“Belly up to the Bar” – and Quit?

Listening to the Washington machinations on the non-binding resolution on Iraq, it is clear that the Legislative Branch – both houses, both parties – has decided it wants out. Sen. Harry Reid told National Public Radio the toothless resolution is important because it requires members of both parties to “belly up to the bar” and say where they stand on the President’s policy. “We’re disagreeing with the president. We’re doing it very vocally and openly.” Reid added the Senate does not have the same obligations as the President and his cabinet to come up with a different strategy.

Listening to the Washington machinations on the non-binding resolution on Iraq, it is clear that the Legislative Branch – both houses, both parties – has decided it wants out. Sen. Harry Reid told National Public Radio the toothless resolution is important because it requires members of both parties to “belly up to the bar” and say where they stand on the President’s policy. “We’re disagreeing with the president. We’re doing it very vocally and openly.” Reid added the Senate does not have the same obligations as the President and his cabinet to come up with a different strategy.

Sen. Reid apparently thinks it takes real guts to “belly up to the bar” and announce – in a nonbinding way on left-wing radio to a politically friendly journalist – that someone else is wrong and its not your problem. Harry Reid is wrong. It is craven to disavow the war while our soldiers are fighting it. It is irresponsible to fund the troops – making them stay and fight – while announcing that their mission won’t succeed and denouncing their Commander in Chief.

It would take REAL guts for Sen. Reid to “belly up to the bar” and remember out loud that when the polls were different and the war was popular, YOU voted to give the President authority to use all force necessary. It would take real guts to assess our position in the region and talk about what will happen if the U.S. is understood to have abandoned those – Sunni and Shia – who staked their country and their lives on our view of the future Middle East.

If you are convinced that the surge won’t work, Gen. Petraeus is wrong and the President is foolish, then “belly up to the bar” to stake your name and reputation on an alternative plan. And if you don’t have an alternative plan, it would take real guts to support the President’s plan and work like hell to make it succeed.

America’s post-invasion strategy in Iraq has been severely lacking, and the bad guys have been much more successful of late in their pursuits than we have been in ours. Interestingly, the reason may be desperation on their part. U.S. sources report that the bulk of the “Sunni insurgency” is now al Qaeda. Google “Abu Omar al-Baghdadi” – one name for al Qaeda’s guy in Iraq – who claims to head the Islamic State of Iraq. In a video, an al Qaeda spokesman announced a series of terror attacks in the Sunni provinces, lashing out at what he called “Sunni traitors” who joined Iraq’s government. If al Qaeda loses in Iraq, it loses its major land base in the Middle East and the U.S. wins a major victory in the war against terrorists and the states (and land bases) that harbor and support them.

It is the responsibility of the Generals and the President to assess progress in a war that they believe we must win – which we must; and to change course when things are going wrong – which they are. But it is easy to think it’s a very good thing President Lincoln and Gen. Grant didn’t have this Congress at Cold Harbor. After the Union debacle, Gen. Grant is reported to have said, “I will have to do something else tomorrow.”

Other than quit.