[Peace-discuss] Senate Dems again pretend to vote against the war

[C. G. Estabrook]

The press is reporting that in a congressional vote today, "Senate Dems Fail to Cut Off War Funds."  That's the AP headline, but it's seriously misleading.  The Feingold amendment -- which was defeated 67-29 (the 29 all being Democrats, including the Democratic presidential candidates) -- would not have cut off war funds.  It was another attempt by Senate Democrats to appear to support an end to the war, as the public wishes, without actually opposing US policy in the Middle East. It was a hypocritical gesture, as the AP noted by pointing out that the vote "cleared the way for the Democratic-controlled Congress to bow to Bush's wishes and approve a war funding bill next week stripped of the type of restrictions that drew his veto earlier this spring."

And what did the Feingold amendment actually say?  It would have required the president to begin "redeploying" US troops from Iraq within 120 days of enactment and to complete that redeployment by the end of March 2008, when funding for the war would end -- EXCEPT for (1) protecting U.S. infrastructure and personnel, (2) training and equipping Iraqi security forces, and (3) “targeted operations, limited in duration and scope, against members of al Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations”!

Those exceptions vitiate any claim that this bill cuts off funds for the war. "Infrastructure and personnel" includes the world's largest embassy and the permanent bases the US is building in Iraq.  "Training and equipping Iraqi security forces" is what Gen. Petraeus is supposed to be doing now (as "they stand up, we stand down," etc.).  And “operations ... against ... al Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations” is the Bush administration's explanation of its war ("fighting them there so we won't have to fight them here," etc.).

In short the bill is a fraud and a charter for the continuation of the war on the same terms that the administration has  been conducting it.

Feingold and the other liberal Democrats do not object to the fact that the US is conducting an aggressive war in the Middle East -- only to how it is being done.  They want a more successful war.  Feingold says that with his bill's enactment "we can finally focus on what should be our top national security priority -- defeating al Qaeda."  But, he says, "Defeating al Qaeda also means recognizing that it is not a one-country franchise ... terrorist networks have developed new capabilities and found new sources of support throughout the world. By redeploying our troops from Iraq, we can refocus on creating a more effective, comprehensive strategy to defeat these networks."

Feingold wants specifically to widen the war in Afghanistan.  Even more incredibly, he says that "Somalia is another instance in which the U.S. government response has been insufficient"!  That, after the US -- having funded warlords in Somalia for years -- employed Ethiopia to invade and overthrow a popular government that arose against those warlords.

The result of the liberal Democrats' policy would be more war, not less.  Feingold says, "We need a strategy for a post-redeployment Iraq and the region that allows us to refocus our global fight [sic] against al-Qaeda."  But of course "we should continue to provide assistance to the Iraqi government and people ... We must not abandon the country and allow it to become another failed state, like Afghanistan in the 1990s or Somalia. If we do, al Qaeda will exploit it to its advantage."

That is of course the administration's announced position.

With their mendacious anti-war talk, the Democrats are playing Good Cop to the administration's Bad Cop.  But the Good Cop and the Bad Cop are on the same side -- trying to manipulate the suspect, who is in this case the US populace.

It's arguable that the twenty Democrats who voted against Feingold's bill are more honest that the 29 who voted for it.  The former are straightforward about their support for the continuation of the war, in spite of the results of last fall's election; the latter (including the presidential candidates), noting that vote and what the polls show, want to appear to be against the war while not really being so.  The Republicans called that bluff early on, saying that if the Democrats really opposed the war, they should use their constitutional power to defund it.  

The Democrats have chosen not to, although they have the votes to do it (only 41 are needed in the Senate), not because they fear the transparent charge that they don't "support the troops," but because they do support the war.  --CGE