Congratulations to Harry Reid and the Democrats, who defeated a Republican effort to remove the deadline for withdrawal from the Senate’s appropriations bill.

Senators still must vote on the overall legislation this week, and then their bill must be reconciled with a House measure passed Friday. The House voted 218 to 212 for a binding measure requiring the president to bring most American combat troops home from Iraq by September 2008.

A few minutes after the vote on Tuesday in the Senate, the White House repeated its vow to veto any legislation containing a withdrawal date.

Since the GOP agreed not to filibuster the legislation in exchange for the free vote (they had Cheney standing by to break a tie, and they expected to win — three cheers for the state of Nebraska), the president is going to get an appropriations bill that ends the war.

Which he has threatened to veto.

It’s a quirk of our system of government that, if the president is a warmonger, it requires a 2/3 majority to end a war, but only a majority to start one. But even so, and even in view of the disregard Bush has for unspoken customs and traditions, for how things are done, it’s still rather shocking to watch a president veto peace.

It’s unheard of in American history. When Congress demanded that Nixon stop bombing Cambodia, Nixon threatened a veto, but he didn’t follow through on the threat. He stopped bombing Cambodia. Even Richard Nixon had more respect for American democracy than that which would shown by Bush were he to veto a bill ending the war in Iraq.

I’m not much moved by the (stupid right-wing) argument that Bush, by not allowing Congress to fund the military, is against the troops. The reality is worse. He’s actually vetoing peace. The president is refusing to end a war that the American people overwhelmingly oppose, and that both houses of Congress have voted to end.

Posted by Ben Brothers at 9:03 am, 28 March 2007 and filed under War and Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.