I admit I did have some expectation that my post on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Non-binding resolution on the President's "surge" policy might attract a barb or two from my friend Chad at CCK. I was not disappointed. Chad's post was full of the nastiness and careless reading that has become his blog's M.O., but I will reply to his musings about responsibility.
He attributes to me the proposition that the Democrats want to bring our troops home. Yes. That was expressed in the non-binding resolution. But "wanting" is not a position or a policy. What are they prepared to do about it? The answer is nothing, just yet. Why not? If they think the President's policy is a terrible mistake, why not act to stop it? Why not use their powers to force an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq? The answer to that is that they do not want to take responsibility for what would then happen. So long as they express "wants" without actually doing anything, the President will be held responsible for the eventual outcome. That was the point of my words about responsibility.
I will now go further. The Democratic majority in Congress has the power to stop the President from putting more troops into the Fertile Crescent. They are responsible as much for what they don't do as for what they do. Passing cowardly non-binding resolutions may well allow them to escape responsibility, but that is just weasel talk. If the Democrats allow the President to pursue his policy, when they could have blocked it, they are in fact responsible for it as he is.
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