Resolved To Bind, At Last

Senate Dems, obviously aware that their colleagues in the House were making them look pale and feckless in comparison, have finally grown a pair.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today joined Assistant Democratic Leader Dick Durbin, Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer, Democratic Conference Secretary Patty Murray, Senator Russ Feingold, and Senator Evan Bayh to announce a new Joint Resolution to revise U.S. policy on Iraq. Iraq has fallen into a bloody civil war, and as conditions on the ground have changed so must U.S. policy change to meet them.

The Reid Joint Resolution builds on the longstanding Democratic position on Iraq and the Levin-Reed Amendment: the current conflict in Iraq requires a political solution, Iraq must take responsibility for its own future, and our troops should not be policing a civil war. It contains binding language to direct the President to transition the mission for U.S. forces in Iraq and begin their phased redeployment within one-hundred twenty days with a goal of redeploying all combat forces by March 31, 2008. A limited number of troops would remain for the purposes of force protection, training and equipping Iraqi troops, and targeted counter-terror options.

As Tim F. at Balloon Juice points out, the bill will never break a filibuster but "if Reid tacks it onto the appropriations bill like Pelosi did then it might not have to." Pelosi's amendment requires "the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the fall of next year" and she intends to add it to the $100 billion the Bush administration has requested for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House has said Bush will veto any such proposal - or he could just make another one of his hundreds of signing statements, I suppose. He's obviously not intending to be steered by the will of the people and Congress.

But his alternative doesn't amount to an alternative at all. Petreaus is already saying he will need more time and more troops to make the surge-that-isn't a success and the administration has already admitted it has no Plan B. As Libby at The Impolitic says,

Already the so-called surge supporters, who were repeating the tired refrain of "just give it six more months" to see if it will work, are now saying just give it two more, six more months. And you can be certain that in two more, six more months, the same wrongheaded pundits will be calling for just six more, ad infinitum, until Bush can skulk out of the White House and back to Crawford where he'll turn his attention to zealously hogging brush and pretend the whole nightmare never happened.

Meanwhile, the forthcoming "conference of neighbours" is looking more and more like an excuse to incite Shiite and Sunnis to have at each others' throats on an even wider scale.

The Dems, speaking for the majority of the American people, have asked nicely through a non-binding resolution and are now taking the obvious next step of going for a binding call to finally change the disasterous course. If Bush ignores that, then it will create the beginnings of a constitutional crisis and, not coincidentally, consign the GOP - hopelessly tarred by their unthinking support for his war of choice - into the political wasteland for at least two decades.