[Peace-discuss] House Votes Today on Afghan, Pakistan Wars

[Brussel Morton K.]

It is a blatant lie to say that I defended Obama, and this statement reveals a kind of turpitude that I should not have expected. Furthermore, you know that I didn't vote Democratic (for Obama), so your second sentence is simply disingenuous obfuscation. 

You might remember that in the previous election, Gill was against the Iraq war;  Johnson supported it and the policies of Bush. My contacts with Gill, although limited,  were encouraging: He explicitly stated his opposition to our wars and occupations and to U.S. militarism in general (Is Johnson voting for cutting the military budget—and by how much if at all?. How has he voted on that budget?).  Whether Gill would vote the way I prefer if in Congress is unanswerable now, but his stances in the past were far superior to those of Johnson, not only on the issues of militarism, terrorism, national "security", and war and peace, but on many other progressive issues as well.  

Your manichean approach to these candidates is unworthy if not unusual. 

--mkb

P.S. I am sending this to Gill to see if and how he responds. 



On Jul 27, 2010, at 9:52 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> This is unworthy of you, Mort. It's also stupid to stay with a candidate just
> because he's a Democrat.
> 
> We have a Congressional representative (whom I ran against in 2002) who voted for the invasion of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.
> 
> He now says he was wrong to do so.  More importantly, he has promised to vote
> against any more funding for the Mideast war - and he has consistently voted that way.  Isn't that what we've been trying to get Congress members to do?
> 
> His rather desperate opponent refuses to make a similar promise. (Since Gill has little chance anyway - look at the returns for the last 3 or 4 elections in the 15th CD - he wouldn't want to offend anyone who's either for or against the war.) He asks us to vote for him (because he's a Democrat) and then he'll decide later how much blood he wants on his hands.
> 
> Haven't you been lied to enough?  Of course, I do remember your defending Obama
> in similar terms.  How do you think that's worked out?
> 
> How long will they be able to seduce and abandon you?  --CGE
> 
> 
> On 7/27/10 9:25 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>> Plugging for Tim Johnson is becoming tedious. So is denigrating David Gill.
>> 
>> I'll bet on Gill's humane qualities any day over Johnson's. I suspect that
>> there's more behind your campaign for Johnson than just his  (recent
>> opportunistic?) war issues  He goes to church and he's against abortion .
>> Does he still believe in the war on terror, which at least until recently he
>> supported? Forget about public health and other issues such as taxes and the
>> economy.
>> 
>> --mkb
>> 
>> On Jul 27, 2010, at 8:05 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> 
>>> Rep.Johnson voted for the Kucinich-Paul resolution.
>>> 
>>> His arrogant Democratic opponent, David Gill, seems to want us to vote for
>>> him without telling us how he would vote on war funding. Would he have
>>> voted for the Kucinich-Paul resolution?
>>> 
>>> Given the consistent lying from Democrats about what they'd do in regard to
>>> the war, I can see no reason for people opposed to the war to vote for them
>>> in November. Certainly not for David Gill, when he will not even echo Tim
>>> Johnson's promise to vote against money for war in the Mideast. --CGE
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 7/27/10 11:53 AM, Robert Naiman wrote:
>>>> [Note that while we can be pretty confident that Rep. Johnson will vote
>>>> no on the war money, we have no such assurance, as far as I am aware,
>>>> that he will support the Kucinich-Paul measure calling for the withdrawal
>>>> of U.S. forces from Pakistan; another reason to call, using the toll-free
>>>> number provided below.]
>>>> 
>>>> The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote this afternoon on the
>>>> wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
>>>> 
>>>> This morning, the Senate version of the Afghanistan war supplemental was
>>>> brought up in the House under "suspension" rules, which require a 2/3
>>>> majority to pass. This expedited procedure is generally used for measures
>>>> considered "uncontroversial," which is odd, to say the least, since the
>>>> war in Afghanistan is anything but uncontroversial, with the most recent
>>>> evidence being the release by Wikileaks of secret documents on the war,
>>>> which the New York Times reported "offers an unvarnished, ground-level
>>>> picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than
>>>> the official portrayal." [...] If 90% of the Members who voted for the
>>>> McGovern-Obey-Jones amendment on July 1 vote no this afternoon on the war
>>>> supplemental, the measure will fail. [...] Also on the House calendar
>>>> today is H.Con.Res. 301, a "privileged resolution" introduced by Reps.
>>>> Dennis Kucinich, Bob Filner, and Ron Paul, which invokes the War Powers
>>>> Act to force a debate and vote on the deployment of U.S. forces in
>>>> Pakistan.
>>>> 
>>>> As Representative Kucinich points out, what U.S. forces are doing in
>>>> Pakistan has never been authorized by Congress. The 2001 authorization of
>>>> military force targeted those who planned and carried out the September
>>>> 11 attacks and those who harbored them. It was not a blank check to
>>>> attack anyone we don't like, or anyone our friends don't like. U.S.
>>>> forces in Pakistan are targeting people who did not, as far as we know,
>>>> plan or participate in the September 11 attacks, and against whom no
>>>> evidence has been presented that they harbor those who did. Whether one
>>>> thinks the enterprise worthy or not, U.S. participation in a war against
>>>> the internal foes of Pakistan has never been authorized by Congress.
>>>> There's nothing in the 2001 authorization of military force about a
>>>> barter agreement in which we attack people in Pakistan that the Pakistani
>>>> government doesn't like in exchange for permission to attack people in
>>>> Pakistan that we don't like.