Rep. Rashida Tlaib brought a war powers resolution to the House floor Tuesday demanding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Lebanon. Twenty-two members of her own party crossed the aisle to bury it alongside nearly every Republican in the chamber. The final vote was 189-235.
Only two Republicans voted with her — Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. That's the coalition she built. Two.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, Republican from Florida, laid out the situation on the floor in terms that left very little room for Tlaib's framing. "There are not U.S. combat forces conducting operations or engaged in hostilities in Lebanon," Mast said. "They are training the Lebanese Armed Forces. Why are they training? Because there's probably at least 40,000 — probably more — Hezbollah terrorists spread across the South of Lebanon that are actively engaged in targeting Israel."
That's the part Tlaib's resolution conveniently skipped over. U.S. personnel in Lebanon aren't kicking down doors. They're training the Lebanese Armed Forces to deal with an estimated 40,000-plus Hezbollah fighters dug into southern Lebanon since the conflict with Israel escalated in early March. The resolution wasn't about ending a war. It was about hamstringing the one effort keeping the region from getting worse.
The resolution was concurrent — meaning it was largely symbolic and wouldn't have even gone to the President's desk for a signature or veto. It was a press release with a roll call attached.
Ranking Member Gregory Meeks, Democrat from New York, tried to frame the yes vote as keeping America "out of another forever war that is not in our national interest." A reasonable-sounding argument, except U.S. forces aren't in a war in Lebanon. They're in a training mission. Calling a training deployment a "forever war" is the kind of language inflation that makes actual forever wars harder to identify when they show up.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat from New York, didn't whip his caucus to save Tlaib. Twenty-two Democrats walked away from her. That's not a policy disagreement — that's a caucus telling its most vocal member that the act has worn thin. Even an earlier, more expansive version of the resolution floated earlier in the month couldn't find traction. The appetite for this fight existed in exactly one office on Capitol Hill.
When you lose 22 of your own and your entire coalition is two Republicans and a press conference, the resolution isn't the problem. The strategy is.
