Shut. It. Down.

People can disagree about what might be the best course for America’s Iraq policy, but one thing is certain: the only way to stop the U.S. war in Iraq is to cut off the money for it. I know, I’ve been over this ground many times, but it remains the case that Bush is never, never, never going to voluntarily bring the troops out of that miserable hulk of a country. That leaves only one option – turn off the revenue tap. The Democratic congressional leadership and “front runner” presidential candidates make this out to be a complex affair, but it’s really much more as Rep. Dennis Kucinich describes it. To cut off the funding, congress doesn’t need to pass any legislation at all – quite the opposite. Simply block any further supplemental spending bills for the Iraq war. This will force the administration to implement an orderly withdrawal. If they don’t agree to approve specific funding for a withdrawal and reparations plan along the lines of what George McGovern and others have proposed, then withdrawal can be funded from other sources within the Pentagon system.

Let’s be clear on this, folks. The Pentagon gets over $400 billion of our money every year, all tolled. The supplementals for the Iraq war are in addition to that amount. I may not be a C.P.A., but to my mind that means sufficient funds for an orderly withdrawal can be diverted from other programs in the military budget, should president junior choose to dig his little cowboy boot-heels in and defy the overwhelming public will. To suggest that cutting off funding for the war leaves our troops defenseless is a ludicrous canard, absurd on its face. It is incumbent upon the administration and the military to implement a redeployment when the American people have clearly had enough of this policy. So defund the fucking useless boondoggle F-22 cold war fighter-bomber, or the dysfunctional destabilizing money pit ironically referred to as “missile defense” – what the hell, the president can break every law in the book, but he can’t order the Pentagon to move some money around? The fact is, if congress could find the spine to deny supplementals for continuing the war, it would remain for the president to request the money for a troop pull-out, which I’m certain they would provide.

Bush isn’t the whole problem, of course. Very few Democrats are strongly opposed not merely to the conduct of the war but to the objectives it was founded on. Their refusal to bring it to an end is not due to cowardice so much as lack of wisdom and, somewhat less charitably, bad intentions. Many voted to authorize this war, even when they knew – as did you and I – that the rationale behind it was bogus. But even the more “liberal” or “progressive” voices are speaking from pragmatism. Obama criticizes Clinton for agreeing to the war without having an exit strategy. This implies that, had someone articulated a way out, it would have been okay to blow a big bloody hole in a country we’d already strangled, bombed, and starved for many years. Like John Kerry in 2004, most are presenting themselves as better managers of the war. The only ones who openly attack the Iraq project on a fundamental level are Gravel and Kucinich. But in the world of major party politics, being right is not an electoral asset.