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.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Sad, but true. The American people have spoken and our representatives don't have the cajones to project our voice on capital hill. What was it Jefferson said? A little revolution now and again is a healthy thing. We've made our voices heard at the ballot box, but since then we the people have not had the representation we sought. I'm not sure what it is goig to toake, but somehow this surreal episode in our history has got to end. I just hope it doesn't end badly. We are in a very precarious position-China (a nuclear armed communist nation) owns 20% of our national debt. Thanks George. That alone scares the crap out of me. If they called in that debt, this country would collapse in a matter of days. I have the feeling no one would bail us out. We need to be in the streets like we were during the Vietnam war.
The 21 dems and 48 rethugs have traded the constitution and the American people for money, once again.
Dems what will your little earmarks matter in a fascist USA destroyed in world war III BushCo is busy starting?
You have betrayed your country once again.
This does it for me. Where were the 4 senators running for President? With all their blathering about getting us out of Iraq, this proves they're all slopping out of the same trough as the Republicans. As for Reid and Pelosi, they promised no more funding without troop withdrawal. It seems their new strategy is to leave Bush alone and the worse mess he gets us in by 08, the better the democrats will do. God save us from this clueless bunch.
There have been times in my life when I was thoroughly outraged by tings our government did or didn't do... but NEVER more than now.
We are at a major crossroads in America. Either we will go on and let the corporations and the ultra-wealthy continue to have their way, making obscene profits and driving most Americans deeper and deeper into the abyss... or we will stand up, grow some testicles and vote nearly every damned incumbent out of Washington D.C.
Corporate leaders, politicians and steroid monster athletes continue to make more and more money every year and Joe Citizen can't afford to send his kid to the local community college, let alone the hospital if he needs a bone marrow transplant.
America is being raped by the rich and powerful, and the people who built the nation and keep it running are being driven into the poorhouse.
Someone said "We get the government we deserve...
The true Axis of Evil: The Executive Branch, The Congress, The Supreme Court!
This is easily explained. Fascism is now the coin of the realm. There is no opposition party. The entire MSM is essentially a propaganda machine for the Far Right. The military-industrial complex devours our tax money and the borrowed money from other nations. The yachts rise as all the others sink. The capitalistic health insurance companies continue to murder Americans by spreadsheet. John Edwards will fight against this. Hilly and Barack would compromise with the corporate cannibals-the rich will win as usual.
The opposition?
There is no opposition.
Acquiescence is not opposition.
And certainly the Putin-Cheney pissing match is not in opposition in any way with the Clinton-Cheney pissing match.
Same cold war, different players.
And the same lies all around.
the surge is working
the surge is working
the surge is working
this is imperialism at its best and american arrogance.
the reality
the invasion of iraq was illegal
the war with iraq was and is illegal
we americans all of us should be put up for war crimes yet we argue over if the surge will or is working.
sad day for america.
and we wonder why the russians under 30 consider us the worst threat in the world.
america the scourge of capitalism that has led to imperialism. next fascism wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross like lewis stated.
And people wonder why some Democrats are registering Republican to vote for Ron Paul.
sighhhh, your analysis is most persuasive and informative, but it is not really a surprise. It took the Congress forever to stand up to Nixon, making the Vietnam war the aberration, not the rule, and Congress did nothing about the Iran Contra scandal when it broke (Republicans may have been in control, but where was the Democratic bold action?)
and then we get to this:
"The United States, for the first time in our history, is more feared than it is trusted, and more hated than it is feared. " ....
I dunno, it seems to me that The Ugly American has been hated and feared since we assumed the mantle of hegemon right after the Second World War.
Oh, BullS**t.
The vote proved that with the upper house split 50-50, stalemate is the default position and progress is unlikely.
If I read one more "liberal" gripe about the dems in congress, I may puke.
We all agree that the Republicans are evil incarnate, that they would do anything to block human progress, that all they care about is the almighty buck or Jesus or both, and that Bush is a deranged sociopath and liar.
Hmmm. People of the above description have half the seats in the senate, and a large minority in the house.
So, be a "liberal" and cry about how Nancy did not bring you the pony that she did not promise. Ignore the fact that the Republicans slaughtered all the ponies for dog food.
Wadda ya say? Let's get our butts whipped in November, good plan.
Absent! Not only from the floor of the Senate, but from the real debate about the war, about the assault on our Constitutional rights, the lengthening shadows of a unitary executive, and just about every other issue confronting us.
What have Clinton and Obama REALLY told us about the way forward? (When asked if she would retain the presidential powers Bush has accrued to himself, Hillary said she would definitely look into it -- what does that mean?) And has anything they've said weighed more heavily than their absence from the floor of the Senate when these matters are decided?
"Next summer, when the money runs out..."
hahahoho, the 'money' will never run out for our wars.
"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."
Correct. And that's what they want. The masses are extremely easy to mislead. SWS, Stepford Wives Syndrome, comes to mind. Outta sight - outta mind.
Read this:
"A recent decline in U.S. news coverage from Iraq coincides with improved public opinion about the war
.. Pew project director, Tom Rosenstiel, said declining coverage from Iraq, which follows a sharp fall in news about the Iraq policy debate in Washington, has likely played an important role (in improved public opinion).
full:
http://www
The country is expected to pay for endless war with a low wage service-based economy. I believe one of the reasons this war was created was to give the Republicans a permanent majority. The Republicans have never had confidence in the appeal of the conservative message. They've always had to resort to some dirty tricks to get their way. The selection of Bush as president was one of those dirty tricks.
So how did the Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate vote?
Biden - Absent
Clinton - Absent
Dodd - Absent
Obama - Absent
This was a $555B appropriations bill with an implication for funding the occupation in Iraq, and none of these candidates felt the need to show up for work.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
