Democrats
Seek Accommodation
With Bush Administration
To Continue Iraq Occupation
By Joe Kay
21 November 2006
World
Socialist Web
Over
the weekend, leading Democrats pledged their eagerness to work closely
with the Bush administration in forging a bipartisan policy to continue
the occupation of Iraq, and voiced their support for a substantial increase
in the military budget and the recruitment of more Army troops.
The remarks come amidst an
intense debate within ruling circles over how to salvage the Iraq occupation
and preserve the interests of American imperialism in the Middle East.
While several different options are being considered, the possibility
of an immediate withdrawal of some or all troops—the position
supported by the vast majority of those who voted for Democratic candidates
in the elections held less than two weeks ago—has been removed
from the table.
Steny Hoyer, the Maryland
congressman who was selected by the Democratic caucus to be the new
House Majority Leader last week, set the Democratic Party’s tone
in an interview on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”
on ABC News on Sunday. Stephanopoulos asked Hoyer to respond to the
position of Arizona Republican Senator John McCain that more US troops
should be sent to Iraq. He also noted that one of the options under
consideration by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group is to increase US troop
strength to help crush militias operating in Baghdad.
“If that temporary
increase is consistent with a plan to transition and to redeploy”
US forces, Hoyer said, then he would be prepared to go along with it.
Hoyer also repeated the position of many Democrats and sections of the
military brass that the main problem with the Bush administration’s
Iraq policy has been that not enough troops were sent in to begin with.
Hoyer’s comments were
a clear signal to the Bush administration that the Democrats would support
a troop increase if it could be packaged as a step towards an eventual
drawdown. To emphasize this point, Hoyer stated toward the end of his
interview that US troops were placed in danger not because they are
forced to fight in Iraq, but because “their lack of numbers exposes
them on a daily basis to danger and death.”
The new Majority Leader also
made clear that the Democrats would not consider cutting off funding
for the Iraq occupation. “We are not going to de-fund the troops
in the field, period,” he said. The power to cut off spending
on a war is the ultimate power wielded by Congress to compel the executive
branch to change its foreign policy. Rejecting that out of hand means
that the Bush administration can continue the war in Iraq, as Bush has
pledged, until the end of his term in office, January 20, 2009.
These statements highlight
the significance of the House Democrats’ vote last week for Hoyer
over John Murtha, the candidate supported by incoming House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi. Murtha, who has close ties to sections of the military
and for decades stood on the right wing of the Democratic Party caucus
in Congress, came to public attention nearly a year ago when he spoke
out in the House for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
In the run-up to the vote
for majority leader last week, Murtha came under attack from the media
and fellow Democrats over his involvement in the Abscam bribery scandal
over a quarter century ago. Abscam was resurrected as a means to vilify
Pelosi and Murtha, but the real issue was Murtha’s position on
the war.
While Murtha was useful in
attracting antiwar support for Democratic congressional candidates on
November 7, there is no significant support for the immediate withdrawal
position, either in the Democratic caucus or in the American ruling
elite as a whole. While issues of policy, regional interests, even personality
undoubtedly affected the closed-door secret-ballot vote, the war in
Iraq was uppermost. The Democrats decided by an overwhelming 149-86
vote that they did not want to go into the new Congress with a majority
leader strongly identified in the public mind with a call for withdrawal.
Hoyer’s statement came
one day after remarks by the leader of the Senate Democrats, Harry Reid,
during the Democrats’ weekly radio address. Reid called for a
“change of course” and said that he was “encouraged
the president is finally listening to outside experts and members of
Congress,” a reference in particular to the Iraq Study Group.
“Working together,” Reid said, “we must craft a new
way forward—one that allows Iraq to be stabilized, and our troops
to begin to come home. On Iraq, and elsewhere, Democrats pray the president
will work with us, because we’re ready to work with him.”
Last week, Reid said that
one of his top priorities in the Senate will be to provide an additional
$75 billion in funding for the military, particularly to rebuild the
Army and the Marine Corps, severely depleted by the losses of both manpower
and equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan. The invasion and occupation of
Iraq has already cost an estimated $350 billion.
The Democrats are clearly
pushing the question of troop withdrawal into the distant future, while
the immediate task is “stabilization”—that is, a new
bloodbath against organizations hostile to the American presence in
Iraq. The US military has long been planning major operations against
Shiite militias in Baghdad, particularly that controlled by Moqtada
al-Sadr.
Whether or not this will
require an increase in US troops in Iraq is one of the major issues
currently being debated within the political establishment. Democratic
Senator Carl Levin, the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, spoke out against an increase in troop strength during an
interview on CNN’s “Late Edition” on Sunday. However,
Levin also made clear that his position—that the US should announce
it will begin withdrawing US forces from Iraq in four to six months—is
not a call for an end to the occupation.
Levin stressed that he was
not advocating a specific timetable for the removing “all or even
most of our troops” and said that a substantial US military presence
would continue indefinitely. “We do not have a complete withdrawal”
in any of our proposals, he said. Levin’s hope is that threatening
the Iraqi government with a partial withdrawal will serve to pressure
the different factions of the ruling strata in Iraq to reach some accommodation
with each other.
One issue about which the
different factions of the ruling establishment are generally agreed
on is the need for an increase in the size of the US military as a whole,
which is seen as a necessary precondition for increasing US forces in
Iraq. On Sunday, the New York Times’ lead editorial (“The
Army We Need”) expressed the view that “the Army’s
overall authorized strength needs to be increased some 75,000 to 100,000
more than Mr. Rumsfeld had in mind for the next several years.”
The Times is here expressing the position of leading Democrats, who
have long pushed for increasing the number of soldiers in the Army and
Marine Corps.
In testimony before the Armed
Services Committee last week, General John Abizaid, the top US commander
for the Middle East, ruled out troop reductions but said that increasing
the size of the US presence was infeasible, given the existing strains
on the military. The timing of this testimony was very significant,
coming shortly after the election, as it was intended to shift discussion
away from any talk of withdrawing US forces.
Lurking in the background
of the debate over increasing the size of the military is the question
of the draft. Democrat Charles Rangel, the incoming Chairman of the
House Ways and Means Committee, reiterated on CBS’s “Face
the Nation” his support for the implementation of the draft. “If
we are going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea, and some people
have called for more troops in Iraq,” he said, “we can’t
do that” without the draft. “I don’t see how anyone
can support the war and not support the draft.”
Rangel pledged that he would
reintroduce a bill to initiate the draft, a proposal that has been supported
by many Democratic strategists, as one of his first acts in the new
session of Congress next year.
Republican Senator Lindsey
Graham, speaking after Rangel, said that he also supports an increase
in the size of the military, but that he felt that this could be done
with an all-volunteer force. If this is not possible, however, Graham
said, “We’ll look for some other option.”
In the debates over how to
salvage the occupation, the Democrats are largely lining up behind the
Iraq Study Group, set up by some congressional Republicans to propose
a new US strategy in Iraq. Prominently represented within this group
are former members of the first Bush and Clinton administrations, who
have certain tactical differences with the present Bush administration
and figures such as Vice President Cheney and outgoing Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld.
Leading Democrats, including
Reid, have also already declared their full support for Bush’s
new nomination for defense secretary, Robert Gates. Gates was a longtime
CIA operative under President Reagan and served as CIA director under
Bush senior. He played a major role in the Iran-Contra scandal, and
was also involved in American support for Islamic fundamentalists in
Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden, during the proxy war with the
Soviet Union in the 1980s.
Reid said on Friday that
Gates should be confirmed easily within the next few weeks.
The statements of Democrats
in recent days highlight the central fact that there is no section of
the political establishment opposed to the war, even though this is
the position of the majority of the American people. On the contrary,
in the aftermath of the election, the Democrats are seeking to forge
a new pro-war consensus to defend the interests of the American ruling
elite. As the population of the US is moving to the left, the ruling
elite is responding by moving sharply to the right.
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