From The Nation
More than 100 Democratic House members and a dozen Republicans voted
against funding the Obama administration's Afghan war surge Tuesday,
offering one of the strongest shows of opposition to presidential
warmaking since the Vietnam War era.
President Obama still got the money for his expanded war
in Afghanistan, as well as for his plan to continue the occupation of
Iraq.
By a 308-114 vote ,
the House approved a $58.8 billion emergency funding bill--most of which
will go to pay for the president's plan to surge tens of thousands of
additional troops into Afghanistan. The measure parallels a Senate bill
passed earlier this month and will now go to Obama's desk for a quick
signature.
But the real story Tuesday was that so many members of the
president's own party rejected his misguided approach to foreign policy.
Even in 1968, at the end of his tortured presidency, Lyndon Johnson
never faced so high a level of opposition from fellow Democrats to his
requests for Vietnam War funding as Obama was hit with Tuesday. And the
votes against Obama's war were not just coming from the usual suspects;
Democratic opposition to the president's policies surged from thirty-two
votes against last year's supplemental spending bill for Afghanistan
and Iraq to 102 against this year's bill.
"All of the puzzle has been put together and it is not a pretty picture; things are really ugly over there," Congressman Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, said Tuesday
with regard to the House Democratic Caucus. "I think the White House
continues to underestimate the depth of antiwar sentiment here."
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California Democrat Lynn Woolsey, a co-chair of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus, said that this week's Wikileaks revelations
regarding the quagmire in Afghanistan had strengthened the resolve of
many Democrats who were doubtful about the supplemental. "The documents
released to the news media this past weekend by WikiLeaks add to the
mounting evidence that the war in Afghanistan remains fiscally
unsustainable and morally unjustifiable," said Woolsey, who
explained that, "As if I needed any more persuasion, the WikiLeaks
revelations left me with no other choice than to vote this week against
the supplemental appropriations bill to spend billions more on military
operations in Afghanistan. How could I in good conscience endorse
continued financial support for an unwinnable war, one that does
violence to our values and is undermining our national security
objectives? There is only one option: End this war and bring our troops
home."
The most dramatic "no" vote came from Wisconsin Democrat David Obey,
the chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, who was
charged with bringing the bill to the floor for a vote.
"I have a double, and conflicting, obligation. As chairman, I have
the obligation to bring this supplemental before the House to allow the
institution to work its will," explained Obey .
"But I also have the obligation to my conscience to indicate--by my
individual vote--my profound skepticism that this action will accomplish
much more than to serve as a recruiting incentive for those who most
want to do us ill."
Obey argued that the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan
unreliable partners with histories of corruption. And he questioned why
US tax dollars should fill their coffers when the United States is
struggling to deal with domestic economic challenges.
"I have the highest respect and appreciation for our troops who have
done everything asked of them. They are being let down by the inability
of the governments of Afghanistan and in some instances Pakistan to do
their parts," Obey told the House. "I would be willing to support
additional war funding--provided that Congress would vote, up or down,
explicitly on whether or not to continue this policy after a new
National Intelligence Estimate is produced.But absent that discipline, I
cannot look my constituents in the eye and say that this operation will
hurt our enemies more than us."
As arguably the top expert in Congress on budgeting, the
Appropriations Committee chair explained that continued spending of the
sort seen in the supplemental for an ill-defined and seemingly endless
occupation of Afghanistan threatens to "obliterate our ability to make
the kinds of long term investments in our own country that are so
desperately needed."
Joining Obey in voting "no" to the war supplemental were a number of
senior Democrats, including Education and Labor Committee chair George
Miller of California, Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers of Michigan
and Veterans' Affairs Committee chair Bob Filner of California.
Among the Republicans voting "no" were the GOP's traditional antiwar
bloc, which includes Texas Congressman Ron Paul, Tennessee Congressman
John Duncan and North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones, as well as a
number of new critics of the Afghanistan mission.
Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake, an ally of Senator John McCain, the
Arizona Republican who is one of the war's most ardent backers, voted
"no."
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John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.
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