I’ve made no secret of my opinion that the U. S. withdrawing its forces from Iraq before the country is significantly more secure than it is now would be very imprudent and I have good reason to believe that, whatever their rhetoric, the Democratic Congressional leadership agrees with me. As Exhibit A in making my case (that the Democratic Congressional leadership agrees with me) I’d like to submit Article I, Section 7 of the U. S. Constitution:
All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.
Bills for raising revenue are given special attention by the Constitution. Such bills must originate in the House of Representatives and, notably, the House isn’t subject to the pesky super-majority cloture rule to limit debate that hobbles the Senate. All that the House need to do to force the removal of our troops from Iraq is…nothing.
In fairness I should acknowledge that what is in all likelihood the real truth is that, in the hierarchy of values held by the Congressional leadership, removing the troops from Iraq isn’t the highest value but that it is without question below some other values is patently obvious by virtue of the mere fact that they haven’t acted to do so.
Now I have no reason other than my intution to suggest that one of those values is that the Democratic Congressional leadership doesn’t want to run the risk of the political consequences of what I (and, I think, they) believe is likely happen in the event of a U. S. departure from Iraq sooner rather than later and which there are, apparently, no means other than our staying there for the foreseeable future by which those may be staved off. For nearly a year now I’ve solicited suggestions for staving off the likely consequencees, I organized an online colloquium just for that purpose the consensus of which seemed to be there were no means for staving off what was likely to happen other than our staying Iraq for what looks like the foreseeable future. I’m still open to suggestions. What is most often suggested is that we have to take our medicine. By “we” I mean everybody in the world and by “medicine” I mean death and destruction for lots and lots of Iraqis and other people in the Middle East and much higher prices for oil.
