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

[realitytrumpsbull]

I don't know, I guess the Big Lesson here is
that Congress is pretty ineffective in doing
their jobs. There's a remedy for that, though,
recall elections.­..

[itsnotmyfault]

This is an excellent analysis, which is much appreciated. The unfortunate thing is that we are awash in what can be deemed "frozen scandal." Starting with the underlying criminal march to war in Iraq and its conduct thereafter, to the rampant corruption pervasive in all levels of the Bush administration. While these activities have been uncovered and are almost universally known...th­ere is nothing but fruitless efforts to thoroughly investigate let alone actually prosecute these trespasses. We operate amongst these cataclysmic icebergs floating in the landscape, with no real understanding of their mass and ultimate threat to the wellbeing of our Nation.

[nowaterboardUSA]

When the Christians would not give up their opposition to the Roman Empire - Rome caved and became Christian. I wonder if we are in a period right now where in the future (50 to 100 years maybe?) where the West might cave to Islam. I know that's what the Islamic fanatics want. Hopefully, I'll be in my grave or jar before this happens.

[Vajara]

I appreciate that Senator Bingaman, NM, voted against funding the war. He has been very consistent whereas Domenici has been a Bushie, so perhaps NM will change and put another good "D" in office. Perhaps we can change our politics locally, seems our politicians some times listen to their locals.

[Crowhaul]

Am I alone in calling for an anarchal revolution as the best means to end this one-party corporate-run system of ours?

[jackpinesavage]

Excellent post, Mr. Bromwich

[wayoutleft]

this could be helpful in getting beyond the MSM-touted "majority" this and "rights" that and "constitution" drivel trowled out on tv sundays before the football games.

[Coronadoman]

Some of us will actually get to see the so-called candidates, in person. Some of us will get to be on teevee with the so-called candidates. For our sake, for a change, please think about how you will accost them. "Mr. Obama/Clin­ton/whoeve­r, please tell us why you, and your fellow Congressional Democrats, have failed so miserably to end this war, in the face of enormous American will to do so? Why have you all capitulated to Bush and his corporate controllers? And as a follow up, knowing you will not answer this question truthfully, who do you think will be the best third party candidate to do so?"

[Snakeback]

Glad to see both of my senators fro WA State voted against it.

Obama, as usual, was "nowhere" on this.

What is it with Obama missing so many roll-calls?

Next, his campaign will claim that "not being there" was some kind of brilliant opposition strategy.

And yo make a very important point: foreign policy throughout the post-WWII period and on into the 21st century has been maintained by both parties regardless of who is president.

I get the feeling that all the major players are briefed on the policy, and it's made clear their careers will fade into oblivion if they don't get on board. Proof of concept: HRC and Nancy "Praying With The President" Pelosi. Both started out as anti-war pols, but when they assumed top positions in their party, suddenly their tunes changed, and their votes definitely always go to support the policy.

Use your heads, people - there's no way that's accidental.

[Sundialsvc4]

Start .. start .. by figuring about $10 million per person in bribes paid to Congress for passing this legislation.

Go back and read, very carefully, the Wikipedia article on "military industrial complex." Some prophets are Generals.

Now, to the history books. The fall of Troy. Of Greece. Of Rome. Take your pick.

When we read history-books we read about hundred-year sweeps in a paragraph. It's hard to see such a sweep when you're inside one, but it appears that this curious experiment known as "The United States of America" will turn out to be a comparative blip -- lasting only about 230 years, and getting as far as it managed to do only by subjugation. When it ran out of natives, Germans and Japanese, it imploded.

History is quite willing to put a dot at the end of that paragraph and to turn the page. Life goes on. "If that's the way you want to close the paragraph on your country, consider it done."

[RonRico]

I wonder how long the American politico can control this situation. With China becoming stronger all the time, I see us succumbing to them in all economic endeavors. If we continue this approach, we will run out of money and by then the country will have even bigger domestic woes.

This contributes to the destruction of the middle class and that will surely bring change - maybe the kind we need.

[MilwaukeeDan]

Mr. Bromwich, great post, I could't agree with you more. It's American imperialism at its finest or worst, and has been since WWII. We have a 1 party state. Why was NATO expanded after the Soviet Union desolved? I live in this country, so I wish us the best, but the only way towards change is a total collapse(economic or military, like Soviet Union). It will be very painfull, but we might get some new blood to run this train wreck.

[Fez]

With the complete flameout of the Democrats in Congress, the way is now open for Mike Bloomberg and Chuck Hagel to mount a serious third-party bid for the White House. Anyone who offers a true alternative to the corporate whores now infesting the Congress will have a good chance of winning the next election. Millions of us are waiting for someone, anyone to represent the average citizen. Let's hope that third party candidates start popping up like mushrooms after a rain. Within a month no one will remember any of the "usual suspects." If Ross Perot could get 19% of the vote in 1992, a Bloomberg-Hagel ticket could surely get 35% which should be enough to win the next election.

[cheshyre]

This post says exactly what I've been thinking. I thought I was the only one. The whole discourse has changed to be solely the myopic; navel gazing as Rome burns. It's like we've just decided to check out. I get a sensation of us freefalling, of just waiting for the final, fatal impact to hit us.

We live in a time of unreality. Endless war has now become preferable to ending war. No one is concerned anymore with the human or economic costs. Maybe we never were. 4 out of 5 people supported this war when it started and it seems, in effect, those numbers still hold true when it comes down to demanding an end. Very quietly, as you say, America has voted for its own destruction.

[whoopingcrone]

Fine post and great comments, though we're mistaken to think that now is the 'first' time the US has been more feared/mistrusted than loved.
The difference is that "finally", the 'rest' of the world has the means to express their concerns and displeasures efficiently and effectively.
In other words, the "world" is no longer mainly about "us" and the candidates' "positions" are irrelevant.