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

Wed Jul 28 08:20:20 CDT 2010

If folks want to support David Gill because they like his positions on
other issues better than Rep. Johnson's, that is one thing; with that
position I have no argument.

But anti-war folks ought to acknowledge clearly that by deeds, Rep.
Johnson is now one of the most anti-war members of Congress, certainly
one of the most anti-war Republicans.

As Carl pointed out, Rep. Johnson voted yesterday for the
Kucinich-Paul-Filner resolution demanding the withdrawal of U.S.
troops from Pakistan. As you can see from the roll call, the vote on
this resolution was 38 - 372: 32 Democrats and 6 Republicans voted
yes; less than 10% of the House were in support.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/roll473.xml

A key task of anti-war activists is to produce more such people, so we
ought to celebrate whatever we did to help create this one. I think it
might be a stretch to say we "pressured" Johnson to turn against the
war, since electorally he is Representative-for-Life, unless he is
"caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy," in Edwin Edwards'
immortal phrase.

But I think we had a significant effect in helping to change his mind;
in particular, I think the anti-war referenda had an effect in showing
local support for the anti-war position. As Ricky and I have recounted
before, we were at Brookens in 2006 watching the tallies in favor of
the referendum on withdrawal from Iraq when we saw Tim give his
victory speech, in which he said, as I remember, something along the
lines of "the American people have spoken" (referring also to the
national results, in which Democrats retook the House) and it's time
to turn around our policy in Iraq.

I'm glad that David Gill is running. Running for office can be a real
a pain in the butt, and it's a bad thing for such an important
position like Member of Congress to be uncontested, even if the
prospects for electoral victory are imperceptible. So I appreciate his
willingness to do this, and to try to run a real campaign.

But while I have not followed the recent conversations with Gill about
war and peace issues in detail, it seemed to me in the past that he
was parsing his statements politically in a way that was both
unsatisfying from an anti-war perspective and mysterious in terms of
strategy. I could understand parsing statements this way if one had a
real chance of winning in a conservative district. But in this
district, with no chance of winning, why not just tell the truth? It's
not going to have any significant negative impact on the electoral
result, and one of the key purposes of running, especially when there
is no prospect of electoral victory, is to have a media platform for
telling the truth.

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 6:16 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> It's not enough to have a Congressional representative vote to defund the
> war - we have to be sure he's doing it for the right reason?
>
> The House votes no more money for war - and we have to plumb the souls of
> the no voters before we approve?
>
> And while we're probing souls, what do we say about that of a candidate who
> arrogantly refuses to tell us how he'll vote? He's supposed to do that so we
> can decide whether to vote for him or not.  Instead, he's marketing himself
> like toothpaste. (I admit that's what Obama did.)
>
> And we are spending far too much time on this.  David Gill has no chance of
> being elected.  It's a gerrymandered Republican district (as he points out)
> in a year when there will be a substantial vote against the administration
> and the Democrats.  Under those circumstances, he can't expect even to do as
> well as his 2-1 losses before. Does he think he'll get Tea-party support?
>  There isn't even a strong enough pro-war sentiment in the district for his
> attempt to stay to the right of Johnson on the war to garner him many votes.
>
> Let's get back to an issue more serious than David Gill's bashfulness about
> his views on killing people - like dirty T-shirts...  --CGE
>
>
> On 7/28/10 4:40 AM, Stuart Levy wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 04:08:04AM -0500, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>
>>> I have no idea how you voted, but I'll leave it to the candid member of
>>> AWARE to say whether you "defended Obama" by objecting vigorously to my
>>> news summaries that criticized his candidacy and pointed out his
>>> obfuscation of his position on the war.  I recall that you exploded at
>>> one
>>> TV taping when I guyed you a bit for offering a "commercial for Obama."
>>>
>>> I know that our present system is a parody of democracy, but in principle
>>> we're supposed to vote for legislative candidates who will vote correctly
>>> on the issues. There is no issue more important than the war this year,
>>> and
>>> it seems that, unusually enough, we have a choice: an incumbent who is
>>> consistently voting against the war, as he promised to do; and an
>>> opponent
>>> who refuses to make a similar promise.  The choice isn't hard for anyone
>>> opposed to the war.
>>
>> Well... as I mentioned in David Gill's facebook thread, we still don't
>> know why Tim Johnson has flipped on the wars (even though I called him
>> this week to confirm that I'm glad he did).  And as I said there,
>> one can imagine several plausible reasons -- including that this war
>> is now being promoted by a President of the opposite party, which could
>> change in a couple years.  If a President Palin attacks Venezuela,
>> what would Johnson think of that?  Given that uncertainty, I don't think
>> the
>> choice is as clear as you say.
>>
>> It'll mean more if we can see that Gill is taking a position which is
>> opposed to the President of his own party.  He's done that on health care,
>> as far as I can see.  And Gill commented, just last night, after
>> conferring
>> with Progressive Dems. of America, that he will now issue a position
>> on (I think) war funding, which he had not done before.
>> I look forward to reading it.
>>
>>
>>> On 7/27/10 10:40 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
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-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

Urge Congress to Support a Timetable for Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern