The bottom line today is that despite the clear message from voters in November, Congress has yet to do anything to stop the war in Iraq. The debates over a non-binding resolution to reject Dubya’s troop “surge” were like a peek into a dysfunctional family’s table conversation. If everything about the war in Iraq wasn’t so horrific, the arguments would have been amusing.
First, spitting-mad war supporters fretted, fumed and all but foamed at the mouth, warning of what would happen if the United States “surrendered.” Charlotte’s own Sue Myrick was typical, framing the debate as — surprise — a dire matter of good-vs.-evil. “We cannot retreat! … we are fighting the first battles of a war against radical Islamist ideology that will be waged for the next 50, maybe 100 years,” thundered Sue, recapping her simplistic worldview — and revealing a previously unknown gift for predicting the future. Other GOP Kool-Aid drinkers sounded much the same.
Those in Congress who initially supported the war were even more interesting than the pro-war diehards. Republicans and Democrats alike, these former supporters of Dubya’s Big Adventure, were backpedaling like crazy and offering a variety of excuses for their vote to authorize the war. Hardly any of them, however, got to the heart of the Iraq tragedy — namely, that we never should have invaded the place to begin with.
Other congressmen blamed Bush & Co.’s pre-war intelligence reports for misleading them, but that excuse won’t fly, either. During the pre-war buildup, numerous voices were pointing out problems with Bush’s claims. Not all members of the mainstream press were compliant lapdogs. Plus, frankly, anyone with experience parsing government PR could see what was going on, as the intelligence reports were cherry-picked in order to build a case that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous, imminent menace.
Some members of Congress who voted against a new surge in Iraq still claimed that the war was OK overall, since we had gotten rid of Saddam. Well, big whoop. Three thousand young Americans dead just to eliminate a tinhorn tyrant who couldn’t have threatened Iran, much less the United States? No thanks, that’s not a trade-off Americans should have to live with.
The backpedalers’ most common claim was that the main problem with the war in Iraq has been incompetent management, as if proper supervision of the invasion’s aftermath would have made everything turn out OK. Obviously, BushCo incompetence has been a major setback, but it merely compounded the original “blunder” of attacking a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. And that’s the bottom line truth Congress didn’t come close to facing up to last week.
The invasion was much more than an “oops, my bad” moment; this was a deliberate attack on a sovereign country without provocation. If you’ve read your history, friends, you know that’s serious business. In fact, it’s the Big Taboo of international relations. When a country steps over that line, it becomes, in effect, a rogue, aggressor nation, according to universally held standards of international conduct — the kind of thing for which leaders are tried as war criminals. Don’t expect Congress to face up to their responsibility for going along with this bit of nastiness.
Why Bush & Co. attacked Iraq will be debated for years, but you have to place at least some of the blame on the smug arrogance of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld who, having opted out of Vietnam, saw a way to prove their “toughness,” especially compared to that wimp Bill Clinton. As soon as the 9/11 attacks occurred, the administration’s macho posturing began.
There’s a passage in a new biography of Ariel Sharon by Uri Dan, an Israeli journalist who was very close to the former Prime Minister, in which Bush’s juvenile macho bluster is on full display. Bush told Sharon (as related to the author by Sharon himself), that when Osama bin-Laden was caught, “I will screw him in the ass!” An interesting comment from someone so adamantly opposed to gay marriage, but there you have it. Bush was no doubt intimidated by Sharon’s reputation as a fierce warrior-politician, but whatever the reason for his statement, it’s just the latest episode of our clown president’s miserable inadequacy.
Here’s how bad the situation is regarding Washington and Iraq: The best the Democrats could do was an anti-surge resolution that wouldn’t even have the power of law — and the Senate Republicans won’t even allow a vote on it. Democrats like John Murtha are talking about withholding funds for the war, but most of his fellow Congressional Dems seem scared of a follow-up GOP campaign that would brand them as “not supporting the troops.”
As I’ve written before, Congress should make it clear to Bush that he needs to call together international leaders for a conference to negotiate a political settlement of the Iraqi mess, which he, after all, created. If he doesn’t convene a meeting within 30 days, Congress should gradually cut off war funding, except for what’s needed to get our troops home safely, until Bush gets the picture. Democrats control Congress now largely because of the war, and they need to get moving.
This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 6, 2007.
You voted for a bunch of cut and run cowards, now you are surprised that they don’t have the courage to actually act on their campaign promises. Now that’s funny.