Decius wrote:

Seven of the most important Sunni-led insurgent organisations fighting the US occupation in Iraq have agreed to form a public political alliance with the aim of preparing for negotiations in advance of an American withdrawal, their leaders have told the Guardian.

Congradulations Congress... The result of all this ineffectual pre-election grandstanding you've been doing this week is that the Sunni insurgency, who boycotted the elections a few years back, just declared victory. Anyone got any links on what, exactly, their problem is with the democratic government?

From the article it looks a lot like the Sunni's are morphing into something like an IRA/Sinn Fein situation with political and paramilitary wings.

And if you need links you really haven't been paying attention, but I'll give you a quick summary. The Sunnis mostly live in western Iraq, and the Ba'athists were mostly Sunni. They saw the new government as something that was default going to be opposed to them (a very rough population breakdown is 50-60% Shia, 20-25% Sunni, 20-25% Kurd) simply based on the numbers. Because they were also in control of much of the country under Saddam, they were expecting reprisals from the Shiite's and Kurds.

Put another way, they saw what was coming and liked it about as much as blacks would have liked the 3/5 compromise in the Constitution.

And since you've conflated multiple issues here that have nothing to do with each other, how about moving the congressional grandstanding thread someplace else? And if you can explain what the hell that has to do with the Sunnis going political instead of blowing things up, I'd love to hear where that comes from.

Mike the Usurper wrote:
And since you've conflated multiple issues here that have nothing to do with each other, how about moving the congressional grandstanding thread someplace else? And if you can explain what the hell that has to do with the Sunnis going political instead of blowing things up, I'd love to hear where that comes from.

Eh? They're looking for a US withdrawl from Iraq in the short term. Hasn't that been what the discussion has been about this week? The last time Congress acted on Iraq they approved Bush's "surge" plan. If you were anticipating a strategy shift from the U.S. you'd be anticipating it based on the dialog that has been goiing on this week in Congress. And yes, its grandstanding. Congress cannot pass a withdrawl bill that won't get vetoed. Congress knows this. The grand battle you are watching is 100% political theater. How could it be anything else. They can't do anything.

Decius wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:
And since you've conflated multiple issues here that have nothing to do with each other, how about moving the congressional grandstanding thread someplace else? And if you can explain what the hell that has to do with the Sunnis going political instead of blowing things up, I'd love to hear where that comes from.

Eh? They're looking for a US withdrawl from Iraq in the short term. Hasn't that been what the discussion has been about this week? The last time Congress acted on Iraq they approved Bush's "surge" plan. If you were anticipating a strategy shift from the U.S. you'd be anticipating it based on the dialog that has been goiing on this week in Congress. And yes, its grandstanding. Congress cannot pass a withdrawl bill that won't get vetoed. Congress knows this. The grand battle you are watching is 100% political theater. How could it be anything else. They can't do anything.

Okay, let's deal with the Senate thing. The point of the Senate thing is this. It is currently the middle of July, and already the Republicans have killed measures (whether Bush would veto them or not is not the issue here) by using the endless debate clause 20 times this year. That's not counting measures killed by saying they would do so, those are the ones where cloture has been asked for and denied (like yesterday, which was #20). Is this political theater? To some extent yes. What's the message they are trying to push? I mean theater has a message right?

The message is, Congress isn't getting anything done, and nothing is getting sent to W to veto because the Republicans are blocking anything from leaving. By using a rule people in this country don't understand, the Republicans are actively working to make Congress look bad because of inaction rather than make the President look bad because of vetoes. Tuesday night was to put the pressure on the Republicans in the Senate who are making Congress look bad. Frankly, I hope Reid does this every time. At the rate the Republicans are going, they'll have caused votes to never be cast on 35-40 bills by the end of the year.

The GOP has been saying for years that government doesn't work. That it can't get things done, and when it does get things done it screws them up. From what I can see, there are plenty of things the government does just fine, but not when the GOP is at the helm. You think Clinton would have allowed everything that happened with Katrina to happen? Gore? Kerry? I don't. Not for one second. Hell, Bill and Poppy went off after the Christmas tsunami and did more to help there than W has done in New Orleans. Do you think the Republicans would have rallied behind Gore after 9/11 the way the Democrats rallied for Bush? Not. A. Chance. In. Hell.

Government doesn't work with Republicans in charge. Running a government is about good governance. L... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Mike the Usurper wrote:
The message is, Congress isn't getting anything done, and nothing is getting sent to W to veto because the Republicans are blocking anything from leaving. By using a rule people in this country don't understand, the Republicans are actively working to make Congress look bad because of inaction rather than make the President look bad because of vetoes.

hear hear.

Mike the Usurper wrote:
By using a rule people in this country don't understand, the Republicans are actively working to make Congress look bad because of inaction rather than make the President look bad because of vetoes. Tuesday night was to put the pressure on the Republicans in the Senate who are making Congress look bad.

OK, that makes sense, both for them as a strategy and as something an all nighter is worth countering. Thanks for the explanation. Thats more insight into the strategies of both parties than I've gotten anywhere.

Decius wrote:
Eh? They're looking for a US withdrawl from Iraq in the short term.

As it happens, so are a majority of Americans.

Congress cannot pass a withdrawl bill that won't get vetoed. Congress knows this. The grand battle you are watching is 100% political theater. How could it be anything else. They can't do anything.

They can't do anything except represent their constituency. If Bush vetoes it, fine, let him. It's not 6 of one, half dozen of the other. A bill that fails in congress, one hopes, fails because it lacks support of the people. A bill that's vetoed by the president represents a COMPLETELY different situation and one that's important to make clear to the public.

Beyond which, claiming that there's some sort of CAUSAL link between the situation in the senate and the politicalization of the Sunnis in Iraq doesn't make any sense. If anything the timing of their announcement might have been affected by the current debate. But the Sunnis didn't just decide, a couple days ago, to get all friendly because the silly American congress is engaged in procedural shenanigans. It's a separate issue.

The issue in the senate is the over-use (which I conceive of as a mis-use) of a particular procedural rule in order to a) shield the president from having to actually exercise that veto power and b) produce a chilling effect on the ability of the opposition to even propose a bill. I'm not naive, I understand that blocking the majority is part of running the country, but there's a line somewhere between acceptable levels of opposition and outright obstruction.

Beyond which, claiming that there's some sort of CAUSAL link between the situation in the senate and the politicalization of the Sunnis in Iraq doesn't make any sense. If anything the timing of their announcement might have been affected by the current debate. But the Sunnis didn't just decide, a couple days ago, to get all friendly because the silly American congress is engaged in procedural shenanigans. It's a separate issue.

Obviously the Sunnis are looking ahead and have multiple plans on the table depending on what happens. This agreement could not have been negotiated in a few days. However, the decision to make this announcement at this time is certainly connected to the debate in Congress, which seems wholey about domestic politics and not intended to influence Iraq in this way. Our invasion plan for Afghanistan, as an example, could not have been formulated and executed in 30 days, and yet it was. Our decision to proceed with it at that time wasn't merely a matter of timing.

While I think that the point you and Mike are making, about the Democrats trying to deflect claims that Congress is ineffective, is inciteful and something not easily found in mainstream analysis, it still means this is political theater intended for domestic consumption.

Furthermore, I want to point out that CSM published a story on this Senate debate that fit my take on it fairly closely.

Never mind that the amendment went down to certain defeat. Or that the legislative marathon changed only a single vote in the Senate. Washington's political theater is part of a deliberate political strategy aimed at living rooms across America. By presenting the choice over the future of the Iraq war in the starkest possible terms, Democrats hope to convince Americans of the need to change course and ratchet up the political pressure on Republican lawmakers supporting President Bush.

"The goal of Democrats was clear: to put Republicans on record on where they stand on an unpopular war and to keep Iraq in the news, which is not good for the Bush administration," says Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. "On these two levels, they were successful, even if no new legislation will come out of it. Democrats want Iraq to be for President Bush what Vietnam became for President Johnson: an all-consuming issue, where nothing else can be discussed."

Democrats plan similar votes in the House to force Republicans to express publicly views on a war that has lost the support of most Americans.

Decius wrote:

Never mind that the amendment went down to certain defeat. Or that the legislative marathon changed only a single vote in the Senate. Washington's political theater is part of a deliberate political strategy aimed at living rooms across America. By presenting the choice over the future of the Iraq war in the starkest possible terms, Democrats hope to convince Americans of the need to change course and ratchet up the political pressure on Republican lawmakers supporting President Bush.

"The goal of Democrats was clear: to put Republicans on record on where they stand on an unpopular war and to keep Iraq in the news, which is not good for the Bush administration," says Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. "On these two levels, they were successful, even if no new legislation will come out of it. Democrats want Iraq to be for President Bush what Vietnam became for President Johnson: an all-consuming issue, where nothing else can be discussed."

Democrats plan similar votes in the House to force Republicans to express publicly views on a war that has lost the support of most Americans.

In truth, I never meant to imply that what was happening in the senate wasn't entirely political. It was, and is. Even all my ranting about the R's misuse of the filibuster is a discussion of politics, so in that sense, we never really disagreed. I merely took issue with your initial implication that the politics happening here were the cause of the Sunni's actions in Iraq. Of course, timing isn't nothing, but in the grand scheme, we are where we are. The announcement would've come soon, and I'm not at all convinced that *declaring* their unity *makes* them victorious (assuming that word has any meaning in this conflict).

The insurgents there are in the position that they are because of the cocked up war, not anything that's happening in Congress this month. The political wrangling serves, as the above article states, to keep Iraq in the news and force the hands of R's to make themselves accountable.

Secondly, I dislike the term "political theatre" because it carries with it the assumption of frivolity and wankery. I recognize that it has a long history and ought not to mean that, but the majority of the country doesn't anymore. So use of the phrase serves the purposes of the R's who brought it into this debate, to cast the goings on as pointless and self-congratulatory and *inherently* a waste of time. Even if this time was a waste (which I don't think is true), it's dangerous to erode the notion that such activity *cannot* be meaningful.