[Peace-discuss] Hypocrisy

[C. G. Estabrook]

    "The Responsible Left:" Funding Obama's Expanding Wars $100 Billion a Vote
     *The cowardly Democrats who checked their spines at the door to Congress
     when they voted Tuesday try to defend their flip-flop on war funding.
     Frankly, it is embarrassing.*
     By Jeremy Scahill

Over the past few days, we reported on how the White House and Democratic 
Congressional Leadership waged a dirty campaign to scare up votes to support 
another $106 billion in funds for their wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. 
Now, several of the so-called anti-war Democrats who left their principles at 
the House coat check on their way in to vote Tuesday are trying to explain away 
their hypocritical votes.

New York Democrat Anthony Weiner, who voted against the war funding in May—when 
it didn’t matter—only to vote Tuesday with the pro-war Dems, sounded like an 
imbecile when he made this statement after the vote: “We are in the process of 
wrapping up the wars. The president needed our support.” What planet is Weiner 
living on? “Wrapping up the wars?” Last time I checked, there are 21,000 more US 
troops heading to Afghanistan alongside a surge in contractors there, including 
a 29% increase in armed contractors. Does Weiner think the $106 billion in war 
funding he voted for is going to pay for one way tickets home for the troops? 
What he voted for was certainly not the “Demolition of the 80 
Football-field-size US Embassy in Baghdad Act of 2009.” To cap off this idiocy, 
Weiner basically admitted he is a fraud when he said the bill he voted in favor 
of “still sucks.”

Jan Schakowsky, who has done some incredibly important work on Blackwater and 
the privatized war machine, also voted against the supplemental in May, but 
switched her vote on Tuesday. “I do believe my president is a peacemaker,” 
Schakowsky said. “I’m going to give him what he wants.” A peacemaker who is 
expanding war? Moreover, what happened to the system of “checks and balances?” 
If Congressmembers, especially anti-war ones like Schakowsky, start just giving 
the president “what he wants,” then where is the peoples’ voice?

How are these people sleeping at night?

Obviously these folks are partisans or else they wouldn’t be Democrats, but this 
“Dear Leader knows best” mentality is cultish. Republican Rep. Ron Paul, who, 
whatever one thinks of him, has been consistently opposed to these wars, put it 
best when he rose on the floor Tuesday to speak against the war funding: “I 
wonder what happened to all of my colleagues who said they were opposed to the 
ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder what happened to my colleagues 
who voted with me as I opposed every war supplemental request under the previous 
administration. It seems, with very few exceptions, they have changed their 
position on the war now that the White House has changed hands.”

One “anonymous” Massachusetts lawmaker told Politico that those Democrats who 
voted for the war funding and IMF credits are “what we call the responsible 
left.” Barney Frank, another flip-flopper on war funding, compared the anti-war 
left to the Rush Limbaugh right-wing, saying, “They have no sense of reality.” 
Perhaps Rep. Frank should ask the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who lobbied 
intensely against the war funding he supported if they have “no sense of reality.”

As previously discussed, this vote was a crucial test—because the White House 
and pro-war Democrats actually needed to get some ‘anti-war’ legislators to vote 
with them or the bill would have failed—in determining which Democrats have a 
spine when it comes to standing up to the war and which are just party 
operatives with their principles and votes up for political bidding.

While the White House reportedly told some Democrats who voted against the war, 
“you’ll never hear from us again,” Obama has made it a point this week to 
intervene to defend those hypocritical “anti-war” legislators who voted with 
him. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn was one of the 51 Democrats who voted against the 
funding in May and then consciously misplaced his principles Tuesday. Cohen was 
targeted for his hypocrisy by activists, spurring President Obama to issue a 
statement to local media in his district praising Cohen:

    The White House Press Office called the Washington bureau of The Commercial 
Appeal late Wednesday afternoon offering the statement after anti-war liberals 
across the country derided Cohen as a “fraud” and one who deserved a place in 
the “Hall of Shame.”

    “Congressman Cohen is a leader in the United States Congress and a strong 
voice for the people of Tennessee,” Obama’s statement declared, adding that 
Cohen’s vote will “ensure our men and women in uniform have the resources they 
need to protect our country.”

What is particularly telling is how Cohen doesn’t even pretend his vote had 
anything to do with principle or representing his constituents. It was simple 
partisanship. “Maybe [Obama] just wanted to respond to people who helped him,” 
Cohen said. “Yes, I was surprised but I’ve been in the president’s corner on 
several occasions and it’s good to have him in my corner.”

All of this sounds, frankly, corrupt. Instead of using cold hard cash, the White 
House threatens to pull the rug from under dissenting legislators and offers its 
support to those who cede their conscience to the president’s agenda. So much 
for change.

This spending bill is likely to sail through the Senate where there is no group 
even vaguely resembling the ever-shrinking anti-war crowd in the House. Once 
again, here are the Democrats who turned their backs on their pledges to vote 
against this war funding:

Yvette Clarke, Steve Cohen, Jim Cooper, Jerry Costello, Barney Frank, Luis 
Gutierrez, Jay Inslee, Steve Kagen, Edward Markey, Doris Matsui, Jim McDermott, 
George Miller, Grace Napolitano, Richard Neal (MA), James Oberstar, Jan 
Schakowsky, Mike Thompson, Edolphus Towns, Nydia Velázquez, and Anthony Weiner.

http://rebelreports.com/post/125855116/the-responsible-left-funding-obamas-expanding-wars