Thomas Ricks, author of “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” said in a recent Washington Post on-line interview:

I’d say the book argues that you don’t get a mess as big as Iraq from the failings of one or two men, such as President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.

Rather, I think there was a systemic failure….

I think that Congress was asleep at the wheel. That’s crucial. Congressional hearings provide oversight and accountability and (when done well) pump information into the American system. In other wars, you had hawks and doves. In this war you had the silence of the lambs.

Let’s break this down further in terms of incumbents and their opponents. In NY-29, Republican incumbent Randy Kuhl did visit Iraq, to his credit. On the other hand, he seems to think that oversight means you fly over the country and look down at it from above:

“When you fly over and you look down, we were 1,000 feet, and you see people in fields, farmers plowing fields, herding water buffalo’s. It’s life as usual.”

Quite simply, that is not acceptable. Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld’s “strategy” for Iraq isn’t working and it is the duty of Congress to figure out why. This isn’t about Congress producing a solution (if there even is what at this point) out of thin air, it’s about, as Mr. Ricks put it “accountability and oversight.”

His opponent, Eric Massa is proposing a different path for Iraq, summed up by

The key points of my Iraq policy are:
– A Political Solution: Separate the Warring Parties.
– An Exit Strategy: Out in less than 24 Months.
– Accountability: The Key to the Future.

There’s more detail at his website. But the exact details aren’t the point here. Massa served under Wes Clark, who oversaw Bosnian reconstruction, seems to have pretty concrete ideas about what might be done in Iraq. It isn’t fair to expect this of Kuhl, who does not have Massa’s background. But Kuhl — and other Congressmen, Republican and Democrat alike — owe it to their constituents, and to the country, to do their duty by holding national leadership accountable for the mistakes that are being made in Iraq.

This isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans. It’s about Congress doing its job.