US President George W. Bush's announcement that he is sending more troops to Iraq has set the scene for the first major test of wills between his Republican administration and the new Democrat-controlled Congress. Both sides are digging in.
The political stakes raised by Bush's prime-time television address this week were high on both sides.
Democrats, who came to power in midterm elections two months ago in large part because of growing public opposition to the war, must walk a fine line between criticizing Bush's plans and appearing to be obstructionists or undermining the military.
And they presently rule Congress with insufficient numbers to block Bush's plan.
For Bush, the decision to send more troops to Iraq -- rather than begin a withdrawal of combat forces as recommended last month by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group -- is a huge gamble.
If it fails, he will have few, if any, options left.
Defying public opinion polls and the newly empowered Democratic leadership, Bush on Wednesday moved to send 21,500 more US troops to Iraq and said it was a mistake not to have had more forces there previously.
He recognized the risks ahead.
"Even if our new strategy works exactly as planned, deadly acts of violence will continue and we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties," Bush said in Wednesday's address to the nation.
But, he added, "to step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear that country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale."
Democrats served notice that they would challenge his plan, with aggressive hearings that begin on Thursday and votes in both the House of Representatives and Senate in the coming days on a nonbinding measure opposing any increase in troops.
"American voters expect us to help get us out of Iraq," said Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a presidential hopeful in the run-up to next year's election.
Congress voted in October 2002 by wide margins to authorize Bush to take military action in Iraq. That authority stands.
Since they now run Congress, even though by thin majorities, Democrats also now share with the president some responsibility over the unpopular war.
Despite their vows to carefully scrutinize Bush's troop increase, their near-term options are limited.
While it is true that Congress controls the government's purse strings, politically about the most it can do is hold hearings and pass symbolic resolutions.
If, even with the help of some Republicans, Congress is able to pass legislation, such as that proposed this week by Senator Edward Kennedy, a senior Democrat, to require Bush to get congressional approval before sending more troops to Iraq, Bush will surely veto it.
And, given the slim margin of Democratic control, such a veto would almost certainly be sustained.
"The Democrats may control Congress but they can't block the president this time without potentially being accused of losing the war. I think an awful lot of this is staging for the next time," the 2008 presidential and congressional elections, said Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
For Bush, many dangers lurk in the new plan.
The new troops might not be enough to stabilize the country. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki might not rise to Bush's challenge to do more in controlling sectarian violence and shutting down private militias. The new US troops could present more targets to militants.
"We have to succeed. We must succeed. The consequences of failure are catastrophic in the region," said Senator John McCain, a 2008 presidential hopeful who has long advocated more troops.
Furthermore, Bush risks losing more and more Republican support, which in turn would lessen his influence in his last two years in office. Next week's votes are, in part, a strategy to divide Republicans by forcing them to take a public stand on the war.
"At this point, the battle lines have been drawn pretty deeply. And the concrete is setting," said Stephen Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University. "I regard this as a last gasp for the president to try to get a successful resolution of the Iraq quagmire."
Both parties are divided on what to do next.
More and more Republicans are trying to distance themselves from Bush and the war.
And Democrats are divided on how far to go in fighting Bush's plan or in pressing for troop withdrawals, even as the party's liberal base pressures them to do more to bring troops home.
"If the question is whether Congress would cut off funds, the answer is no. But you had an election in November that was widely interpreted as a rejection of the president's war policy," said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, an arms control advocacy group.
"While Americans are not sure about how to get out, and only a small proportion back immediate withdrawal, they certainly aren't inclined to support a new increase, an escalation," Isaacs said.
Before his speech, Bush personally briefed both Democratic and Republican leaders on details of his plan. The leaders emerged in agreement on just one thing: that Americans are understandably skeptical and that the war so far has gone badly.
Then, they respectively sounded what are sure to be battle themes for the coming days.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Leader Nancy Pelosi renewed their opposition to additional troops. But, Reid said, "We as senators have had no ability to have any input in the president's position on this."
House Minority Leader John Boehner said the plan might be distasteful to some but he called it "our best shot at victory in Iraq."
The White House’s decision to take a 9.9 percent stake in Intel Corp is looking like very shrewd business indeed. Since the government bought in at US$20.47 a share last August, the US chipmaker’s surging stock price has delivered the US a US$43 billion return. One of the reasons the investment has so far proved so sound is that the White House has made sure of it. According to The Wall Street Journal, Howard personally pushed deals on Intel’s behalf with some of the most lucrative clients imaginable. They include Nvidia Corp, the company at the heart of the AI
A single photograph can cut through a lot of noise, but it can also be used to misrepresent the truth. At the very least, it can concentrate the mind on something that requires further investigation. On Monday last week, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation CEO Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡) and former National Security Council secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) held a news conference in which they showed a photograph of former foundation CEO Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑), now Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) deputy chairman. In the image Hsiao is seated next to Xiamen Taiwan Businessmen Association chairman Han Ying-huan (韓螢煥). The two men were holding
I first met Professor Ray Jiing (井迎瑞) as a film and documentary student at Shih Hsin University’s (SHU) Department of Radio Television and Film in 1988. The following year, he went on to become the director of the Chinese Taipei Film Archive — forerunner of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI). Over his eight-year tenure, Jiing rescued and restored over 200 classic Taiwanese films. In 1997, he established the Graduate Institute of Studies in Documentary and Film Archiving at Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA), and I joined the program in his third cohort of students. Beyond a
President William Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) May 20 second-anniversary address was not just a routine policy review; it was damage control. US President Donald Trump’s remarks — that he did not want to see anyone move toward independence and that the delivery of a major Taiwan arms package could depend on the progress of US-China relations — unsettled Taiwan’s public and created an opening for opposition parties to question whether Taiwan was being treated as a bargaining chip in Washington’s dealings with Beijing. Lai’s speech was designed to close that opening. The address covered the expected ground: sovereignty, cross-strait relations, defense spending,
RSS