Micromanaging The Iraqi War

This is an article that I wrote between March & May of last year -- 2007 ("created" in March and last editing of the file done in May). I believe it still has vast relevance today!


Many Republicans of late have bandied about the term “micromanagement” in reference Congress’ involvement in the Iraqi war. They obviously feel that only the “macro managing” of said war ought to matter since government is best done -- once officials are elected -- from the top level down and not from the bottom, grassroots level up. Therefore, they feel that Democrats would do well to ignore polls citing disenchantment of the public with the Iraqi war and just let the President “do his job”. This is a strong argument. It is a well-known business axiom that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. That the “small picture” is ofttimes necessarily engulfed by the “big picture”. Macro therefore takes precedence over micro. So let’s take a closer look at the “big picture”.

The big picture is that our Founding Fathers chose a trifurcated government with built-in checks and balances to ensure that neither branch ever became powerful enough to overshadow either or both of the other two. Thus, for Congress to acquiesce to our continued presence in Iraq is tantamount to dereliction of constitutional duty. This Congress was elected with the mandate to remove our troops. Anything short of that would make them career politicians and not public servants.

I, for one, still believe in government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”. Anything else in clearly un-American. I, therefore, believe that Americans are seeking public servants, proxies -- and not career politicians -- to represent them, and our elected officials need to be mindful of that. We expect them to be savvy enough to figure out the “how” of “what” it is that we want -- not give eloquent soliloquies as to why we “really want” something else.

The big picture is that our troops were sent to Iraq to protect American interests. Granted, they are economic and not security interests -- but American interests just the same. Don’t be disillusioned, when President Bush says that this war is about “protecting our way of life”, he’s referring to our ECONOMIC way of life. And it is this very economic interest that many feel provides justification for “staying the course”. Even presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton -- though against the war -- has said that America needs some presence in Iraq to protect our national interests. When asked what interests we have there, she candidly replied that the oil in the region is vital to our economic security.