An Implied Threat?
Suppose you are a father who has given his son money to go to the movies a couple of times. However, on both occasions he has misled you about the movie he has gone to see and has gotten into trouble. Now, he comes to you for a third time to fund his night out at the movies. But this time you refuse him, citing the problems he has caused your family with his behavior that you have funded.
And so it was that Chris Wallace, arguably the most objective of personalities on GOP TV, yesterday on Fox News Sunday asked of Hillary Clinton a variant of the question war opponents continually face: "But Senator, some of this money as you know goes to protect our troops against mines and IED's. No matter how you feel about the war, how can you vote to cut them off while they're still on the front lines?
Clinton, for her part, gave an excellent response. She began "I think, uh, the best way to protect our troops to to start bringing them home," then noted the body armor "the Bush Administration was not able or not willing to produce in the quantities that were necessary;" the armored vehicles which "needed additional protection in Iraq and they weren't getting it;" and "no-bid contracts and the cronyism" while Mr. Bush "keeps turning a blind eye to the abuses and the contracting process."
But I wonder about the question itself. Just as you expect that your son will not continue going to the movies now that you have denied him funding, why would you expect Mr. Bush to continue the war if he is denied funding? Could it be that the Administration which has denied soldiers superior body armor, as Lisa Myers of NBC reported here, or superior protection against rocket-propelled grenades (apparently the Trophy system, as the Israeli army now uses, according to Myers here) would leave soldiers out in the field unprotected? Could it be that the President who has always fought this war on the cheap, preferring tax cuts for the very wealthy to protection of soldiers and victory in war, would leave our fighting men and women vulnerable to attacks by insurgents bent on murder? I hope not.
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1 comment:
sorry i haven't been commenting much, Mr. Richter! i'll do my best to keep checking the site every few days.
In regards to this whole issue of ending the war, I can see Ron Paul's point about having Congress once again formally declare war because then it could be stopped more easily than it is when they simply authorize the president to do so. Since they did authorize it, they gave him the right to conduct the war as he sees fit.
Cutting the funding is certainly of high political risk, but it would also do exactly what everyone knows Democrats want: to tie Bush's hands and effectively end the war. Their push to try to pass bills that make it a requirement for troops to stay home as long as in combat is, in my opinion, an underhanded way to try and end the war because its done under the guise of caring for the troops' health, when in actually, its really more about ending the war. If it was really about the troops well-being, it would of been brought up long ago.
Of course, cutting the funding won't happen. If they can't get enough votes for a timetable or the troop deployment time bill, they certainly can't get enough to cut funding. There best bet is to continue putting pressure on the president through whatever means possible.
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