Americans don't know what America is up to, either!
Bush says the NIE finding that Iran has not re-started its nuclear weapons program since 2003 makes no difference; he continues to rattle rockets. At the same time, Democrats are making a deal to provide some limited funds to support the Iraq Occupation [note: none of us should call this a "war" any longer; language makes a difference]. Democratic leaders in Congress are now negotiating with Bush and the GOP to pass a budget bill that would include $70 billion for the occupation, no strings attached.
What happened to the "no-more-money-for-the-war" line they were trumpeting, with moderate success, over the $50 billion and withdrawal timeline the GOP blocked?
Caved again?
Do Congressional Democrats believe the Republican line that the President holds all the cards? It's true they're unpopular, but so is he. Are they afraid of the mainstream media? They shouldn't be; they won an election in part on the promise to bring the troops home; they're unpopular because they didn't do it.
The occupation tastes sour in everyone's mouths--except Bush's and a small select coterie of yes-men/women who have their careers on the line (like Gen. Petraeus), or money in play (like executives and owners of security firms like Blackwater and defense contractors like Raytheon and Bechtel).
Even the troops and their families want them home.
Americans, really, would like nothing better than to have nothing to do with Iraq or Iran, or Israel and Palestine, for that matter. For those who argue that American military withdrawal from the Mideast would be dangerous and that American isolationism is the last thing this world needs, two points need to be made:
One: American involvement in the region has created disasters wherever you look: Iran is Islamist because of US intervention back when it placed the Shah on "the Peacock Throne," the proximate cause of the 1979 Islamic revolution and anti-Americanism.
But when a more moderate Iran tried to negotiate in 2003, the US turned its back, making more likely the election of the more extreme Ahmadinejad. The Taliban and al Qaeda, now resurgent in Afghanistan and the tribal regions of Pakistan, first emerged because of US support for the most Islamist mujahadeen fighting the USSR (including Osama bin Laden): talk about blow-back! "Islam in danger" was a CIA invention. Palestine and Israel are mired in their present disaster because the US never made support for Israel conditional on reasonable behavior towards Palestinians. And then there's Iraq, which the US invaded and virtually destroyed, without justification.
Second: military withdrawal is not equivalent to isolationism. We do have obligations to Iraq, to Israel, to Palestine, at very least, but these should be manifested as material, financial, not military, not attempts at establishing hegemony in the region.
The world does not need an American Empire, and neither does the American people; only a small global elite wants it; only they profit from it. Empire is at the expense of everyone else, and at the expense of the world, too, since constant war would destroy any international commitment to reducing global warming, and of stopping non-state actors from terrorizing peaceful people. In fact, even the intelligence community's own statistics show: the US occupation in Iraq has stimulated terrorism worldwide, not tamped it down.
The US should turn away from interventionism and court cooperation, instead. Democrats in Congress should model this. Instead, they are afraid of being media targets. Hell, they're targets as wimps, now, from both the left and the right. Wouldn't it be better to stand up with courage, demanding withdrawal of the troops? Whatever Democrats do, unless they completely capitulate and wholeheartedly support Bush's disasters, they'll be attacked by the media.
Why? Because large corporations, of which the media are part, are battening off the huge government contracts generated by the occupation. The biggest media also hope the Republican administration will allow them what they want: further concentration of their industry: Democrats won't. So, they're going to attack Democrats regardless. Democrats can only gain through courage, not through timidity.
Rahm Emmanuel (Majority Leader) should stop worrying about campaign donors (and we should pledge to withhold money from Democratic funds if Democrats vote more billions for the occupation); he should worry instead about what the American people want: we want to get out of Iraq.
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