Defending, Defunding, and the Strength of Madness

Well, for reasons that escape me at 1:33 AM, I am off on our school’s Senior Trip to Florida for the next few days. But before I head out, I felt compelled to jot down my own thoughts on the recent decision by the Democrats to send Bush a war-funding bill without any of the strict timetables that led to his veto of the previous ones.

I make no secret of the fact that I fall on the political left and that I believe this Administration is, very likely, the Very Worst Ever. I think it’s time to end this war and to begin healing the massive wounds that have been dealt to our prestige abroad, our civil liberties at home, and indeed the very soul of our democracy. I would support, without reservation, a move to impeach this President for abuse of his office and betrayal of the American people and, worse, the betrayal of core American principles that have made this nation a beacon of hope for humanity.

So naturally enough, the blogs I read and the people I pay attention to have been in a furor over the recent decision by the Democratic Party leadership. Outraged, and shocked, and hurt, these commentators lament that the Democrats “caved in” to the President and handed him his first legislative victory since November. It will be taken, they say, as a sign of weakness. I felt the same visceral revulsion, the same sense of abandonment, when I realized that the timetable-stripped bill was the one that would reach the President’s desk. After that mind-blowing adrenaline high of sweeping Congress, of finally getting real oversight going, this did seem like a crash back to the dark depths of the Bush supremacy, circa 2004. I did feel that the leadership let me down.

And yet…

And yet, things have become more complicated as I’ve thought about them. It seems clear to me, now, that a vote to insist on timetableswould indeed be a vote to “de-fund” the troops. Obviously, for at least thirty years, the Democrats have been terrified of the bogeyman “Doesn’t support the troops” — as much as anyone, we’ve bought into the meme that “the Left” spit upon our brave troops as they returned after “the Left” “lost” Viet Nam out from under them. We still suffer Dukakis-in-a-tank Syndrome. Recently, solid political thinkers such as Glenn Greenwald have argued that de-funding is a “myth” inflicted on the American people which Democrats help perpetuate. Greenwald makes his usual, cogent, logical case.

Unfortunately, this time, he’s wrong. Sending the President only timetable-laden bills would be the same as de-funding the troops. You know why? Because on this issue, this President isn’t bluffing. He really would refuse to sign any bill with timetables. He wouldn’t sign it in June, in September, in January 2008, ever. He is afflicted with a messianic complex that leads him to believe that, as “the Decider”, his plan is blessed by God and so will always work out, no matter what temporary hurdles the Devil throws in the way. He is utterly convinced of the rightness of his cause and will not be swayed by logic, by emotion, by evidence — by anything.

So Greenwald and all the others have to decide: Do they believe so strongly in timetables that they would be willing to see the Army actually run out of money? Because the only way our political system funds the Army is through a bill from Congress, and if the President vetoes any bill with timetables and if the timetable-friendly majority is not a supermajority, then the bills will each die on the President’s desk. So “sticking to our guns” on timetables is the same as playing chicken with a madman who cannot turn away from his chosen course. It’s a gamble that, faced with actual shortfall of funds, the President would blink or that the Republicans supporting his war would blink.

I think it’s a tragic mis-reading of the political history of the past six years (perhaps the past twenty) to think that the other side would blink. They’ve convinced themselves that they are always on the side of the troops and that the Democrats are always opposed. When American kids started dying because supplies didn’t come through, it wouldn’t be a moment of self-revelation for the right. It would be confirmation of all they hold dear. And even though it would be the President’s pen that would be drawing the blood, they would argue — because they would believe — that it was the Democrats who stabbed the troops. And they have a well-established noise machine to confuse the issue and make the case to the populace.

Does giving in and sending the President a timetable-stripped bill make the Democrats look weak? Yes — because on this issue they are weak. They’re not weak because they lack conviction or because they can’t play the game or because the Republicans out-manuvered them. It’s that the other side has the strength of madness. Reasonable, good people quail in the face of fanaticism, and rightly so — for there is something awe-inspiring as well as awful in such displays of transcendent obtuseness.

That’s the final, bitter irony: Because we on the Left actually do support the troops, because we do love our country, we would be unwilling, in the last analysis, to see American soldiers dying because necessary funding was held up by a President with delusions of destiny. When the money really ran out, someone would have to blink. And because we are members of the reality-based community, because we don’t bask in the seductive self-assurance of mad consistency, it would have been us to have blinked. And if you still lament that, you have to answer honestly: When push came to shove (and it would have) — if the pro-war party didn’t budge (and it would not have) — would you really have called for letting American kids die rather than send a bill without timetables to the President?

Because in my heart of heart, I am certain that, rather than sign a bill that would have forced his hand in Iraq, George W. Bush certainly would have let American kids die.