[Peace-discuss] House of ill repute

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Swanson's argument is better than Hayden's, it seems to me.  --CGE]

	March 12 2010
	Why Hayden's Wrong, Why Pelosi's Lying
	By David Swanson
	AfterDowningStreet

Tom Hayden wants peace, but he's sincerely mistaken about how to get it. He 
claims that Wednesday's unsuccessful vote to end the war in Afghanistan makes 
ending the war less likely, and that the way to end the war is to pass a bill 
that would then have to pass the Senate and the President, a bill requiring an 
exit strategy, any exit strategy -- it could be "redeployment" to Iran in 2038 
or anything else.

I'm not against moving bills forward, even meaningless bills if they send a 
helpful message. I'm not against ending the war in a way that leaves the 
president in charge of Congress, if that proves the fastest way to end the war 
-- even though it leaves us in a state in which more wars are inevitable. I 
don't think we're especially likely to force the House to cut off the funding 
next month.

But forcing a debate on the war, and forcing congress members to put their names 
down on one side or the other, does not make those members more likely to stick 
with those positions. It makes them more likely to oppose the wars. Why? Because 
it raises public awareness and public pressure. Those who voted to end the war 
are now being thanked and rewarded and pressured to vote no on funding what they 
just claimed to want to end. Those who voted to keep the war in Afghanistan 
going are now being pressured to change that position in a way that they were 
not when all was silent. Hayden, of all people, is leaving the public out of his 
calculations.

If we are handed an opportunity to -- at least temporarily -- block the funding, 
because all the Republicans vote No for some unrelated reason, we will need to 
seize that opportunity. It will increase the same dynamic of public involvement. 
It will advance a strategy that is one of the most likely to eventually end the 
wars. And it will advance an understanding of power dynamics in Washington that 
will discourage wars by shifting war powers back away from presidents, something 
that will also be needed in the coming months if we are to end the war in Iraq 
that too many people naively believe we've already ended.

Those who think that opposing wars should involve, you know, opposing wars, 
should build on the recent debate and vote, by joining in upcoming actions 
including:
Brown Bag Vigils, and
Peace of the Action.

Pelosi does not sincerely want anything substantive and tends to lie whenever 
her lips move. And here's what she says about war and impeachment:

Pelosi: The issue that … bothers me the most is the issue of the Iraq War. 
There's so much evidence that there was no reason for us to go into that war at 
that time or to go into it period. But to think that thousands of lives have 
been lost, lives affected to the tune of hundreds of thousands, the cost in 
terms of our military readiness it has not made our military stronger, in terms 
of dollars to the treasury, but again most of all loss of lives our precious 
treasure on this war and there was really no price to pay for it so . . .

Maddow: Do you regret having taken impeachment off the table?

Pelosi: No, no, I believe that the if there was evidence, if we could have the 
evidence to impeach the president then that could come forward. Just because I 
say it's off doesn't mean if the evidence is there that something wouldn't go 
forward. It's not a question of not knowing where the culpability is, it's what 
you can demonstrate and what you can prove. But I do think that those who had a 
hand in perpetrating not just going to war but misrepresentations to the 
American people - . Every piece of evidence that we have points to the fact that 
there was no reason in terms of weapons of mass destruction to go into Iraq…. 
It's one of the great tragedies.

So it is. And truly tragic as well is to brazenness of it. Pelosi's poodle, John 
Conyers, who backed off impeachment at her command, offered a wide and varying 
and self-contradictory list of excuses why, but never present among those 
excuses was any claim of lacking evidence. Conyers' committee staff spent most 
of the relevant years publishing books documenting the evidence. His excuses 
were about electoral campaigns and the corporate media and the likelihood of 
winning conviction in the Senate.

The level of mendacity in Pelosi's remarks above, her dedication to obeying the 
president (articulated just prior to what I've quoted), and her allegiance to 
the war machine: this is what we are up against. We will not defeat it without a 
massive public movement. We will not generate a massive public movement if we 
are afraid of raising the issue, pressing our demands forward, naming names, and 
rewarding and punishing elected officials as merited. This is a life and death 
struggle, brothers and sisters, and it's not going to be won through fear, 
stealth, or timidity.

David Swanson, a Member of the Project Board for Votes for Peace, is the author 
of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More 
Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour 
will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.

	***

	March 12 2010
	Congress Votes on the Afghan War
	By Tom Hayden
	The Nation

A plain reading of yesterday's vote on the Kucinich war powers resolution is 
that an overwhelming majority of the House has authorized the Afghanistan war, 
including a majority of Democrats. The war now has greater legitimacy. The vote 
was 356-65-9.

(If Rep. John Conyers had been present, the dissenting bloc would have been 66, 
including just five Republicans. Few members took the option of abstaining.)

Strong Kucinich supporters will feel vindicated that their hero took a lonely 
stand and forced the House to a moment of choice. Critics will note that a 
dubious war has been legitimized, and that it will be more complicated for those 
who voted "aye" to reverse course in the months ahead.

The outcome will make the anti-war forces appear weaker for now than they are, 
and appearances do matter.

By contrast in Germany, 100-plus members of the Left Party demonstrated inside 
the Bundestag last week against expanding the German troop commitment, and were 
thrown out of the parliament for hours. They too lost the vote, but they made 
their point to the German people and parliament, drawing a sharp line in German 
politics.

As things stand now, most of the same bloc of 65 Congressional dissenters are 
likely to vote against $33 billion in funding for the recent troop escalation, a 
measure introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee. That means a two-thirds House majority 
soon will be voting to fund the escalation. Soon after will come the vote on 
funding the war for the next year.

The fact is that peace forces inside and outside of Congress lack sufficient 
support to terminate war funding.

Perhaps, therefore, a two-year strategy will receive consideration.

A majority of Democrats already support HR 2404, the exit strategy resolution 
being prepared by Rep. Jim McGovern. The measure, which was opposed by the White 
House, needs updating and amending. If subject to hearings, McGovern's 
initiative might flesh out what the Obama administration has in mind when 
planning to "begin" withdrawing by summer 2011. Depending on the formulation, 
the McGovern measure might win a Democratic majority and even pass the House, a 
signal to Obama that the Democrats are beginning to pull away.

A strategy to amend the funding bills might also win much greater Democratic 
support than a straight yes/no vote. None of the possible amendments has been 
discussed significantly, but they might include a requirement of all-party peace 
talks in Kabul, a deadline for US troop withdrawal, and lifting the secrecy 
around Pakistan, among others. McGovern is collaborating with Sen. Russ 
Feingold, who tentatively plans to introduce a "flexible timeline for troop 
reductions" on the Senate side.

None of this will please the peace movement.

But neither are Obama and the Democrats likely to avoid a growing quagmire in 
the next two election cycles, at budget costs reaching trillions of dollars for 
Iraq and Afghanistan, and thousands of American lives. Twice the American people 
have been manipulated into sending 250,000 troops (cumulatively) into Iraq and 
Afghanistan on the pretext of hunting an Al Qaeda which wasn't there. The real 
hunt is a secret CIA operation for Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders hidden in the 
wilds of Pakistan. If they simply avoid capture, Obama loses, and the spreading 
occupation goes on. If bin Ladin is killed (a big if), Obama wins, and the 
spreading occupation goes on anyway.

Source: The Nation

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