[Peace-discuss] Kyl-Lieberman

[C. G. Estabrook]

{The prediction in CounterPunch a month ago -- that "should the bombs 
start to fall on Tehran, most of the Democrats in Congress will be on 
their feet, cheering" -- has come true even before the fact.  If the 
administration orders an attack against Iran -- which they're clearly 
free to do -- will Durbin, who voted for this resolution, say, "But the 
original draft was modified"? --CGE]

	David Bromwich
	Hillary Clinton Votes for War Again

Yesterday, by a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed the Kyl-Lieberman 
amendment in support of military actions against Iran. This is the 
second such endorsement of the president by a senate majority in just 
three months. In July, the Lieberman amendment to "confront Iran" passed 
with the far stronger majority of 97-0.

The original draft of Kyl-Lieberman had asked U.S. forces to "combat, 
contain, and roll back" the Iranian menace within Iraq. But the words 
"roll back" were all too plainly a coded endorsement of hot pursuit into 
Iran; and the senators did not want to go quite so far. To assure a 
larger majority the language was accordingly trimmed and blurred to say 
"that it should be the policy of the United States to stop inside Iraq 
the violent activities and destabilizing influence of the Government of 
the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese 
Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies."

The inclusion of Hezbollah deserves some notice. It is part of a larger 
attempt, already apparent in the Lebanon war of 2006, to manufacture an 
"amalgam" of all the enemies of Israel and the United States throughout 
the region, and to treat them all as one enemy. Those who believe in the 
amalgam will come to agree that many more wars by the United States and 
Israel are needed to crush this enemy.

More provocative is a secondary detail of the amendment, which received 
less notice from the mainstream media. Kyl-Lieberman approves the 
listing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran as a "foreign 
terrorist organization." Now, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard is the 
largest branch of the Iranian military. By granting Vice President 
Cheney's wish (a distant dream in 2005) to put the Iranian guard on the 
U.S. terrorist list, the Senate has classified the army of Iran as an 
army of terrorists. The president, therefore, as he follows out the 
Cheney plan has all the support he requires for asserting in his next 
speech to an army or veterans group that Iran is a nation of terrorists.

It was said during the Vietnam War that "a dead Vietnamese is a Viet 
Cong." It will assuage the conscience for U.S. bombers of Iran to know 
that a dead Iranian is a terrorist. The Senate, by this classification, 
has absolved the bombers in advance.

Hillary Clinton voted in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to press 
the army toward war with Iran. This was an important step, for her, and 
a vote as closely considered as her vote to authorize the bombing and 
occupation of Iraq.

Here are the senators who voted against Kyl-Lieberman:

Biden (D-DE) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Byrd (D-WV) 
Cantwell (D-WA) Dodd (D-CT) Feingold (D-WI) Hagel (R-NE) Harkin (D-IA) 
Inouye (D-HI) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Leahy (D-VT) 
Lincoln (D-AR) Lugar (R-IN) McCaskill (D-MO) Sanders (I-VT) Tester 
(D-MT) Webb (D-VA) Wyden (D-OR)

John McCain and Barack Obama did not vote.

It is a remarkable fact that the war meditated against Iran, like the 
war on Iraq, is sought most keenly by a vice president and president who 
went further than most of their generation to avoid serving their 
country in Vietnam. The fact becomes the more remarkable in view of the 
contempt shown by both men for those who did not cheer and avoid, but 
opposed the Vietnam war by conscientious dissent. The same is true 
across the range of non-combatant neoconservative war architects and 
propagandists. Psychological compensation of an astonishing kind (to say 
no more) is at work in this display of rashness disguised as courage in 
the later careers of our war leaders behind the lines. For several years 
now, the mainstream press and media have said as little as possible 
about it.

Two votes against Kyl-Lieberman were issued from veterans with 
considerable experience and firsthand knowledge of war, Chuck Hagel and 
Jim Webb. If these two men were now to sharpen their dissidence, if they 
could make their reasons articulate and see the present as a time that 
calls them to the sustained work of opposition-- we might have the 
beginnings of a potent resistance which will never come from Harry Reid.

What of the absence of Barack Obama? In a speech in Iowa on September 
12, he addressed by anticipation the matter before the Senate in 
Kyl-Lieberman: "We hear eerie echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq in 
the way that the President and Vice President talk about Iran. They 
conflate Iran and al Qaeda. They issue veiled threats. They suggest that 
the time for diplomacy and pressure is running out when we haven't even 
tried direct diplomacy. Well George Bush and Dick Cheney must hear--loud 
and clear--from the American people and the Congress: you don't have our 
support, and you don't have our authorization for another war."

It is baffling that a man who spoke those words two weeks ago could not 
find the time or the resolve to cast his vote in a conspicuous test for 
authorizing war on Iran. This seems to be one more demonstration of 
Obama's tendency never to take a step forward without a step to the 
side. As for his own message about Iran, it has not been "loud and 
clear," but muffled, wavering, experimental.

With Hillary Clinton, we know where we stand. Yesterday she voted to 
bring the country a serious step closer to war against Iran. And she did 
so for the same reason that she voted to authorize the war on Iraq. She 
thinks the next war is going to happen. She hopes the worst of its 
short-term effects on America will have died down before the election. 
She suspects the media and voters will show more trust for a candidate 
who supported than for one who opposed the war. She wants a ponderous 
establishment of American troops and super-bases to remain in the Middle 
East for years to come. If she wins the presidency, she will inherit the 
command of that army and those bases, and she believes she can manage 
their affairs more prudently than George W. Bush.

Hillary Clinton is consistent. Every move is calculated, her actual 
intentions are masked, but the total drift is easy to comprehend. It is 
not so with Obama. How can he expect anyone to back a man who will not 
back himself?

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