Democrats War Now
Yeah, it’s official - - What once Democrats could argue was “Bush’s war,” is the Democrats war now. On June 16, “in a vote that should go down in recent histories as a day of shame for the Democrats,” according to the writer Jeremy Scahill, 221 Democrats and 5 Republicans backed the Obama administration’s $106 billion supplemental appropriation bill to maintain the occupation of Iraq, escalate the quagmire that is Afghanistan, enlarge the bombing and death into Pakistan and “fund the International Monetary Funds anti-social policies of forcing developing countries to sacrifice programs for the poor in order to bail out big banks.It was quite a day for Obama and Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership. Only 32 Democrats, most associated with Progressive Democrats of America, had the courage to vote their convictions. Not one of the 32 was from the state of Washington, certainly not our war-mongering Congressman, Norm Dicks. Those 32 Democrats faced “significant threats to their political future from the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.” “The White House and the Democratic Congressional Leadership played a very dirty game in their effort to ram through the funding,” reports Scahill. Representative Lynn Woolsey of California, a leader of the antiwar Democrats, said the White House is threatening to withdraw support from freshmen who oppose the bill, saying, “you’ll never hear from us again.” She said the House leadership was also targeting freshmen. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, the right-wing, former congressman from Illinois, was reported “cutting deals with Republicans to go easy on them in the 2010 elections in exchange for votes,” supporting the supplemental war funding.
Anybody remember the 2006 elections? That was the election when Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi asked us to vote for Democrats because the Democrats would end the war. Democrats took over the Congress in that election and then pulled a bait-and-switch by not only not ending the war but escalating it. They voted for war funding supplemental after war funding supplemental. They told us they could not overcome the unpopular Bush. Well, Bush is gone so what is their excuse now? “We’ve got to give Obama’s war a chance?” “This vote,” Scahill writes, “revealed a sobering statistic for the anti-war movement in this country and brought to the surface a broader issue that should give die-hard partisan Democrats who purport to be anti-war reason for serious pause about the actual state of their party.” “Under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the Democratic-controlled Congress has been a house of war. Unfortunately, it is not a house where the war is one of noble Democrats fighting for peace, freedom and democracy. . . . Instead, it is a house void of substantive opposition to the ever-expanding war begun under Bush and escalating under Obama.”
If the first casualty of war is truth, the second should surely be the destruction of “patriotic slogans, calls for sacrifice, honor and heroism and promises of glory” in which war comes wrapped. Except for the 32, the hands of the Democratic members of Congress who have made Bush’s wars their own will now be forever stained by the blood of those whom they sent to die and those who will be killed by our soldiers. “War from a distance,” writer Chris Hedges recalled recently, “seems noble.” But, “war is always about betrayal,” Hedges concludes. “It is about betrayal of the young by the old, of cynics by idealists, and of soldiers and Marines by politicians.”
Labels: Democrats, Iraq War, Obama, Republicans
6 Comments:
Gary,
I'd like to say this is an example of Dem Party betrayal, but I won't. This is what we leftists figured would happen all along. So, they simply kept to the script.
In my opinion, the betrayal is not the vote of these Dems but of the voters who like to call themselves progressives. They put these jerks in office and they did so to "save" America. They have betrayed their own so-called values and they've sold the rest of us down the river.
As one of those "Dems who like to call themselves progressives", I am not satisfied with all that is going on.
However, I am convinced that it is better than it would have been with the alternative. And, Progressives have a much better opportunity to work with the current Administration than we would have with the McCain.
Elections matter.
Stash,
That SOUNDS good. However, when you look at issues like the war and the egregious bailout to the moneyed interests, I'm not sure how it could be much worse under McCain. Besides, if McCain was prez today, there's a good chance Congress would still be controlled by the Dems and it is Congress who keeps passing this crap.
President Obama honored the agreement to pull out of cities in Iraq. I don't know that 'Bomb Bomb' McCain would have been so eager.
President Bush put the bank bail out through.
President Obama pushed the Stimulus bill through that includes many job programs meaning wages to basic workers.
President Obama is pushing a tax cut to 95% of Americans.
It's not great, but it would disingenuous to not acknowledge that it would be worse had the other side proven victorious.
Yes he may be a Republican, but Dicks' sincere, freedom-loving opponent, Doug Cloud, has opposed going into Iraq from the beginning. He wants an "honorable but swift" withdrawal.
It's time we put principle over party and support people who believe in peace, freedom and open government. People who are opposed to the special interest, the DC culture of corruption (pay-to-play) and understand we need a truly free-enterprise system, not the state-managed fascist/corporatist variety of capitalism we currently have under the shadow of the federal behemoth.
Check him out, with an open mind: http://www.dougcloud.com/
Obama is NOT going to end the war; instead he's expanding it into Pakistan. We are just as likely to be at war with Iran and N. Korea, and others, as we were under bush.
The only thing that is happening under Obama is that the banks are in even greater control. With the banks holding all the US debt, and with the Congress/President pushing through back-to-back-to-back $trillion bailouts, "stimulus" packages, cap&trade and socialized medicine, who do you really think benefits?
The federal government is selling our children into debt to Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and China. They're all a bunch of criminals if you ask me.
Check this: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine
Throw the bums out!
And don't forget that Obama sat at the table with McCain - when he suspended his campaign - to push for the bailout along with Bush. Congress pushed it through under the direction of Pelosi. Then he replaced former Goldman Sachs exec. Paulson for fomer Goldman Sachs exec. Geithner.
Obama - progressive? Yeah...
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