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Friday, November 18, 2005

House on Fire

Posted by on November 18 at 14:38 PM

There’s a war on in the House of Representatives, with the Rs pushing for a vote a resolution calling for the troops to be pulled out of Iraq immediately. They’re going to vote against it, and so are most Dems, and they’ll point to this as “support” for the President’s “stay-the-course” position on Iraq. It’s also a way for the Rs to humiliate the Democratic hawk, Rep. Murtha, who gave a speech yesterday in which he called for the troops to be withdrawn in six months.

GOP leaders decided to act little more than 24 hours after Rep. John Murtha, a hawkish Democrat with close ties to the military, said the time had come to pull out the troops.

By forcing the issue to a vote, Republicans placed many Democrats in a politically unappealing position - whether to side with Murtha and expose themselves to attacks from the White House and congressional Republicans, or whether to oppose him and risk angering the voters that polls show want an end to the conflict.

Murtha offered a resolution that would force the president to withdraw the nearly 160,000 troops in Iraq “at the earliest practicable date.” It would establish a quick-reaction force and a nearby presence of Marines in the region.

What the Rs are doing is ugly, it’s grandstanding, and it’s bullshit, but it’s a perfect example of the GOP’s willingness and ability to go on the offensive. So what should the Dems do? GO ON THE FUCKING OFFENSIVE THEMSELVES! In an op-ed in the New York Times this week, I called on the Dems to go on the offensive concerning the right to privacy. Reacting to what’s going down in the House right now, John Aravosis at Americablog is calling on the Dems to go on the offensive with some resolutions of their own—here’s his entire blog post, because it’s so FUCKING BRILLIANT. I hope to God the Dems in the House are reading Americablog and that they TAKE JOHN’S FUCKING ADVICE!

The Democratic House members should propose a resolution saying “President Bush is doing a great job executing the war in Iraq”

I’m serious. The Republicans are now pushing a resolution in the House, forcing a vote on whether we should immediately withdraw our troops from Iraq. The Republicans of course don’t want to remove the troops, they think the war is going fine, so they’re trying to embarrass the Dems into voting against withdrawing the troops, and thus voting against Congressman Murtha, who so bravely yesterday called for the US to withdraw.

But that’s fine. Let’s join the Republicans at their same game.

The Dems should try to offer a resolution, and have the Repubs block it, proclaiming the sense of the Congress that President Bush is doing a great job - a heck of a job, one might say - executing the war in Iraq. If the Republicans kill the resolution, they look like they’re afraid to endorse Bush, and if they vote for the resolution, they’ll look like idiots calling this a great job when the majority of the public doesn’t agree.

Other possible resolutions to offer:

- We are winning the Iraq war.
- Invading Iraq was a great idea.
- Knowing what they know now they’d vote to invade Iraq again.

You get the picture.