| This is the oped I authored that appeared last week in Greenwich Citizen:
"Lord, I want a timeline!", Congressman Chris Shays blurted out toward the end of a rambling speech on the floor of the House early this month. But does Mr. Shays really want to establish a firm timeline for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq? If one looks closely at his pronouncements on the Iraq War, the answer is "doubtful."
Mr. Shays has served as one of the Bush administration's most ardent and outspoken supporters for war from the beginning. For years following the invasion, Shays had been a consistent and determined foe of setting a timeline for withdrawal, declaring in January 2005, "We should not put out a timetable." Again in June of that year he told Larry King that, "The only people who need an exit plan, in my judgment, are the Syrians, Saudi Arabians and the Iranians. They're the ones who need to find a way to get out of the mess they're getting themselves into." In April of 2006 he stated, "I'm having every expert on terror that I talk to say that the last thing you do to terrorists is give them a timetable." Then in June of that year he blurted, "Thank goodness George Washington didn't have a timetable. Thank goodness George Washington didn't have Congress telling him he had to have a timetable to beat the Brits." On August 3, he was even more forceful in denouncing timelines, remarking on WNPR's "Where We Live" that, "To have a timeline would be absolutely foolish." |
| But all that was before the ardent anti-war candidate Ned Lamont defeated Shays' pro-war friend Joe Lieberman in the Democratic senatorial primary in August 2006, and before Shays realized just how difficult his re-election campaign against anti-war Democrat Diane Farrell might be. Two weeks after the Lamont victory, Shays performed a dramatic flip-flop. On August 24, Shays stated that he was now in favor of setting a firm timeline for withdrawal of our troops and, moreover, most of them could be withdrawn in 2007. But he famously hedged, anomalously stating that he was not "breaking with the president" on Iraq, and he told Larry King that, "I strongly support the war."
In debates that fall, Shays attempted to paint himself as the anti-war candidate, repeatedly stating that he was "more anti-war than (Farrell) is", because he was in favor of a timeline for withdrawal, but she was in favor of setting benchmarks. He also remarked that, "I have a plan to bring our troops home; she doesn't." But that was then.
After Shays eked out a narrow victory over Farrell and believed he was safe from another serious challenge, he reversed himself yet again. Still maintaining that he favored setting a timeline for withdrawal, Shays introduced a "catch-22" that he had not mentioned to voters the previous year: to be acceptable to him, a withdrawal timeline must come from the the commander-in-chief, not from Congress. "Congress is not the commander in chief, and it shouldn't be," he stated, concluding that a congressionally-introduced timeline would be tantamount to Congress' attempting to "micromanage" the war. Given President Bush's adamant opposition to setting any timeline, it meant that Shays would oppose every single effort by Congress to set a date for withdrawal.
In 2007, Shays, who claimed that he had a plan to bring the troops home, voted in February to support Bush's plan to escalate the war. Then he voted three times against Democratic measures to set timelines for withdrawal, including one that embodied precisely the timeline recommended by the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group, whose recommendations Shays continues to state he supports. But, once again, that was then.
In July, when Democratic challenger Jim Himes announced that he had raised more campaign funds than any congressional challenger in the country, Shays reversed himself yet again. Gone was the catch-22 that he would only support a timeline proposed by the president. Now he said he would support a timeline of December 2008, virtually the same one that he had voted against a year and a half before. But in typical Shays fashion, he added that April 2009 would be even better. And one should keep in mind that Shays supports John McCain who just this week reiterated his position that setting a "fixed timetable" for withdrawing our troops would result in "chaos", and he would not do it.
So does Chris Shays really support fixing a timeline for withdrawal? As the old saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice..." |
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