Exactly four years later, George W. Bush had to veto a Congress bill linking the funding of the military mission in Iraq and Afghanistan with a U.S. troop withdrawal from the former.
The Pentagon will not receive the requested $124.2 billion if it does not start troop withdrawal next October and finish it by April - this is the gist of the bill submitted by the Democrat-controlled Congress. The president turned it down by using his right of veto for the second time during his term in office.
This clinch, to use a boxing term, of the American legislative and executive branches of power is no surprise. Bush did what he had promised long ago. Many Americans are sick and tired of the reasons he gave for his veto. He lamented about politicians in Congress who had never smelled gunpowder but were trying to push their opinion through, ignoring the American generals in the battlefield. For an umpteenth time, the president listed the disastrous consequences of a potential withdrawal.
The Americans heard again about the impending demoralization of the Iraqi people (as if they had not been split into warring clans); the inspiring signal for murderers all over the Middle East as if this signal had not been given by the U.S. invasion of Iraq), and America's imminent defeat on the pullout date (as if anyone still doubted the failure of the U.S. campaign in Iraq).
But in his speech, the president tried to conceal the main point - by turning down the bill, he has ignored the will of the American voters.
In November, the antiwar attitudes allowed the Democrats to win mid-term elections to both chambers of Congress. These attitudes have grown even stronger over the past six months. The poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News, which was published last week, shows that the Americans favor the Congress pullout bill by a ratio of 56% to 37%. Moreover, 55% of those polled are convinced that a victory in the war that has already killed 3,350 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis has become impossible a long time ago, regardless of all the wishful thinking of the Bush Administration and Pentagon generals.
Now that the president has vetoed the bill, the confronting sides have found themselves in an awkward situation. The Democrats know only too well that they cannot leave tens of thousands of Americans who are risking their lives in Iraq without new hardware, ammunition, warm porridge and all the other things that come with the federal funding due to expire in June. This would be mockery of patriotism even in the eyes of the Americans who voted for the Democrats in November.
There are also some other considerations. Apparently, the Democrats would have been very upset if the president had suddenly endorsed their bill. With only 19 months to go before the presidential elections, the last thing the Democrats want to do is assume responsibility for what is happening in Iraq - let those who have created the mess in Iraq deal with it. The Democrats believe that they will go much further if they initiate noble peacemaking ideas and blame the lack of progress on their political opponents: "See how hard we are trying to get our guys home. But the president brings our efforts to naught with his veto."
The Republicans also fear that on November 4, 2008 they may have to pay through the nose for the president's ossified orthodox arguments in favor of the unpopular war.
The reality is pushing both the Congress and the White House to compromise. Neither the House, nor the Senate is likely to overcome the presidential veto. They need two-thirds of votes, but their majority is too small. They are more likely to sacrifice the pullout deadline. After all, they have lots of other opportunities to state this demand in future documents, such as the bill endorsing the Pentagon's operations in 2008, which the Congress will review this May. What the Democrats are not going to give Bush is a blank check for the war.
In turn, the White House may try to sweeten the pill for the Democrats by including into the bill a number of demands for the Iraqi government. For example, they could oblige Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to substantially enhance security or agree to divide oil profits.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
