Democrats
Criticize Iraq “Surge”,
But Won’t Cut War Funds
By Patrick Martin
10 January, 2007
World
Socialist Web
The
two top congressional Democratic leaders have publicly opposed the Bush
administration’s plans to dispatch more troops to Iraq, while
signaling to the White House that there will be no serious effort to
prevent an escalation of the slaughter as the bloodbath in Iraq heads
towards its fifth year.
The two-faced character of
the Democratic posture is the product of their need to speak to two
audiences at the same time: the American voters, largely working class
and middle class, who voted for Democratic candidates last November
7 to express their opposition to the war; and the American ruling elite,
whose social and economic interests, within the US and worldwide, the
Democratic Party is committed to defend.
Public opinion is overwhelmingly
against Bush’s plan for a “surge” of additional military
forces into Iraq One recent poll showed only 11 percent favoring the
deployment of more troops, while over 50 percent supported withdrawal
of all US forces by the end of 2007. A second poll found that even when
the alternatives were heavily loaded in favor of the escalation, with
those polled asked to assume that the increase in troops would stabilize
Iraq, more were opposed than in favor.
Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought to appease this massive antiwar
sentiment with a letter to Bush that was made public January 5, followed
up by Reid giving the Democratic Party’s response Saturday to
Bush’s weekly radio address, and Pelosi appearing Sunday on the
CBS interview program “Face the Nation.”
The letter offered Bush the
cooperation of the Democratic Congress in “finding an end to the
war in Iraq,” citing the death toll among American troops, now
past the 3,000 mark, and called for a decision “to begin the phased
redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months.”
“Our troops and the
American people have already sacrificed a great deal for the future
of Iraq,” they write. “After nearly four years of combat,
tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars,
it is time to bring the war to a close. We, therefore, strongly encourage
you to reject any plans that call for our getting our troops any deeper
into Iraq.”
The Democratic letter does
not challenge the basis of the war and expresses the wish to contribute
to the “success” of the Bush military intervention. Not
only that, the Democrats attribute this position to the American people
as well, portraying the election results as the product of the public
belief that the Iraq intervention has failed to achieve Bush’s
war aims, not to popular opposition to the war itself.
“The American people
demonstrated in the November elections that they do not believe your
current Iraq policy will lead to success,” Reid and Pelosi write.
This effectively accepts the argument put forward by the White House
and its neo-conservative backers that the public will support a victorious
war, regardless of the casualties, and that administration policy should
therefore be based on achieving military victory.
The Democrats’ differences
with Bush revolve around whether military victory is achievable, not
about the legitimacy of Bush’s initial decision to invade and
occupy Iraq, which the congressional Democratic leadership largely supported,
and which nearly every Democrat in Congress has backed materially by
voting to fund the military budget.
The cringing character of
the letter is underscored by its language—it closes with Reid
and Pelosi pleading, “We appreciate you taking these views into
consideration”—and by its timing—only a few days before
Bush goes on national television to announce an escalation plan that
was largely worked out before the Democratic Party missive was issued.
The initial inclination of
the incoming Democratic congressional leadership was to focus on a handful
of cosmetic measures on domestic policy—tightening ethics rules,
a minimum wage increase, minuscule improvements in the Medicare drug
plan and college student loan subsidies—and avoid as long as possible
any public engagement with the White House over the war.
One top House Democrat, Rahm
Emanuel of Illinois, told the Washington Post, “I know where support
for more troops is, and I know where support is for the minimum-wage
increase. I’d rather be doing what we’re doing.”
The downplaying of the war
issue was flatly in defiance of public opinion. A CBS poll published
January 4 found that 45 percent of voters want the Congress to focus
on Iraq, compared to only 7 percent regarding the economy as the first
priority, 7 percent for health care, and 6 percent for immigration.
This decision was essentially
a reprise of the political strategy carried out by the Democratic leadership
in the 2002 congressional elections, when they sought to confine campaign
discussion to domestic issues and avoid the overriding question of the
war, even though the Bush administration was seeking a vote on a resolution
to authorize military action, which passed the House and Senate only
days before the election.
The congressional Democrats
were only compelled to address the war issue by political necessity,
when it became clear that Bush would give a national television speech
this week announcing a decision to send more troops to Iraq. According
to the Post, Pelosi summoned a meeting of chairman of the committees
with relevant jurisdiction—Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence,
Homeland Security, and Oversight and Government Reform—and the
decision was taken to move scheduled hearings up from the end of January
to begin on Thursday, the day after Bush’s speech.
The hearings themselves will
be narrowly focused. There will be no examination of the lies employed
by the Bush administration, about weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi
ties to Al Qaeda, to intimidate public opinion in the run-up to the
war. As Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said,
“Our purpose is not to revisit the past, but to help build a consensus
behind a new course for America in Iraq.”
Reid’s radio speech
Saturday and Pelosi’s Sunday appearance on “Face the Nation”
were further demonstrations of the half-hearted and fundamentally dishonest
character of the Democratic Party “opposition” to the war.
Reid cited the opposition
in the Pentagon to the proposed “surge” in troops into Baghdad.
“Based on the advice of current and former military leaders, we
believe this tactic would be a serious mistake,” he said in his
reply to Bush.
Pelosi repeatedly declared
in her television interview that the Democrats would not cut off funding
for the war, portraying that as an action that would endanger the American
troops now deployed in Iraq—covering up the reality that the greatest
danger to the lives of American soldiers is the right-wing cabal in
the White House, which ordered them to Iraq in the first place.
She suggested, tentatively
and timidly, that a White House request for additional funds to expand
the war would “receive the harshest scrutiny,” although
this language itself suggested hearings and the raising of questions,
not an actual denial of the funding.
As in the letter, Pelosi
reiterated that the outgoing US commanders in Iraq were opposed to additional
troop deployment, since it would only further inflame the nationalist
opposition to the US occupation and provide more targets for bombs,
mortars and sniper fire—particularly if coupled with more aggressive
street-level patrols in which the US troops leave their armored vehicles.
Even this level of opposition
was too much for other prominent Democrats, including two potential
presidential candidates. Biden, an announced presidential candidate,
declared on a Sunday television interview program that it would be unconstitutional
for Congress to limit troop levels or cut funding for an escalation
of the war, since Congress had authorized the war in the first place.
He said the surge plan was “a tragic mistake,” but added
that “as a practical matter, there is no way to say, ‘Mr.
President, stop.’”
Senator Barack Obama of Illinois
told Newsweek magazine in an interview last week that Bush would likely
have at least a further year of untrammeled control over the war. “To
anticipate your question,” he told the magazine, “is Congress
going to be willing to exercise its control over the purse strings to
affect White House policy? I am doubtful that that is something we are
willing to do in the first year.”
In other words, the congressional
Democrats will permit the war to continue until the election year, when
they will adopt a (purely verbal) antiwar posture in the congressional
and presidential campaign. Newsweek observed, “[d]on’t expect
Obama—or most other Dems—to try to block George W. Bush
when he asks Congress in the coming weeks for another billion-dollar
bundle for the war. The party won’t deny the funds, and may not
even try to attach conditions to them.”
The Democrats are prepared
to back an even wider use of military power. The new House Majority
Leader, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, gave an interview to the Jerusalem
Post, published Sunday, in which called for stepped up diplomatic pressure
and economic sanctions against Iran, while not rejecting military action.
“I have not ruled that out,” he said, in response to a question
about possible air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “It
is not an option we want to consider until we know there is no other
option.”
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