Iraq Funding

Less than 2 months ago President Bush addressed the nation and explained his strategy to start slowly drawing down troops in Iraq before the end of this year and continuing reductions based on progress. (Described in my post “Bush Addresses The Nation”) The speech given by the president seemed to be an affirmation that the Iraqi’s were standing up and we could begin slowly standing down. However, such plans are not good enough for congressional Democrats, who last week put forward a 50 billion dollar war spending bill with stipulations of a clear timeline and a change of mission focus. Needless to say the vote failed. Personally, I’m glad; every time I see a vote such as this fail I believe it is a good thing. That does not however mean that I want these votes to stop coming. I believe that the best thing for America at this point would be for these bills to keep coming and put more pressure on the Iraqi government and yet fail to pass at the same time so as to allow the administrations plan for a successful withdrawal to stay on track. These bills are a kick in the pants to the Iraqi government to get moving and if they stop coming it may take us even longer and cost us even more to finish the job. The only thing worse than democrats not proposing anymore bills of this type would be if democrats actually passed a bill of this type. Such a bill actually passing would most likely lead to a reduction in our success. (Described in my post “Iraq Update”) The key here is balance, the Republicans want an exquisitely well done job and the Democrats want out fast, put the two together and you get a reasonably stable Iraq capable of finishing some of the odds and ends itself with the majority of American troops out in a reasonable amount of time.