Why Congress Caved to Bush
The antiwar Democrats are crying betrayal—and justifiably so.
For a Democratic Congress is now voting to fully fund the war in Iraq, as demanded by President Bush, and without any timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal. Bush got his $100 billion, then magnanimously agreed to let Democrats keep the $20 billion in pork they stuffed into the bill—to soothe the pain of their sellout of the party base.
Remarkable. If the Republican rout of 2006 said anything, it was that America had lost faith in the Bush-Rumsfeld conduct of the war and wanted Democrats to lead the country out.
Yet, today, there are more U.S. troops in Iraq than when the Democrats won. More are on the way. And with the surge and retention of troops in Iraq beyond normal tours, there should be a record number of U.S. troops in country by year's end.
Why did the Democrats capitulate?
Because they lack the courage of their convictions. Because they fear the consequences if they put their antiwar beliefs into practice. Because they are afraid if they defund the war and force President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops, the calamity he predicts will come to pass and they will be held accountable for losing Iraq and the strategic disaster that might well ensue.
Democrats are an intimidated party. The reasons are historical. They were shredded by Nixon and Joe McCarthy for FDR's surrenders to Stalin at Tehran and Yalta, for losing China to Mao's hordes, for the "no-win war" in Korea, for being "soft on communism."
The best and the brightest—JFK's New Frontiersmen—were held responsible for plunging us into Vietnam and proving incapable of winning the war. A Democratic Congress cut off aid to Saigon in 1975, ceding Southeast Asia to Hanoi and bringing on the genocide of Pol Pot.
Democrats know they are distrusted on national security. They fear that if they defund this war and bring on a Saigon ending in the Green Zone, it will be a generation before they are trusted with national power. And power is what the party is all about.
Yet, not only does the situation in Iraq appear increasingly grim, with rising U.S. and Iraqi casualties, other shoes are about to drop that will reverberate throughout the region.
Support for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with his war in Lebanon a debacle and his leadership denounced by a commission he appointed, is in single digits. Waiting in the wings is Likud super-hawk "Bibi" Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel, who compares today to Munich 1938 and equates Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Hitler.
If and when Bibi comes to power, he will use every stratagem to provoke us into attacking "Hitler."
Also drumming for war on Iran are the floundering neocons and the Israeli lobby. Under orders from the lobby, Nancy Pelosi stripped from a House bill a stipulation that Bush must come to Congress for authorization before launching an attack on Iran.
With Democratic contenders reciting the mantra, "All options are on the table," and Iran defying U.N. sanctions, pursuing nuclear enrichment and detaining U.S. citizens, Bush has a blank check to launch a third war.
Lebanon is ablaze. Gaza is ablaze. The Afghan war is not going well. The Taliban have a privileged sanctuary. The NATO allies grow weary.
In Pakistan, the most dangerous country on earth—one bullet away from an Islamic republic with atom bombs—our erstwhile ally, President Musharraf, is caught in a political crisis over his ouster of the chief justice.
Presidents Musharraf in Islamabad, Kharzi in Kabul and Siniora in Beirut, and Prime Minister Maliki in Baghdad, sit on shaky thrones. No one knows what follows their fall. But it is hard to see how it would not be crippling for America's position.
With such volatility in this crucial region of the world, with such uncertainty, it is easy to see why Democrats prefer to be the "dummy" at the bridge table and let Bush play the hand.
The congressional Democrats are cynical, but they are not stupid. If the surge works and U.S. troops are being withdrawn by fall 2008, they do not want it said of them that they "cut and ran" when the going got tough, that they played Chamberlain to Bush's Churchill.
And if the war is going badly in 2008, they know that the American people, in repudiating the party of Bush and Cheney, have no other choice than the party of Hillary and Pelosi and Harry Reid.
That is why congressional Democrats are surely saying privately of the angry antiwar left what has often been said by the Beltway Republican elite of the right: "Don't worry about them. They have nowhere else to go. And that is why the antiwar left was thrown under the bus.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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The thing that will resolve this escalating adventurism is a universal draft. It is not sustainable with a volunteer military.
Last week, actually the week before, I returned from Iraq. For about four months I was there as a journalist. First, we never had enough troops in Iraq -- although, in my opinion, enough troops would not have turned Iraq around. Second, the military today hates the idea of a draft. Both are good reasons for bringing back the draft, but this time without all those wimpy outs for the middle and upper classes. We need a larger military -- just imagine if we were battling a powerful opponent -- and the military is terrified that it will have to deal with people who refuse to simply go along with the career enterprise that our military has become. Oh yeah, it would also be great to watch all the chickenhawks squirm when they realize that they or their kids might be sent to fight a war!
Why Congress caved to Bush? Simple. Because they are a bunch of wuss bags.
The Democrats are as fearful of attacks on their patriotism as Republicans are of being called racists.
The simple truth is "our" government does not operate in "our" interest. This justifies a military coup and mass lynchings in the D.C. area in my opinion.
Much truth here, and elegantly stated -- but also elegantly complicated.
They caved because they are simply opportunistic whores who believe in nothing.
I'm confused about part of this paragraph:
With Democratic contenders reciting the mantra, "All options are on the table," and Iran defying U.N. sanctions, pursuing nuclear enrichment and detaining U.S. citizens, Bush has a blank check to launch a third war.
I'm not sure what sanctions he's referring to, frankly, but as far as enriching uranium, both the U.S. and Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any nation that signed that treaty has the right to enrich uranium for domestic purposes, and the UN inspectors have found zero evidence that Iran is trying to build or acquire nuclear weapons. Iran's nuclear program is the most heavily inspected nuclear program on Earth. The U.S. is demanding that Iran give up its inalienable rights under the treaty, which is the law of the land according to the Constitution, or risk being bombed, and even possibly nuked. The same stale, globally-exposed lies that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq are being trotted out to justify attacking Iran. And there are still millions of slack-jawed, drooling idiots in this country that believe them. In fact, huge numbers of these same idiots still believe that Iraq had WMD after 1995. The only WMD that Saddam Hussein ever had were sold to him by the United States after Ronald Reagan was elected, to use in the eight-year war against Iran that was instigated by the United States as revenge for the embassy hostage crisis back in the 1970's. You couldn't make this stuff up.
By contrast, the U.S. has been in flagrant violation of that same treaty for a long time, given its refusal to draw down its nuclear arsenal in any significant way, if at all. In fact, Uncle Scam is planning to crap away billions, of not trillions, more of your tax dollars to produce even more nukes. This country already has enough nukes to turn the entire planet into a glowing ember. In fact, the people of this country have ponied up probably at least a trillion for the ones we already have. Weren't we told that they were the ultimate deterrent? You know: Mutually Assured Destruction, and all of that? But now, we're supposed to believe that if a nation on the other side of the planet gets its hands on one or two, we're all going to die? Have people already forgotten the manipulation that went on in 2004, with the color-coded threat alerts, that disappeared right after Diebold put Bush back into the White House? We had 30,000 Soviet nukes pointed at us throughout the Cold War, and people managed to live their lives in relative peace, without the government going out of its way to try to scare the bejeezus out of them 24/7. But now, we're all supposed to set our hair on fire, and run around screaming "Save the children!", over Iran? How stupid are people in this country? Don't they EVER learn? Apparently not.
You can't have it both ways. Either those 40,000 nukes are a credible deterrent, as they seem to have been during the Cold War, or we were ripped off to the tune of a trillion dollars, and we need to demand a refund RIGHT NOW. So, which is it?
Excuse my caps, but THE UNITED STATES IS THE ONLY COUNTRY IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS, AND USE THEM ON CIVILIANS. THE UNITED STATES MILITARY HAS BEEN FIRING DEPLETED URANIUM AROUND IN IRAQ FOR SIXTEEN YEARS, WHICH IS THE CAUSE OF GULF WAR SYNDROME, AS WELL AS THE CAUSE OF HORRENDOUS BIRTH DEFECTS BEING SEEN IN THE CHILDREN OF IRAQIS, AS WELL AS U.S. SOLDIERS, AND THEY ARE EVEN PASSING THIS STUFF TO THEIR SPOUSES THROUGH SEXUAL INTERCOURSE.
So just who in hell is the real threat to life, liberty and peace on this planet? Hmm? And what braindead cretins are financing it through illegal taxation? Hmm?
Question for Big M; so there is nothing to worry about from the Islamic Jihad?
Islamic Jihad? Cave dwellers with a vendetta against imperial aggression?
The United States and Israel are the greatest threat before Pakistan.
We are one well-placed bullet away from an Nuclear Islamic Fascist state over there.
Dear Hugh:
Did your parents have any children that lived?
"Why Congress caved to Bush"
Why the three branches of our government caved to AIPAC