Bush Issues Warning: Don't Make Me Harm the Troops

This morning President Bush stood before cameras in the Rose Garden and said the following:

It has now been 57 days since I requested that Congress pass emergency funds for our troops. Instead of passing clean bills that fund our troops on the front lines, the House and Senate have spent this time debating bills that undercut the troops.
[…]
In a time of war it’s irresponsible for the Democratic leadership in Congress to delay for months on end while our troops in combat are waiting for the funds. The bottom line is this, Congress’s failure to fund our troops on the front line also mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines.
[…]
They’re now failing in that responsibility and if they do not change course in the coming weeks, the price of that failure will be paid by our troops and their loved ones.

This entire argument is breathtakingly disingenuous and un-American, but it's that last part that really floored me.

Let's assume, for the moment, that both the Senate and the House hadn't already passed budget resolutions giving the President all the money he asked for. And let's assume that the 57 day number was actually meaningful, even though we know that the Republican-controlled Congress took more than twice as long to pass the same supplemental appropriation last year (and without being accused of endangering our troops). For the sake of argument, let's just assume that Congress is indeed, as Bush suggests, intentionally failing to fund the war in Iraq.

Bush would have us believe that "the price of that failure will be paid by our troops and their loved ones." The clear implication is that Congress's failure to do what Bush wants will somehow result in troops running out of ammo in the middle of a firefight or running out of fuel in the middle of a patrol. But there's a key step missing from his analysis.

In order for our troops to be endangered, President Bush would have to react to the cutting off of funding by insisting that the war continue anyway, without any of the necessary supplies. The whole point of cutting of funding, after all, is to end the war, not to have it continue without supplies. And there is not one member of Congress who wouldn't be willing to supply the funding necessary to allow for a safe and orderly withdrawal of our troops.

So the only possible way that additional harm could come to our troops is if President Bush were to order them to continue fighting a war that our country's democratically-elected representatives had exercised their lawful power to end. And if that were to happen, if Bush were to order our troops to continue fighting a war they no longer had adequate supplies to fight, he and he alone would be morally responsible for putting them in that unnecessary peril.

Bush's remarks today reminded me of that famous National Lampoon magazine cover with the picture of a gun held to a dog's head: IF YOU DON'T BUY THIS MAGAZINE, WE'LL KILL THIS DOG. Well, Bush is essentially doing the same thing, only he's deadly serious. He might as well have said: IF YOU DON'T PASS THE BILL I WANT, I'LL HARM THE TROOPS.

Bush likes to remind people that he's the The Decider when it suits him, but when it comes to the safety of American soldiers in Iraq, Bush acts as if he would be totally powerless to prevent harm from befalling them should Congress elect to reduce funding for the war. We're not yet even close to the point of funds being cut off, but should that happen, it will NOT endanger the troops. The only decision that could possibly endanger the troops is a decision by President Bush to disregard the will of Congress and continue waging a war that is no longer being funded.

UPDATE: See also this excellent post by Digby. Steve Benen is good too.