February 4, 2007
Bush and McCain Mistake Cheerleading the Sacrifices They're Demanding of Our Soldiers for Support"To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace." --Tacitus
Republicans in the Senate will reportedly try to block the Democrats' non-binding resolution rebuking Bush on his ongoing escalation of his Iraq occupation. The Republican leadership is looking for a way to filibuster the vote on the resolution by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mi., and others. The minority in the Senate expects that their two alternate Republican proposals will get an equal vote alongside the bipartisan one, and that each would require 60 votes to pass.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, on ABC's 'This Week', called the bipartisan resolution "a vote of no confidence in both the mission and the troops." His own zeal in advocating for a way for even more of our soldiers to remain bogged down in Iraq has reduced the Senator to using demagoguery and desperate appeals to the basest of our emotions as he joins his president in elevating himself above the rest of us in his supposed concern for the "morale" of the troops they've decided should be targets for anyone who would "fight them there." These contemptuous, haters-of-democracy will turn their backs on the verdict of the last election and continue their manufactured state of war in Iraq behind the sacrifices of our nation's defenders.
McCain and others who insist on allowing Bush to continue to dump our soldiers into the middle of Iraq's civil war have mistaken their cheerleading of Bush's bloody fiasco for support for the soldiers they've abandoned there for four years without a sound mission or adequate resources to keep themselves alive while they've waited for one. McCain thinks it's perfectly fine to send thousands more soldiers than Bush has already committed in his escalation to fight and die against the very Iraqis he thinks he's liberating. McCain has conjured up a fantasy where our troops' morale grows each time their tour of duty in Iraq is extended; an imaginary world where our soldiers swell with gratitude each time their leave is shortened, and every time they're called back for another unprecedented repeat deployment.
His president, Bush, is lost in his own self-validating game of world monopoly with the bulk of our soldiers and our nation's defense resources piled on the Iraq space he imagines he bought with our tax trillions that he dishes out like play money. Like McCain, Bush is content to direct our troops around in Iraq like toy soldiers; both as delinquent as the "enemies" and "extremists" who they've sidled our nation alongside as just another miscreant carpetbagger; each vagabond gang looking to exploit and rape Iraq for their own greed, power, and influence. There's plenty of nobility in McCain and Bush's eyes for the soldiers and others they continue to sacrifice in Iraq as their own personal mercenaries in their unending "ideological 'war on terror" they've "decided" to stage there.
There's everything in Iraq to suit Bush and McCain's obsession with empire-building and conquest for the rest of Bush's term and into McCain's imagined one. Iraq has just enough of an increasing rate of individuals who have been compelled to resistant attacks against our forces and against the U.S. junta -- complimented by a never-ending state of chaos and violence -- to satisfy Bush and McCain's self-validating need to posture behind the sacrifices of our soldiers.
"I do believe that if you really believe that this is doomed to failure and is going to cost American lives, then you should do what's necessary to prevent it from happening rather than a vote of 'disapproval,'" McCain said Sunday.
That's what 'bring them home' means, Senator: Get our soldiers out of harm's way, not commit even more. That's what voters demanded in November when they removed Bush's legislative majority in Congress. Our Democratic majority has every cause to turn their backs on McCain and the other Republicans, who, themselves, have turned their backs on the American people's determination to end Bush's occupation.
Democratic leaders can do that by refusing to give any elevated platform to any legislative notion to continue Bush's Iraq fiasco. Americans shouldn't have to waste time with any status quo resolution from Republicans, or anyone else declaring their intention to continue to ignore the will of the people.
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