Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the Senate Armed Service Committee chairman, took issue with an effort by Majority Leader Harry Reid to limit war spending after March 2008 as a way to end U.S. involvement.
"We're not going to vote to cut funding, period," Levin said. "But what we should do, and we're going to do, is continue to press this president to put some pressure on the Iraqi leaders to reach a political settlement."
Fund the troops. Period. And look for ways to push for a political settlement in Iraq. On the latter I'd add only two refinements. One, this is exactly what we have been doing all along. But if the opposition wants to act like they invented pressure to end the ridiculous talk of an open-ended war, so be it. And two, a political settlement must never be an excuse to reverse the outcome of the invasion.
We rightly defeated the Sunni Arab minority dictatorship. We should seek to promote a political settlement that allows the Sunni Arabs to remain part of a democratic Iraq. We should never seek to reverse the battlefield defeat of the Sunni Arabs by giving them power out of proportion to their numbers or their willingness to operate by new rules in a Shia- and Kurdish-dominated Iraq. Rule of law and not guns should be the way Sunni Arabs protect themselves now.
Focus on victory and not on ways to make us lose. That's the bottom line.
