"The American people have lost faith in President Bush's course of action in Iraq and they are demanding a new direction."
--House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today (AP, 02.13.2007)
"I haven't decided yet."
--Joe Donnelly killing his own political future.
WASHINGTON D.C.--Like Athenian democracy, Congress has decided to shoot itself in the foot with non-binding resolutions. Thinking that this is going to make the public forget that many incumbents and presidential candidates voted for the authorization for the use of force in Iraq, they've deluded themselves as most corrupt individuals do.
Worse still, the public shares some of the blame in allowing the vote to occur at all with nary a fight. It's true, once again, those of us on the real Left had to do this, and few wanted to listen. We can blame George W. Bush as much as we want, but we're in Iraq because we want cheap-gasoline, and because we weren't civically active, let-alone responsible. That's right, it's not just the Bush administration, it's collective-guilt. That guilt is being acted-out--pathetically--in our House of Representatives right now.
But, if you look at the prewar statistics, over 50% of the public was against going in if the conflict was a prolonged one. This is why there was no postwar planning, and such low troop-levels in the aftermath--to do so would have altered the public to the fact that this would inevitably be prolonged based on the plans of PNAC and neocons within the Bush administration. A cabal. But it was an above-ground one that everyone knew about, tolerated it, and allowed it to flourish and hijack our political system. Only radical reform can undo the damage that was allowed by political elites who only view democracy as a means for their own advancement as politicians.
The public deserves this out, but was too-easily deceived to be safe. The GOP seems to be totally committed to self-destruction in their blocking-measures, and their tepid bills that merely allow the Bush administration a continued blank-check:
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), that _
(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and (2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.(AP,02.13.2007)
Mainstream Democrats--reluctantly emboldened by the November midterms that gave them a congressional majority--only seem willing to support non-binding resolutions (not binding as law). Vice President Cheney has stated on CNN that "it won't stop us." This war will be four-years-old in March, and the political-cost will only continue to escalate.
The Bush administration's response to the bills (besides Cheney's): support the troops, the old broken-record we've been hearing for four-years, yet another underscoring of the Bush administration's inherent contempt for the rule of law and democracy. Some congressional GOP incumbents attempted to bring-up the ghost of Vietnam and the disdain most of the public had for returning-troops--save the crocodile tears, wimps:
It was the first debate about the war in either house of Congress since November's midterm elections, when public opposition to the conflict helped power Democrats to control of the House and Senate. Bush's decision last month to deploy an additional 21,500 troops to help stop sectarian violence has quickly become a flashpoint for critics of the war in Congress. There are currently about 141,000 American troops in Iraq and 27,000 in Afghanistan. The nonbinding measure states simply that the House "will continue to support and protect" troops serving in Iraq but that it "disapproves" of the troop buildup. (AP, 02.13.2007)
So, all it does is attempt to apply pressure to an administration that has never made any bones about kicking decorum to-the-curb. The war will continue, and thousands of Iraqis will be murdered by this ongoing-policy. This inaction makes all members of Congress who do not aggressively-oppose this administration fellow travels--war criminals. During a pause in the debate, Republican congressman Charles Norwood was eulogized.
Nobody was salivating over it since the GOP has no-chance of a majority in the House at present, and received a page-nine treatment (in stark-contrast to the stroke of Democratic Senator, Tim Johnson).The AP reports that, "Norwood was part of the Republican wave that took control of Congress in 1994." (AP, 02.13.2007) My, my, if only most Americans got the health coverage he did.
Amazingly, our own Joe Donnelly (here in the 2nd District of Indiana) was interviewed by AP, and had some disappointing things to say:
"The most important part of this to me is standing up for the troops and making sure we have full funding for them," Donnelly said Tuesday, after a weekend meeting with veterans' groups and constituents back home in his conservative north-central Indiana district. "I haven't made up my mind yet." The concerns of members like Donnelly are behind Democrats' strategy for this week's Iraq debate, which was carefully calibrated to bar votes on a GOP alternative that could expose a potentially messy divide within Democratic ranks over whether to cut off or restrict funding for troops on the ground. (AP, 02.13.2007)
A Hint to Joe: if you want to remain in Congress, you had better back defunding this war now. The majority of the public backs this measure, and yet you and the rest of the Democratic mainstream will not even pen a binding-resolution to halt any more troop-escalations.
You and I know this will mushroom into a military disaster, and that your real option is to defund the occupation, giving funds that mandate a demobilization. It doesn't bother me--or anyone except the GOP--that they've been relegated back to minority-status, and barred from watering-down an already watery-bill with their stupid amendments. They should shut up and accept their status.
The AP is siding with the GOP on this one, while they essentially ignored the shutting-out of the Democratic minority during the four-year GOP-majority. Frequently, they ignored the Democrats altogether, barely giving them the ink that the GOP-minority affords today.
This is because most of the mainstream media and the Republican Party are allied through an unconstitutional concentration of media ownership authored and engineered by the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations and Congress. A situation like this that crosses party-lines, done with premeditation over decades, can only emerge from the culture of a class of people.
That would be America's ruling-class and her functionaries in the media, academia, and the other various professions that service them. There is no GOP alternative for Iraq, it will just be more-of-the-same, which is what they're always going to be about.
