The Vote for Endless War

On Tuesday, December 18, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate combined to give President Bush $70 billion to carry the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into next summer. Only 23 Democrats and one independent supported an amendment by Senator Feingold that would have required the safe redeployment of troops from Iraq. Here are the senators who voted to end the war:

Akaka (D-HI)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

Next summer, when the money runs out, a cutoff of funds will be unimaginable. The election will be too close. So our troops are committed till the end of the president's term; after all the talk, the Democrats have ended by obeying him. This capitulation marks the climax of one of the most extraordinary displays in history of a complex phenomenon: power wielded in the face of popular rejection, and power surrendered in spite of overwhelming public support. A president whose policy was disapproved by more than half of the American people chose to defy a majority whose midterm victory he himself had called "a rout." And the majority, saying they wished things were different, pleading the necessity of 60 rather than 50 votes, but never exacting reprisals or driving a hard bargain against defectors from their own ranks--the majority, again and again, backed down.

This definitive result of the 110th Congress will confirm the popular feeling that George W. Bush believes in his disaster more than the Democrats believe in anything.

Some day, an inspired historian will answer the question what the Democrats of the new majority in Congress were thinking in the months of December 2006 and January 2007. For consider their position. The report of the Iraq Study Group had lately told the president to pull back from Iraq; numbers of generals and retired military officers had registered their dissent from the war (a thing unheard-of in earlier wars); the party had on its side the good will of the public and the suffrage of the licensed experts. And then? The Democrats sat, and watched, and waited. They talked about their social policies. They knew if they waited long enough, the next move on Iraq would be the president's; and this apparently was what they wanted. They knew that his next move would be to widen the war. They had decided by February that they would not stop him.

Those who appeared most consequential in the scene were not the real movers. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi can hardly have carried as much weight in these larger deliberations as Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel. Senator Clinton outranked Senator Reid in fame, fortune, and influence; she was the apparent candidate by acclamation for the presidential race in 2008; and her desires, however conveyed, would count for more than those of an obscure and hesitant lawmaker. Rahm Emanuel had taken credit for the winning election strategy of 2006. Ascending with the majority, he avoided the substantial issue of Iraq, and addressed the need to get the best armor for the soldiers already there. Emanuel talked about armor, and soon Pelosi was talking about armor. All the while, on the floor of the Senate and in public speeches, Hillary Clinton gave her best energies to free the president to go after Iran.

If the Clinton-Emanuel axis is indeed a more accurate clue to the workings of the party than Reid-Pelosi, one may well ask what guided the accommodation of the Bush policy through 2007 by the de facto leaders of the opposition.

The premise on which, in fact, the two parties for all their differences seem now impressively unified, is the projection of American power in the Middle East. Whose interest does that serve? The list is long, and the proportions impossible to gauge. There are the oil companies (the province of Cheney and Bush), greedy for the last of a dwindling resource. Another half-century of profits is worth much more than a war to them. There is also Israel, with its largely uncritical American backers, including political supporters in both parties and financial supporters without whom the Democrats are lost (Senator Clinton in particular). Add to these the arms industry and the security bubble of the 2000s--from cluster bombs to retina scanners--alike dependent on the maintenance of this war and the urgency of the next, whatever the next may be.

Four superbases, we were told in 2003, were to be built for Americans in Iraq, but now there are five or six. As Clinton and Emanuel know, those bases are meant to be permanent. They will not be used only to secure Iraq and intimidate Iran, but to harry Russia by way of the friendly belt of former republics, and to raise a bulwark against the growing power of China. The missile interceptors we want to install in Poland and the radar station in the Czech Republic, about which Vladimir Putin was said to be unreasonably exercised, could indeed seem, to a suspicious eye, part of the same broad strategy. Camp Bondsteel, built on 955 acres in Kosovo, might also be supposed to make some contribution. The vice president is not the only American who does not want the Cold War to be over.

To judge by the votes of the 110th Congress, and by what has and has not been said on the campaign trail, some understandings are now clearly in place. The main agreement concerns what is not to be said. If either Clinton or Obama is the Democratic nominee, and if no new insurgency erupts, the Iraq war will drop away completely as an issue of the presidential race in 2008. To have prophesied this a year ago would have seemed fantastic; but the soothing indications are already being slotted in. Baghdad is now said to be "quieter." We are shown few pictures of American soldiers and fewer still of Iraqi civilians. The New York Times ran its story about the $70 billion appropriations vote on page 24. Nevertheless, December 18 will be remembered. It was the day when a thirteen- month contract was signed, and the domestic powers told us that nothing more could be done about this. Go back to the economy, they said, and the mortgage crisis, and the role of religion in politics and the views of undecided voters about gay marriage. While you are talking, the Vatican-sized embassy in Baghdad will be completed, and the superbases will go up. The next step will have been taken for projection of American power in the Middle East.

When did we agree to this? At what time, and in what place? The United States, for the first time in our history, is more feared than it is trusted, and more hated than it is feared. And the opposition does not dare to think aloud about the reasons.

Comments

[HearNoWeasel]

"When did we agree to this? At what time, and in what place?" We agreed in 2004 and again in 2006: R voters who voted the party line, D voters who voted for some incumbend because his was the only name they recognized on the ballot, and the millions who didn't even cast a ballot voted for this mess since they didn't vote against it.

All the complaints about stolen elections shouldn't obscure the fact that not enough democratic voters turned up to make the numbers tamper-proof. Please ensure that your family, friends, and neighbors vote in 08.

Thank you for this excellent article. But America wasn't high-jacked. We the people have been giving it away for decades. That's one thing we can change.

[Anastasia]

Oops. Hit the send button accidentally.

Reid and Pelosi apparently thought that hitting their heads against the wall, vis a vis the war, was preferable to a realistic strategy, to improve people's lives, where they could. Instead of fostering unrealistic expectations, they raised people's hopes to a level they couldn't possibly fulfill.

Let's hope they step down, from their leadership positions, gracefully.

[Anastasia]

As someone who was strongly opposed to the war, from the first days of Cheney's scare-mongering, I'm a little mystified by this pervasive belief, that somehow, the Democrats can end the war.

Without a super majority, George Bush can veto anything that comes down the pike. Add to that, the existence of conservative Dems, in both houses, and the fact that it's relatively easy for a Republican to stop a bill dead in it's tracks, it seems fairly obvious that no matter how hard Reid and Pelosi tried to end the war, it was doomed to fail.

Instead of passing laws that would help the middle class and make the party look good, Reid and Pelosi apparently thought

[musselmanm]

I predict that Pelosi and Reid will be announcing their retirement when their seats come up for their next election. Just like the Repuklicans are doing now. The Democrats which are now supporting Bush and the neocons will be driven from office. They are now in support of our Nation building ways because they are secure in their jobs. This will not be the case in the very near future.
Our job as citizens of America is to insure that none of the current non leaders gets elected as president, Senator or Congressman. This goes for our current elected officials and the future elected officials.
Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, who cares just not our war mongering, rip off the people current batch of thieves.

[poopdeck]

Senator Obama is one of the "paymasters" of the war in Iraq. He must not become our next president or vice-president.

[bbfmail1]

Sorry, no more lesser of 2 evils for me. I voted for Clinton the first time he ran, and he gave us NAFTA within what seemed like days of his swearing in. If I can , I plan to write in none of the above! If the Democrats lose, so be it. Maybe the next time around they might select someone who doesn't plan to "not take the use of nuclear weapons off the table", or did not include the use of illegal drugs in their youth. Perhaps they might actually have someone run who did not support the invasion of Iraq or never voted for funding the war. Maybe I can write in Dennis Kucinich!

[Nonamnesiac]

The Democrats are the equal of the evils. This is as much Hillary’s, Edwards’s, Biden’s, Obama’s and Dodd’s war as it is Bush’s war.

In 2008 the Republicans will run distancing themselves from Bush, pointing out that all unpopular policies (the assault on the Constitution and the war in Iraq (and perhaps Iran)) were bi-partisan and produce a “secret” plan to be out of Iraq by 2013. As the 3 Democratic frontrunners, the 2013 triplets, cannot commit to being out of Iraq by 2013 or they would be “flip-floppers”, the Republicans will again do the impossible win a nearly unwinnable election, solely because the Democrats are collaborators with everything from Blackwater to Katrina to Iraq.

Vote Richardson or Kucinich if you actually want a Democratic victory in 2008. If neither win, don’t vote or vote 3rd Party, as the Dems will be the equal of the evils anyway if the version represented by Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, the 2013 triplets, would make no difference. When you look at their records and positions, they're the same anyway, with only lying rhetoric (like keeping in "non combat troops instead of "combat" troops in Iraq -- a distinction without a difference) distinguishing them from each other. Maybe the Dems will learn their lesson then — that they can’t give the progressive electorate the finger and expect to get their votes anyway.

And don't let any two-bit, Nader-baiting, Democratic Party troll try to put you in fear of taking this path means a Republican victory. If Richardson or Kucinich doesn't get the nomination, it's not going to matter anyway. All three will simply continue Bush's policies, but use a better spin machine than Bush.

[evangelicalatheist]

David,

One aspect of all this political theater you may have missed:

If the Congress cuts off Bush's allowance, then they (Democrats) take all responsibility for Bush's "war".

What we need to realize, under this theory, is that BOTH political parties are gambling with other people's money: the life and limb of our military, and countless Iraqi lives.

[elcid66]

The Democratic party must be purged at the ballot box of the timid, Republicans-lite.
New candidates have to be elected who will provide a real opposition.

[NABNYC]

The 110th Congress: Like the Vichy government, but with less integrity.

[esquire07]

So long as the Bush criminals are making money, the troops will continue to die for Oil.

Expect nothing but cowardace from the sell-out Democrats.

[heyletsevolve]

Mr. Bromwich,

This is one of the better blogs I've read in a while. Thank you for this analysis that goes to the core, or at heads for the deeper layers, of what we're seeing in Washington. Judging by the comments here, not everyone understood what you were tying to say in this piece, they still are caught up in the surface layers of politics. However what you are trying to do is understand the underlying malignancies and determine their size and structure. Why is everything so corrupt? Why do the Democrats keep "failing." They are not really failing, because they are not really trying. And why? To understand the deeper motives of the players and overarching geo-political strategies we have to search for the news we don't hear in the maintstream press and draw our own maps. The permanent bases are certainly one helpful guidepost for the newcomer toward understanding America's role in the Middle East.

Your assessment of how the American people are being manipulated and hoodwinked is quite accurate, and I think more and more people are starting to understand that patterns that are emerging. Especially as we are being inundated with scandals and subsequent investigations that lead nowhere, while the momentum in general of a global restructuring of wealth and power, and a deconstruction of the American system of checks and balances and basic freedoms goes on essentially unchecked.

[wadenelson1]

My comment.

This isn't a war. It's an occupation.

It will only end when the "benefits" outweigh the "costs" to those who are profiting from it.

That would include the major oil companies, defense firms, KBR, Halliburton, Blackwater, and all Americans who own stocks in these firms.

This is a business deal. It may be paid for in the bodies of American GI's, contractors, and Iraqi civilians, but its absolutely, positively a business deal. Nothing more.

[realpolitic]

George Bush presidency is a disaster: endless war, endless deficits, endless bad will around the world, endless ineptness. The one thing he does well is strip us of our civil liberties, unchecked by a compliant Congress. Bush loves war! He governs as if he is some world commander playing a video game. Meanwhile, his bureaucracies go unchecked. No civil rights cases brought by his Department of Justice in years, an EPA that fights emissions legislation at every turn. Bush is an endless disaster brought to us by that carnival barker-Karl Rove.

[lemonv]

The reality of US Senate legislation of bills is there are 49 Democrats and Republicans each with 2 Independents. If you consider Lieberman as an Independent with Republican leanings, that would split the US Senate with 50 Democrats and Republicans. With the Vice President breaking the tie, the Republicans will win all the time.

It would be very difficult for the Democrats to pass any bills pertaining to Iraq because it would need 60 votes just to get through the senate. They need 10 more votes from the Republicans.

If the bill gets the approval of the senate and the President vetoes it (as expected) then the Senate has an even bigger difficulty to hurdle.

The Democrats now need 66.67 or 67 votes to override the veto which means they need 17 more votes from the Republicans.

With the unbending decisions of the President with respect to the Iraq war, coupled by the fact that he is a Republican and the fact that the repubs always put loyalty to the party above loyalty to the constitution and loyalty to the people, I doubt that the repubs would have the backbone to vote for the veto.

Cutting the troop funding will also have to go though the same meatgrinder. See below.

Article I, Section 7, of the Constitution provides in part that--

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States.

And that is the reality of how to enact laws with a 50/50 split between Repubs and Dems.

Hope this clears up the confusion on why the Democrats find it extremely hard in passing a Withdrawal of troops from Iraq bill.