“Once-Promising Strategy”
Murtha trips over shark, falls under bus as other Dems look on idly. The funny part about this Washington Post article is the way it appears to be suggesting that if Murtha had just sprung his troop-undercutting plan by surprise next week, or if Democrats had leapt to his defense, his “once promising strategy” might still have promise.Â
More than anything, this article shows how the Dem Cong is living up to its promise, and why a number of conservatives were not alarmed by the outcome of the November election. After all, it prompted the overdue departure of Rumsfeld and brought the thus-far successful surge strategy. It has also allowed the “once promising” Democratic strategy to play out, which thus far has only improved public attitudes toward supporting President Bush on Iraq. Â
Some highlights:Â Â
The plan was bold: By tying President Bush’s $100 billion war request to strict standards of troop safety and readiness, Democrats believed they could grab hold of Iraq war policy while forcing Republicans to defend sending troops into battle without the necessary training or equipment.
But a botched launch by the plan’s author, Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), has united Republicans and divided Democrats, sending the latter back to the drawing board just a week before scheduled legislative action, a score of House Democratic lawmakers said last week.
“If this is going to be legislation that’s crafted in such a way that holds back resources from our troops, that is a non-starter, an absolute non-starter,” declared Rep. Jim Matheson (Utah), a leader of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats.
… Freshman Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), a retired Navy admiral who was propelled into politics by the Iraq war, said Murtha could still salvage elements of his strategy, but Sestak, an outspoken war opponent, is “a bit wary” of a proposal that would influence military operations.
“I was recently in the military, and I have to speak from that experience,” Sestak said.
The article includes the following odd graph, suggesting the reporters were unaware that Murtha has been marginalized and viewed as an extremist and a loose cannon for some time. In fact, he had jumped the shark before the Dem Cong took office:Â
Murtha’s credentials as a Marine combat veteran, a critic of the war and close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) were supposed to make him an unassailable spokesman for Democratic war policy. Instead, he has become a lightning rod for criticism from Republicans and members of his own party.
Here, Crazy John gets thrown under the bus. He’s all on his own:
… From the beginning, Murtha acted on his own to craft a complicated legislative strategy on the war, without consulting fellow Democrats. When he chose to roll out the details on a liberal, antiwar Web site on Feb. 15, he caught even Pelosi by surprise while infuriating Democrats from conservative districts.
Then for an entire week, as members of Congress returned home for a recess, Murtha refused to speak further. Democratic leaders failed to step into the vacuum, and Republicans relentlessly attacked a plan they called a strategy to slowly bleed the war of troops and funds. By the end of the recess, Murtha’s once promising strategy was in tatters.
Unfortunately, the reporters aren’t going to explain to us what was promising about a strategy to undercut a wartime president and troops in the field by cutting off the funding. Particularly given the opposition’s lack of anything but abandonment as an alternative. They punt, going straight to angry reax:
Tom Andrews, a former House member and antiwar activist who helped Murtha with his Internet rollout, fumed: “The issue to me is, what is the state of the backbone of the Democratic Party? How will they respond to this counterattack? Republicans are throwing touchdown passes on this because the Democrats aren’t even on the field.”
Heads up, Tom! They have no backbone. That’s why they want non-binding resolutions, re-dos on their authorization votes and … hate to belabor the point … have no plan.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a Florida Democrat and deputy whip, said party leaders are working on several Iraq proposals and that Murtha’s may survive. Finding consensus will be difficult but not impossible, she said. “This is a multi-step process,” she cautioned. “At least we’re debating the topic, not blindly following the president.”
Try opening your eyes, Deb! But as long as they’re squeezed shut, sitting around yammering is probably the wiser course.
… Murtha, 74, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, still holds a unique position on war policy, stemming from his roots as a veteran, his close ties to the uniformed military and his long-standing alliance with Pelosi. When he first publicly called for ending the war in 2005, he commanded the attention the party’s left and right wings.
Since then, he has come to be reviled by the military, everyone’s remembered about Abscam, and no one wants anything to do with him. Position definitely still unique!
The strategy he would craft was designed to calm the nerves of the party’s conservatives by fully funding the war, while placating the antiwar left by attaching so many strings to those funds that the president would not be able to deploy all the 21,500 additional combat troops he wanted.
Instead, it disgusted one side and frightened the other.
… Pelosi endorsed the plan in concept but never the details. The plan surfaced Feb. 15 in an unorthodox Murtha appearance on MoveCongress.org, an antiwar Web site affiliated with the liberal activists of MoveOn.org.
Coming through … give the lady some room. We’ve got a career here!
To many Democrats, that was not only impolitic, it was disloyal.
“He stepped all over Speaker Pelosi’s message of support for the troops,” said Rep. Jim Cooper (Tenn.). “That was not team play, to put it mildly.”
More like he stepped in the speaker’s message, which was a lot of crap, and it stuck to his shoe.
Even after that Web appearance, some senior Democratic aides say Murtha might well have been able to save his plan if he had quickly laid it out before the Democratic caucus and marshaled Democratic leaders behind a defense. Instead, the House recessed for a week, Murtha disappeared from the media, and Democratic leaders were silent, saying they could not discuss Iraq legislation because no real plan existed.
In the face of an unanswered Republican assault, the Democratic rank-and-file cracked — on the left and the right.
It wasn’t the “once-promising strategy” that sucked. It was Murtha! GET … UNDER … THE DAMN … BUS, JOHN!Â
“While we’re all for troop readiness, we’re all for them having all the equipment they want,” Matheson, the Utah Democrat, said, “I’d be very concerned about doing anything that would hamstring resources and commanders on the ground.”
Indeed, Matheson and other Blue Dogs said the Democrats should concentrate on oversight hearings on Iraq policy, while refraining from binding legislation on the war.
“We need to be more gutless. We want to be seen to be doing something, but not anything that, you know, could have any consequences,” Matheson said.
OK, he didn’t actually say that last part. I made that up. Here’s what they are thinking about now:
The party’s newly elected Iraq veterans favor a more straightforward approach than Murtha, establishing a legal timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sestak said. And the party’s antiwar left is no less unhappy with what they see as half measures from Murtha.
“Congress has the authority, and I know it has the responsibility, to get us out of there. And we should use every means possible,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Calif.), a co-chairman of the Out of Iraq Caucus.
Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.), another co-chairman who sits on the Appropriations Committee, is likely to try to tie the war spending bill to legislation demanding a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by a date certain, with the bill’s money available only for the safe withdrawal of the troops.
Such legislation was precisely what Murtha hoped to head off with his recent Internet appearance, said Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who helped connect him with MoveCongress.org. And Moran still believes the appearance ultimately will work to the Democrats’ favor. “The cognoscenti is upset because he’s not under their control,” Moran said. “They would prefer he release his plan to a think tank, but he decided he wanted to communicate directly. He doesn’t trust the way the media filters what he says and does. He understands the power of being able to communicate.”
Well, he does now. Maybe.
Topics: Iraq, Uncategorized, pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:06 am on Monday, February 26, 2007
16 Responses to ““Once-Promising Strategy””
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February 26th, 2007 at 2:08 am
Somehow, despite all the magical thinking from the right I don’t think Murtha’s going away.
I’ll put my money on the guy who’s actually been in combat.
February 26th, 2007 at 2:28 am
New Surrendercrat Strategy: Betray The Troops — Update 13
Words from the last of the sane Democrats: The Choice on Iraq I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next. Sen. Joseph Lieberman Two months into the 110th Congress, Washington
February 26th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Rumor has it Murtha was a Marine at one time, years back. Alzheimer’s is a terrible thing. At least Reagan had sense enough to go into seclusion.
February 26th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Which wouldn’t be you, toad.
Why is it that the only vets these guys listen to are the ones who sign their song.
February 26th, 2007 at 2:32 am
SING their song.
Don’t type angry.
February 26th, 2007 at 2:36 am
Because any vet who thinks Iraq is going well must have spent their time in the service doing laundry or cleaning toilets, salty.
February 26th, 2007 at 3:23 am
alphie:
You’re so full of shite I can smell you from here. You are nothing but a shill for enemy propagandists and as such a betrayer. There’s a fine and long standing tradition for dealing with such as you and the pendulum is beginning to swing back toward such tradition.
Those who allow themselves to succumb to enemy propagandists are no different from the actual enemy and by law and tradition, such be treated as the enemy.
You may be so intellectually inbred as to believe that the preceding few decades of aberration due to capitulation to a previous enemy’s propaganda as the norm, but you should really start paying attention.
You are indulging in what is normally a fatal flaw and normal is about to come back into vogue.
February 26th, 2007 at 3:42 am
I disagree of course, Grimmy.
I see your side as the betryers of America. I doubt you guys have contributed anything to America’s success as a nation.
Stupidity, violence and greed builds countries like…today’s Iraq.
Quite a nation you guys have created.
I think you understand why we gave your guys the boot before it was too late.
February 26th, 2007 at 6:44 am
alphie:
Why do you come here? No one who visits a site like this thinks you are anything but an internet troll.
BTW, why is it themaority of vets the Democrats want in their party are the ones who throw away their medals or betray their country or disgrace their uniform.
If they actually support the mission the Democrats will not give them the time of day much less resources to run for office. Well unless they are running in a conservative district of course and it would be impolitic to allow a guy like Murtha too much press.
I know you are longing for the good old days when Saddam was fulling his mass graves, Clinton was bombing Baghdad and the UN was allowing a mass murdering dictator to turn a humanitarian aid program into his own personal slush fund while so called weapons experts from the UN swore up and down that Saddam had weapons….but those happy days are gone. I realize that you are unhappy that your hero Saddam will not realize his ambition to kill a president of the United States or exterminate the Kurds…but we have to deal with the world as it is not the world as a bunch of lefty dictator loving reactionary anti democratic loons who would pander to Lucifer himself if he lit a match to an American flag…want it to be.
They call the subject of this thread Mad Murtha for a reason and the truth is you are as deranged as he is. Pity that.
BTW,. alphie, the guy who won the election in my distrinct was a blue dog Demcorat who said he supported the war. Now the question is was he lying? Do not take a razor thin majority you won with the help of conservative Democrats and turn it into a mandate.
February 26th, 2007 at 6:52 am
And as for today’s Iraq alphi…what about Saddam’s Iraq? The fact that journalists like Easton Jordan were either bribed or terrified into hiding the truth about Saddam’s Iraq does not change that truth.
It does not change what Saddam was and what he did to that country. We see it everyday and if you had your way that madman could go right on doing it and you would not care about Iraq or what it was like for those people.
I read enough accounts from Human Rights organizations to know what Saddam was like.
And then there was the destruction of the ecosystem and the not so benign neglect of the infrastructure and his own personal terrorists whose sole function was to kill and maim and terrorize his own people.
I remember when he was in hiding he promised thousands of suicide bombers would martyr themselves for him. They did and people died, and whose side are you on? That seems plain enough.
February 26th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Me thinks there is one here that not only is a dedicated anti-war American on American soil, but an American turncoat, who really should be in an aL-Qaeda training camp. Waiting to be sent into battle against an AC-130. OR face the troops they denigrate, on the ground. itself.
Of course that could be accomplished here, depending on how restless he and his ilk become. One must wait for these people to fire the first and last shot, they will ever fire.
That is, if these people can ever figure out that the lethality comes out the more pointy end of the fire arm. That’s why I suggested the al-Qaeda training camp.
IF these people are lucky, they will wind up in a Federal prison, ala John Walker Lindh. IF WE are lucky, these people will wind up flat on the ground, in a more attuned country to their beliefs, say Somalia, Persia/Iraq, or Afghanistan/Pakistan, or North Korea.
February 26th, 2007 at 10:15 am
alphie is back, and fellating his latest hero, Murtha. Not surprising, since Murtha fell on his face harder and faster than any of his other heros (Hitler, Saddam, Stalin, etc), and doubtless needs the “moral” support of of the likes of alphie.
February 26th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Web Reconnaissance for 02/26/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
February 26th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Reading alphie’s comments is like watching someone sh*t themselves in public. Both disgusting and pathetic. But I imagine he does serve as an online beacon of hope for morally-deprived and intellectually-stunted people everywhere.
February 26th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016884.php
Letters From Home and Iraq
February 26th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Letting the Dem-Cong be the Dem-Cong. What is it they say about enough rope?
Alf, you must love abuse. There’s counseling for that, you know.