Published: August 16, 2008 08:22 pm            

MARK BENNETT: In 2006, voters spoke up about the war in Iraq. Two year’s later, the war goes on

TERRE HAUTE — Either they haven’t tried hard enough, or they were promising a result they couldn’t deliver.

Perhaps the power of the executive branch of our government and the stubbornness of its occupant, President Bush, has made it impossible for our legislative branch to do what American voters demanded of them two years ago.

As the 2008 presidential convention season approaches, let’s look back at the prevailing theme of the last election, the congressional races of 2006. Dozens of legislators from Bush’s party got ousted in that midterm voting. The power in Congress shifted, for the first time in 12 years, from the Republicans to the Democrats. Why?

“Nowhere did the American people make it more clear that we need a new direction than in the war in Iraq,” said Nancy Pelosi, who would become Speaker of the House, as those election results stacked up on Nov. 7, 2006.

Twenty months later, well, you know. The number of U.S. casualties reached 4,141 on Wednesday. The number of Iraqi war deaths has become a point of contention, with tolls ranging from 90,000 to 1.2 million. Fiscally, the cost of the war will top $3 trillion by the time it ends, according to a book by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. That’s an extravagant venture for a nation struggling to fund its schools and colleges, repair its interstates and bridges, build its infrastructure to keep its industries, develop renewable energy, and adequately compensate its courageous service men and women, among other things.

And yet, the war goes on, more lives are lost, our economy languishes, and that clear message from Americans back in 2006 gets a condescending pat on the head from our leadership — Democrats and Republicans — as they focus instead on signals sent, stabilizing Iraq, and the successes of Iraqi military training.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, visited Indiana on Wednesday to rally support for Barack Obama, the party’s presidential candidate. With some updates along the way, Obama has steadily campaigned on a plan to withdraw U.S. forces gradually over a 16-month period after he would take office. In a telephone interview with the Tribune-Star, Dean was asked if Congress done its part since the 2006 elections to bring a conclusion to the war.

“I think it’s pretty clear you have to have a president to want the war to end in order for the war to end,” Dean said Wednesday. “And so, if you really want to get out of Iraq, you have to have a Democratic president, because John McCain has basically adopted George Bush’s policies on both Iraq and the economy.”

McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, favors maintaining U.S. military forces in Iraq for as long as necessary, until the Iraqis can police their population and borders. The difference in plans for Iraq is a clear distinction between Obama and McCain, and the parties will emphasize that at their conventions (Aug. 25-28 in Denver for the Democrats, and Sept. 1-4 in Minneapolis-St. Paul for the Republicans).

Still, given the mandate set by voters in 2006, has the current Congress pushed hard enough to change the course of the war?

“The Republicans in the Senate have the power to prevent anything from coming to the floor, and they did that hundreds of times to stop [Democrats] from doing anything about health care, the war or anything else,” Dean said in answer to that question.

Blaming the other side is a political art form. A refusal to acknowledge and, thus, to correct mistakes is a prime reason the war kept right on raging from the 2006 election until now.

An interesting assessment of the situation can be found in a plan by a 2008 congressional candidate from Washington state, Darcy Burner, a Democrat.

The summary of the “Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq” states, “the American public demanded a new direction in Iraq by electing a new Congress, and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (the Baker-Hamilton Commission) presented a set of recommendations for just a new direction. President Bush rejected the majority of those recommendations and proceeded — largely unchecked by Congress — on a course explicitly contrary to them.”

That’s it, in a nutshell.

This plan’s solution — shift from military engagement in Iraq toward a political, diplomatic and economic strategy. That idea was also a central component of the far more detailed report by the Iraq Study Group, led by Lee Hamilton and James Baker. Senator Richard Lugar, a Republican statesman from Indiana, made similar methodical recommendations. The Bush administration forged ahead.

Once again, voters will get a chance to send a message to either endorse a change, as complicated as it will be, or a staying of the course indefinitely. This time, though, both the Congress and the Oval Office are up for grabs. In 2006, the American people put aside past party preferences and issued that “clear” statement from the voting booth, but the new Congress and the sitting president only responded with infighting and inflexibility. It’s 2008 now, and the country deserves better from both branches of our government.



Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

Addendum: The 2006 midterm election gave Democrats a 236 to 199 majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Senate was left with 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans and two independents. Because the two independents opted to caucus with the Democrats, that party functions as the Senate majority party. That point was unclear in a column in Sunday’s Tribune-Star.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.