When Joe Sestak, a Democrat and former vice admiral in the Navy, ran for Congress last year, he told the voters of suburban Philadelphia that the United States should withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2007.
Fueled in part by the anti-war sentiments of Pennsylvania voters, Sestak defeated a 10-term Republican.
On Thursday, after months of struggle with the White House, Sestak and fellow House members are expected to vote to fund the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan through September. The legislation, however, will not include a timeline to withdraw from Iraq, which until recently was a key Democratic demand. Instead, the $120 billion measure will contain “benchmarks” that the Iraqi government should meet to show progress.
Despite intense pressure from anti-war groups, Sestak said he will vote for the measure. “The fact of the matter is we have to fund the troops,” he said.
While Democrats battle President Bush on Iraq, they also are facing internal pressures, particularly over the demands of their anti-war base. Bush vetoed a previous spending bill that called for withdrawing troops beginning Oct. 1.
Now that Congress has taken the timeline out, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has said she won’t vote for it. At the same time, she called the bill “a giant step to begin the end of the war.”
Others are less conflicted.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a leader of the anti-war effort, warned that Democrats who vote in favor of the measure are sure to face political peril. “There is a pretty strong consensus that the November elections spoke to the concerns that people had about this war and they expect Democrats to do something about it,” she said.
That’s the position of MoveOn.Org, Win Without War and other anti-war organizations.
“You can’t oppose the war and support a complete capitulation to the president. That’s not why you were sent to Washington,” said Tom Andrew, national director of Win Without War.
But Democrats don’t have the votes to override a presidential veto. As the fiscal year comes to a close, more funds are needed to support the troops, and Democrats are determined not to go home for the Memorial Day recess without passing a funding bill.
“It’s not everything we wanted. I’m not going to oversell it,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. But, he added, Bush was forced to accept specific goals that the Iraqi government must meet.
“This is the beginning of the end. It ends the blank check for George Bush,” Emanuel said, vowing that Democrats will return to the issue.
Stuart Rothenberg, a non-partisan political analyst, said most congressional candidates in 2006 did not campaign on leaving Iraq. Instead, they complained about the administration’s lack of planning, strategy and direction for the war.
“The key question is whether individual Democrats have established a record over the last six months of prodding, pushing, tugging to try to get the administration to change policy and start the withdrawal of troops,” he said. “Most Democrats have done that, I think. That’s the whole point of these votes.”
Most likely, Rothenberg said, the troops will begin to withdraw from Iraq before the 2008 election. Until then, lawmakers will have plenty of opportunities to continue to press for a change.
That is certainly true in the Senate, which is expected to approve the spending bill Friday. Three weeks later, the Senate plans to take up a defense authorization bil1, and senators again will push for an Iraq timetable.
“I share the frustration of those who are angry about this failed war policy and the soldiers who are fighting and dying,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 ranking Democrat in the Senate. “Until we have more senators of both parties who feel this way, we are limited in our options.”
Democrats who oppose the war say the anti-war groups should pressure Republicans who are siding with the president — not Democrats.
“Democrats have expressed our desire multiple times now that we want to hold the president accountable,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who plans to vote against the legislation Thursday. “It’s time that the Republicans stop holding on to this tragedy of the war.”
For Sestak, only five months into his first year in elected office, there are no doubts about what to do. There are the troops who need federal dollars and there is a war to bring to a close.
“I’ve been against this war from the day it happened,” he said. He still supports setting a withdrawal date, but he will vote Thursday to fund the war.
“There’s a greater cause than whether I survive the next election, and that’s the troops,” Sestak said.
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jzuckman@tribune.com
