Democrats
For War
By Joshua Frank
12 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
precipitous decline of antiwar sentiment within the Democratic Party
has been on grand display over the past few months. The majority of
leading Democrats say they oppose the war in Iraq, but still refuse
to cut funding. And when Bush vetoes the pork-swollen appropriations
bill, which he's promised to do, the Democrats have pledged to compromise,
rewrite the bill, and grant President Bush exactly what he wants: more
cash and no timetable for troop withdraw from Iraq.
"We're not going to
cut off funding for the troops,'' said Senate Armed Services Committee
Chairman Carl Levin over the weekend on ABC's This Week. "But what
we should do, and we're going to do, is continue to press this president
to put some pressure on the Iraqi leaders to reach a political settlement.''
Levin also stated that Democrats
would take out language calling for troop withdrawal, but reiterated
that they would not "vote to cut funding, period." Sen. Chuck
Schumer of New York defended Levin as well as the Party's forthcoming
concession, "We will try to come up with a way by talking with
the White House, trying to compromise with the White House that both
supports the troops and yet changes the strategy in Iraq,'' Schumer
said on the Fox News Sunday.
The Democrats may not have
enough votes to overturn a Bush veto, but they certainly have enough
to filibuster the war-funding bill, which at this point is the only
way to stop this god-awful disaster. One brave Democrat could take a
stand, filibuster, and 40 more senators could then abstain from breaking
the filibuster. That is all it would take. Bush would then have to be
the one to compromise and produce a plan that was acceptable to the
41 Senate Democrats who want to end the war.
But, of course, we are more
likely to see Dick Cheney drinking margaritas with Cindy Sheehan on
the White House lawn before we'd witness this scenario play out. Indeed
the Democrats have assured us that they will continue to fund Bush's
egregious war. There will be absolutely no fight in Congress to stop
it. The bloodshed will rage on. More money wasted, more innocent Iraqis
dead.
Betrayal after betrayal and
we are still told that the Democrat Party is the only vehicle for change
in this country. We are told they are the only ones who will halt the
madness of the Bush Regime. Well, we elected the Democrats to office
last November and they have done absolutely nothing to pay us back.
Sure there may be a few true
antiwar Democrats in Washington, but in the end they are Democrats.
Not antiwar activists. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who is running another
campaign for president, wants to bring the war to an end. But as we
should have learned back in 2004 when Kucinich embraced John Kerry's
pro-war campaign after running in the primaries -- we shouldn't be trusting
Kucinich's rhetoric today. Or the rhetoric any other so-called antiwar
Democrats.
When will the antiwar movement
begin to put pressure on the Democratic Party? More importantly, when
will we break with the Democrats? They have given us more than enough
reason to do so. And until we do, we will continue to remain politically
irrelevant.
Joshua Frank
is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush
and edits www.BrickBurner.org
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