George W. Bush has been spending a lot of time responding to the Congressional (and popular) mandate to end his misadventure in Iraq. He is whining that Congress is making decisions that the generals should make.

Leaving aside the disingenuousness of the suggestion that unqualified people are making military decisions, I’d like to point out that in our form of government, generals are rightly left to make the tactical decisions about warmaking, and even given a large role in strategic decisions about how to conduct wars.

What they are not entitled to do is decide whether we start or stop wars. That is a decision for the the public to make. When the public elected a Democratic Congress, it knew full well that such a Congress would work to end the war.

I’m not sure how we lost track of the fact that we shouldn’t be engaged in wars without congressional declarations of war. (Obviously, Truman and Lyndon Johnson are the two previous offenders in this regard.)
The people have spoken, and Congress is listening. It’s time for our feckless, reckless, and careless President to start listening, too.