Reprogramming not Defunding

The money will be spent on the military -- one way or the other.

The US is not about to defund its standing army or eliminate the national guard -- that is an inane red-herring.

The question is whether the funds will be used to bring the troops home or whether the funds will be used to keep them in Iraq. The obvious answer is to extract the troops from the middle of a civil war.

Just threatening to start the process of repositioning the troops will change things on the ground.

The long term interest of the US is damaged by another Vietnam and that is exactly what this is. The sooner we get out the better. By getting out we show that the US is a rational actor that can actually pursue its national interest, rather than being captured by a small cabal that sends the US incompetently off to war. As long as the US is perceived to be a loose cannon the worse our situation will be (Kissinger's madman theory to the contrary notwithstanding -- it worked soooooo well in Vietnam).

With regard to the defunding myth Glenn Greenwald makes it very clear here:

It is difficult to overstate how irrational this theme is, and yet it is equally difficult to overstate what a decisive role it just played in ensuring the continuation of the war. Polls consistently demonstrate that Americans overwhelmingly favor compelled withdrawal [emphasis in the original] of the troops from Iraq. Other than defunding, they overwhelmingly favor every legislative mechanism for achieving that goal -- from a straightforward bill setting a mandatory time deadline to a rescission of the resolution authorizing military force to compulsory benchmarks. Yet polls are equally uniform in showing that a solid majority of Americans oppose de-funding.

Yet, rationally speaking, this makes absolutely no sense. De-funding is nothing more than a legislative instrument for ending the war, and is substantively indistinguishable in every way from the other war-ending legislative means which Americans favor. Congress has used de-funding or the threat of de-funding multiple times in the past to compel the President to cease military action, and to invoke it, Congress simply consults with the military, determines how much time is needed to effectuate a safe withdrawal, and then de-funds the war accordingly [emphasis added].

The obvious conclusion here is that, once again, Republicans won the framing game (especially by getting Dems like Obama and Levin to buy into the Rep frame). Greenwald is rather pessimistic, arguing that the Democrats are unlikely to be able to push back now. I wish he was wrong, I wish I knew what I could do about it.