Yesterday, the House okayed a bill that would provide funds to continue the war in Iraq but with a mandatory timetable for withdrawal. I have no idea if that's a good idea or even if the representatives who voted for it all think it's a good idea. My omnipresent cynicism suspects the more immediate goal may be to force Bush to veto the bill, thereby taking even more responsibility for the war.
That was my suspicion when they passed it. I thought it was Political Theater, even though that precise term didn't pass through my noggin at the time they did it. I picked it up a little later when George W. Bush appeared in front of a microphone and accused the Democrats in Congress — though oddly not the three Republicans who voted for it and gave it a scintilla of non-partisan veneer — of "Political Theater."
And I thought, "Hey, he's right." If Bush knows about anything, it's Political Theater. In fact, he made this pronouncement from a lectern, flanked by members of the Armed Forces in uniform. Why were they there? They were props in a display of Political Theater staged to denounce someone else's Political Theater.
I think both sides are more interested in scoring points with voters than in doing what's right for our country and our soldiers. If the Democrats were primarily interested in doing the right thing, the bill wouldn't have been loaded down with irrelevant spending, thereby muddying its purpose and giving a few swing votes a chance to oppose it and claim they did so because of the pork. And if Bush were primarily interested in doing the right thing, he'd stop using our troops as window dressing and engage Congress on a bi-partisan basis…and I don't mean "bi-partisan" the way he always does, which is to demand they give in to him on everything.
The sense I get after following all the back-and-forth is that if we pull out of Iraq now or even soon, an awful lot of people are going to die…and if we stay there, an awful lot of people are going to die. And whichever way we go, we're going to have to listen to the side that didn't get their way blame all the deaths that occur on the side that did. So at the moment, it comes down to deciding which of two bad alternatives will do less damage and destruction. I'm not sure I trust either side to make that decision on the proper basis. Not as long as they're more interested in engaging in Political Theater.