Punting Iraq to September, Then What?

US Capitol Building and peace marchers, originally uploaded by jcolman.

If you've been following the Iraq debate in Washington these last few weeks you may have had a sense of deja vu. Congress and the President have already had this debate, of course. Has anything changed? Has anyone changed their mind. Not really. Here's how I'd summarize the positions of different constituencies:

1. The President is staying the course, and remains deeply (stubbornly?) committed to finding a military solution to stabilize Iraq. All indication are that Mr. Bush will not change his position by an inch until his position doesn't matter, in January 2009. This being a fact, there is actually little Congress can do because the President has pretty unencumbered war powers in the constitution.

2. Congressional Republicans. I hate to bunch all the republicans in congress together, because there are hardly united under the surface. Most don't like the Bush policy, they know it's very unpopular in their districts, yet somehow the white house is pushing them hard to hang in there.. until the report from the Pentagon is in. And they do not want to lose another congressional election on the issue of Iraq. Expect the trickle of dissent to become a flood in September.

3. Congressional Democrats. Also hard to bunch together. The most extreme voices want an immediate withdrawal (what does withdrawal mean, by the way?) the more moderate ones sound a lot like like they want to stop talking to their constituents about Iraq. By pulling their withdrawal bill from debate yesterday, leaders Pelosi and Reid are saying that they do not want to compromise, even with receptive moderate Republicans.

4. Iraqi Leadership. Not interested in a strong central government, oil-revenue sharing, power sharing between Sunnis and Shiites. And what about those Kurds! Generally, not interested in what the United States has been calling benchmarks. What they want is not pretty, but almost impossible to avoid.

5. The Terrorists in Iraq that weren't in Iraq before the US invasion. They basically want everyone to kill eachother and create a failed state.

So, where does this leave the well intentioned Americans who want to do the right thing, but also get out? Not in a really good place.

What if congressional Republicans and Democrats could come to a compromise? What if they pushed the president hard not to gain votes, not to stoke their interests groups, but to do what's right for the country and the country's interests in the middle east?

I think they'd come up with some sort of partition plan to pull troops out of central Iraq (without pulling them out entirely), I think they would try to prevent a massacre of the Sunni minority. I think they would try to push the president to keep Iran and Turkey from getting involved in the Iraq civil war.

But the way the president talks, and with limited power and courage to force the president in congress, I think we'll probably suffer 2 more years of the consequences of a careless mistake.