I checked around The Hill but saw nothing about the House of Representatives voting today to tell the president to order the troops home from Pakistan. By a 222-196 margin, the House said the following:
SECTION 1. REMOVAL OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES FROM PAKISTAN.
Pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1544(c)), Congress directs the President to remove the United States Armed Forces from Pakistan–
(1) by no later than the end of the period of 30 days beginning on the day on which this concurrent resolution is adopted; or
(2) if the President determines that it is not safe to remove the United States Armed Forces before the end of that period, by no later than December 31, 2010, or such earlier date as the President determines that the Armed Forces can safely be removed.
See, this is embarrassing. Someone leaks something to the New York Times and suddenly everyone starts pretending to be commander-in-chief. Wake me up when they order our troops home from Iraq or Afghanistan. You don’t make good laws when you act in kneejerk fashion. Our relationship with Pakistan is probably our most complex relationship with a foreign country. Most congresspeople don’t have the slightest clue what’s going on between our two countries. And they weren’t voting after having been briefed by the State Department, our intelligence agencies, or the White House. They just reacted to a bunch of outdated classified information from low level sergeants in Afghanistan. Maybe we should pull our troops out of Pakistan, but you need a little information before you go passing resolutions that impact a very sensitive relationship.
Still, isn’t it fascinating how the media can ignore anti-war sentiment but can’t get enough Tea Party?
Update [2010-7-27 19:13:52 by BooMan]: I jumped the gun on this. The vote described above was merely on the the resolution to allow a vote. The actual vote failed by a 38-372 margin (as it should have).
I have a feeling that no one in the American government understands our relationship with Pakistan. Democrats, Republicans, Bureaucrats in the State Department, the CIA, the military — no one.
Maybe Richard Holbrooke. Maybe not.
So how many troops do we have in Pakistan? This seems to me to be an empty gesture to try to look like they are addressing some of the issues raised by the Wikileaks documents.
That’s classified, but we have at least two drone airstrips with hangers, operated in co-operation with the Pakistani government (on the serious down-low, of course).
Are we still using the base at Peshawar from which Garry Powers took off on his fateful U2 flight? The armed services are sticklers for tradition, ordinarily.
Yeah, but it looks like the Dems passed this under the War Powers Resolution, which is a well-known farce. Always has been too: Congress passed it with good intentions in the mid-70’s to prevent another Vietnam (basically, undeclared war that’s initiated through Executive action). But they wrote it with no teeth – it forces the President to “report” military deployments to Congress, but there are major loopholes in all the requirements for the President to actually pull troops out of a location if Congress doesn’t approve. Basically, Carter went through the motions once or twice, and then all the Presidents since have pretty much ignored it (Reagan was particularly dismissive).
Of course, if Congress really wanted to pull troops out, they could defund the military actions in question. But that’s a political landmine to end all landmines, and as we see today with the Afghanistan supplemental, it will never, ever happen.
This is a ‘never-mind’ post now, for the most part. I jumped the gun, misreading a procedural vote for the actual vote. Basically, a bunch of Dems and Republicans allowed Kucinich to grandstand for a bit and voted against him.
Ah, ok – looks like it was the usual suspects for the most part.
In keeping with the seriousness of our times I hereby demand that Obama call me to personally apologize for your hasty conclusion. Or something.