[Peace-discuss] Funding the war

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Democrats vow to continue funding Iraq war
	By David Walsh
	12 December 2006

Following the release of the Iraq Study Group’s report last week, 
leading Congressional Democrats made clear they intend to continue 
funding the disastrous war in Iraq to the tune of hundreds of billions 
of dollars.

According to a recent AP-Ipsos poll, a record 71 percent of the US 
population disapprove of George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, 60 
percent favor withdrawal of US forces in 2007 (immediate withdrawal was 
not offered as an option) and only 9 percent believe in an American 
victory. Yet the Democrats, brought to power in both houses of Congress 
largely as the result of this antiwar sentiment, have pledged to keep 
granting Bush’s demands for more money for the interventions in Iraq and 
Afghanistan.

As Tom Curry of MSNBC commented bluntly, “Incoming House Speaker Nancy 
Pelosi had a message Tuesday for voters who elected a Democratic 
Congress last month hoping it would force President Bush to bring US 
troops home from Iraq. ‘We will not cut off funding for the troops,’ 
Pelosi said. ‘Absolutely not,’ she said.”

Pelosi made the emphatic comment in response to a question from a 
reporter who asked her if the Democrats in Congress would vote to end 
funding for the war if Bush refused to change course in Iraq.

She went on, “Let me remove all doubt in anyone’s mind; as long as our 
troops are in harm’s way, Democrats will be there to support them, but 
... we will have oversight over that funding.”

The new Democratic majority leader, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, declared, 
“None of us want to fail; none of us want to see Iraq as a failure.”

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has already 
signaled his willingness to go along with Bush’s next massive 
supplemental-budget request, expected to amount to $160 billion. “We’ll 
see if there’s any fluff in it and make sure there’s no pet projects,” 
he said recently. “But if it’s legitimate, I think we’ll have to go 
along with it.”

Having acknowledged their surrender to Bush over the funding, the 
various Democratic leaders in Congress claimed that their capitulation 
came with a price. Pelosi asserted that “the days of the rubber stamp 
are over.” And Hoyer argued that “There may well be attached to this 
$160 billion various parameters that the Congress expects to be met.”

Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, organizer of the Democratic campaign to 
win back the House in the recent election, claimed the next war spending 
bill would be “the turning point for a new direction.” According to 
Curry of MSNBC, Emanuel “said the bill will impose conditions which Bush 
will be forced to accept if he wants the money, such as a commission to 
investigate funds unaccounted for or allegedly wasted in Iraq.

“To voters who’d be disappointed because they thought the new Congress 
would bring the troops home from Iraq, Emanuel gave a tentative answer: 
‘From now on we are beginning to figure those questions out in the 
proper way.’”

Even the Democrats’ vague threats to place future conditions on Bush 
were met with skepticism.

Thomas Donnelly, a defense policy expert with the Center for Strategic 
and International Studies, told the press, “They could say, ‘We’re not 
going to pay the bills for a force larger than X size,’ or ‘You can’t 
have this money unless you start withdrawing troops from Iraq.’ [But] I 
think they haven’t got the votes or the nerve.”

In reality, the Democratic Party has been the Bush administration’s 
accomplice in the war since its leadership voted for the October 11, 
2002, resolution authorizing an attack on Iraq. The Democrats supported 
the colonial-style war then, and they support it now, with whatever 
qualms and tactical disagreements.

Reid, Pelosi and their colleagues have now excluded the two possible 
constitutional means of ending the war in Iraq: impeachment of Bush or 
the cutting off of funds for the war.

Hoyer has even ruled out a resolution encouraging Bush to adopt the 
Baker-Hamilton recommendations “at least for now” and has indicated that 
he does not anticipate that subpoenas will be issued to the 
administration to determine what went wrong in Iraq.

A comment last week in Roll Call, the Washington insiders’ newspaper, 
underlined the farcical character of the Democrats’ opposition to Bush. 
After noting that Democrats “privately acknowledge that they will be 
careful not to go too far in embracing the [Baker-Hamilton] study,” 
because “they want to make sure that the report ... doesn’t provide 
cover for the Bush administration over its policies,” Roll Call went on 
to point to “One potential complication for Democrats: Incoming House 
Intelligence Committee chair Silvestre Reyes (D) supports increasing US 
troop levels.” That is a ‘complication,’ that one of your leading 
representatives openly supports an escalation in the death and destruction.

One element within the Democratic Party, more sensitive to popular 
sentiment, postures as an antiwar opposition. Rep. Jim McGovern of 
Massachusetts has introduced a bill that would cut off most spending for 
the war, but leave funds for the “safe and orderly” withdrawal of 
troops, economic recovery and international peacekeeping. McGovern’s 
bill has 18 co-sponsors and no chance of getting on the House floor for 
a vote.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a candidate for the Democratic 
presidential nomination in 2004, has proposed that the Democrats vote 
against the Iraq war supplemental bill when it comes up for their 
approval next year. He told Curry of MSNBC, “If new members came in here 
on the expectation that they’re going to help end the war, and then they 
vote to appropriate $130 billion, they might find difficulty going back 
home and explaining that. You can’t simultaneously say you oppose the 
war and then vote to fund it.”

In a memo addressed to other Democratic members of Congress, Kucinich 
said, “The voters will not forget who let them down” if Congress votes 
to keep funding the war.

Kucinich has no support at this point for his proposal. Incoming House 
Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri gave the stock 
response, “My only real comment is you have to support the troops.” Rep. 
Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, dismissed Kucinich’s idea as 
“silly.”

Kucinich points to a real dilemma for the Democrats, but his own 
position is fraudulent. His and Al Sharpton’s presence in the 2004 
Democratic presidential nomination race, as the WSWS observed at the 
time, was nothing but a “dog-and-pony show.” The pair were tolerated, 
even encouraged, by the party establishment to boost the credibility of 
the Democrats as a “people’s party” and fuel the illusion that they 
represented an alternative to Bush and the Republicans.

In the end, prior to the party’s convention in 2004, Kucinich’s 
supporters dropped opposition to the right-wing Democratic platform and 
the Ohio congressman endorsed pro-war John Kerry. “The next critical 
step we must take is to help elect John Kerry as the next president of 
the United States,” Kucinich told reporters. “The word is unity. That is 
the operative word.” Given the opportunity to speak at the Democratic 
national convention, a gathering notorious for its patriotism and 
militarism, Kucinich called on delegates and voters to “blaze a new path 
with John Kerry and John Edwards.”

Recently, when asked by an interviewer what the election of pro-war 
Hoyer as majority leader meant for the Democratic Party and the war in 
Iraq, Kucinich replied, “We’re united behind Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer 
and our entire leadership team.”

One month after an election that amounted to a repudiation of the Iraq 
war, what are the prospects for ending it?

The report issued last week by the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan 
panel headed by former secretary of state James Baker and former 
Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, rejects the possibility of outright 
US military victory and urges a change in course, including an increased 
diplomatic and political effort, while maintaining indefinitely tens of 
thousands of American military personnel in Iraq. Baker and Hamilton 
speak for a section of the ruling elite fearful of the military, 
diplomatic and domestic political consequences of a catastrophe in Iraq.

Another faction of the political establishment, represented by Bush, 
Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, the Wall Street Journal 
editorial board and others, rejects any pulling back of troops, 
substantial redeployment or a change in the provocative attitude toward 
Syria and Iran. This group is an authoritative mouthpiece for the most 
predatory and brutal section of the American ruling elite.

For their part, the leaders of the Democratic ‘opposition,’ Pelosi, 
Hoyer, Reid and Emanuel, brought to power by the population to bring an 
end to the war, criticize this or that action by the administration and 
the Republicans, but, at the end of the day, promise to continue support 
for the bloodshed and destruction.

None of these elements proposes a rapid withdrawal of US forces from 
Iraq, much less holding to account those responsible for this criminal war.

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