Wind them up and watch them fall down. The US Democrats in Congress turn from ostensible antiwar warriors at election time to spineless war enablers at budget throwdown time. Then watch them wriggle as antiwar activist groups bravely struggle to surgically implant new backbones into these political hacks.
Finally, watch as the Democrats and Republicans edge toward some kind of "bipartisan compromise". Their shared imperial principle is not to "tie the hands of the President as Commander in Chief". They would rather blame the Iraqis for the mess and hence impose "benchmarks" on the theoretically sovereign and independent government of that shattered country.
The process is still unfolding in slow motion, but here's the sequence in brief. In November, voters sent the message 'Get our soldiers out of Iraq, quick."
They gave the Democrats narrow majorities in both houses of Congress. The political elites sent a similar message to president Bush in the form of the Iraq Study Group report.
The Bush gang responded to both by trashing the ISG report and sending 20,000 more troops to Baghdad. This so-called surge that has created a "target-rich" environment for insurgents and jihadists. And by forcing the Mahdi Army to stop patrolling the streets of Sadr City, it has left the Shia population exposed to increasingly murderous car bomb attacks.
A few weeks ago the United States was traumatised by close to three dozen murders by a deranged student at Virginia Tech University. In Baghdad alone, a massacre of that magnitude occurs pretty much every day, and often much worse. The Democratic leadership came into power in Congress talking big about "the power of the purse" to force Bush into "timetable" for withdrawal from Iraq. The power, in theory, is considerable. The hundreds of billions of dollars thrown down the Iraq war rathole is not part of the obscene regular US military budget (in order to make the federal budget deficit look smaller than it is).
The war funding requires periodic "supplementary" or "emergency" appropriations, at the time when support for the war is collapsing.
What the
strength into weakness? Partly it's their internal divisions. An "Out of Iraq" caucus is contending with a faction of conservatives in the party while the leadership - Nancy Pelosi in the House of Representatives and Harry hands of the Commander in Chief".
More and more of the American public wants to hear a political leadership say: "Yes, we want to tie the president's hands. We want to tie his feet, and we want to put him in a straitjacket, and it wouldn't hurt to stuff a gag in his mouth too."
That will simply never happen, not only because the Democrats are divided but because they aspire to take over the office of the Imperial Presidency, not to curb it.
After lengthy internal wrangling, the House and Senate Democrats - with the reluctant support of most of the party's antiwar wing -managed to push through a bill on war spending.
The bill authorised funding ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to the tune of $124 billion(!) while imposing an October deadline for beginning the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The whole effort was deeply flawed, but it hardly mattered since a Bush veto was a foregone conclusion.
Bush is demanding a war spending bill with no conditions attached. Meanwhile the antiwar lobby More and more of the American public wants to hear a political leadership say: "Yes, we want to tie the president's hands. We want to tie his feet, and we want to put him in a straitjacket, and it wouldn't hurt to stuff a gag in his mouth too." Escalation in Iraq, includthe following message from
In the past few days, we trial balloons signaling a significant weakening of the Democratic position. this, we want to be perfectly clear: If Democrats appear to capitulate to Bush - passing a bill without measures to end the war - the unity Democrats have enjoyed....will immediately disappear.'
The compromise apparently emerging is to tie the hands, not of criminal-inchief Bush but rather those of Iraqi prime minister alMaliki. "Benchmarks" will be written down under which the Iraqis will be required to meet timetables for "progress". They will be called upon to reduce sectarian bloodshed, take over security in Baghdad, and what of course really matters, open Iraq's oil industry for foreign investment.
Such targets will be essentially meaningless. They have nothing to do with the real-life Iraq disaster and Bush can issue one of his notorious "signing statements" that makes them null and void anyway. They'll provide a pretext for funding the next round of carnage until the next emergency funding comes up. expands, the white noise of mate change builds. editor of the US socialist journal Against the Current. Check out www.solidarity-us.orgfor a new feature on the immigrant rights struggle in the