that he invoked as a gambit to distract us from his numerous failures. The assembled spectators were polite enough not to openly laugh or jeer when Bush, in discussing Iraq, repeatedly invoked 9-11 (again), or conflated Sunni Al-Qaeda and Shiite Hezbollah with the all-purpose "terrorist" tag. But what Bush said didn't matter, because he has lied so many times that nobody is willing any longer to give his words, let alone his war, yet another chance. The only reason he matters now is because of his actions, actions that are mostly facing the staunch opposition of a majority of Congress and a supermajority of Americans. In that vein, it's hard to avoid the conclusion, based simply on media coverage and public buzz, that Americans would just as soon fast forward through the next two years. It was telling that in the run-up to Bush's speech, the previous media week was spent not speculating on his words, but lavishing attention and coverage on the presidential campaign announcements of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Theirs were the earliest major campaign launches in history, and even then a surprise to nobody. Much of the public seems more than ready for Barack, Hillary, or anyone else to be our President. With approval ratings in the sewer (start from the toilet and go down...), the consensus seems to be: Bush has had his chances on the war, and on everything else. Give someone else a chance. Please. Now. It's not going to happen, of course. Bush will be president for two more long years, barring the completely unforeseen. Congress seems to be in no mood to play along. That will stymie much of Bush's domestic agenda. But what, practically, can be done to stop the Bush cabal from escalating current wars and starting new ones? Nonbinding resolutions won't do it. The only true power Congress has, short of impeachment, is to cut funding for Bush's wars. Nothing less will do it. The next two years will in all likelihood be a rolling constitutional crisis: the White House refusing congressional subpoenas, Congress cut out from any influence over Bush foreign policy. At present, there aren't the votes to cut funding, and the Beltway consensus is that using the power of the purse to demand that the current escalation be stopped -- an escalation that, depending on the poll, somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of Americans oppose -- is somehow "political suicide." It wouldn't be, of course; it would be hugely popular, as well as essential evidence that Democrats are not just saying the right things, but are now willing to use their new power to act forcefully. Those going to Washington to demonstrate and lobby this weekend should hammer this point home. Cutting off funding would render Bush impotent as well as irrelevant. Nothing less will do. And for any legislators who will see it, the cautionary tale stood before them Tuesday night. After four years of botching the execution of an illegal invasion and occupation, that is what political suicide looks like. George W. Bush has exhausted his chances. As ducks go, he is more dead than lame. What is left is to find a way to keep his body from destructively twitching. See more in the Geov Parrish archives. For notification each time a new Geov Parrish column is published, enter your email address here: Geov Parrish can be reached by email at geovlp@earthlink.net -- please indicate whether your comments may be used on WorkingForChange in an upcoming "letters" column.

Cutting off funding would render Bush impotent as well as irrelevant. Nothing less will do.

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