on Iraq: Blank Check Democrats

[yurbud]

I think there is some strategery to what the Democrats are doing. They figure if they wait for Republicans to end the war, the Democrats can't be blamed for it in the future as happened with Vietnam.

Apart from the morality of that, I don't think it will work. If the Republicans still control as much of the media in 20 years, they can make it look like Bill Clinton personally started the war if they want to and they'd get away with it.

This passive approach might work if they said what they were doing out loud instead of pretending they are trying to end the war then going limp instead of for the jugular.

As I write this, another alleged attempt by Congressional Democrats to begin bringing home a sizable minority of troops from Iraq seems to be going the way of every other previous attempt. That is, to the dustbin of history. The reasons given this time by the Democrats are as pathetic as those provided previously. You know the litany: they don't have the votes, the GOP is threatening a filibuster if the troop withdrawal limits are attached to the bill, they don't want to harm the troops in the field, and so on. Now I don't know about you, but isn't leaving the troops in the war zone more dangerous than bringing them home? Furthermore, if the Republicans can filibuster a spending bill to prevent the inclusion of elements in the bill that they don't like, can't the majority Democrats also filibuster that same bill to make sure those same elements are included?

I mean, we're not talking about halting funding for the war and occupation and bringing the troops home starting tomorrow here, even though that is what we should be talking about. No, we're talking about a bill that essentially suggests to Mr. Bush that he take $50 billion more for the war and start thinking about bringing some of the troops home as soon as possible with the idea that a good number of them are no longer in Iraq by December 2008. That's not a hell of a lot to ask for. Yet, the Democrats are backing off from this lily-livered legislation and planning on giving the White House another $50 billion with no strings attached, not even the silly string of the aforementioned withdrawal suggestion. To top it off, the Democrats are telling the press that it's the Republican's fault that they refuse to stand their ground.

"We've tried maybe a dozen times" to bring troops home, said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "And when we do try and we don't succeed, we still provide funding for the troops." In other words, they still provide monies for the war. If the Boston Red Sox had this attitude, they would never have made it to the World Series in 2004 and 2007. But then again, baseball teams don't conspire with their competition to get to the championship, they play them harder than they are being played because they truly want to win. If the Democrats truly wanted to end the war, they would stand up to the challenges of the war supporters across the aisle and in the White House. Instead, they hedge their bets, blame their opponents for their failures, and vote for more war. All of which makes it harder for those of us who truly oppose the war and occupation to vote for any of them.

http://counterpunch.com/jacobs12132007.html">FULL TEXT