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What's Next from Congress
Rhetoric and wishy proposals with no chance of passage are once thing, real bipartisan action with teeth another, and so far there's none from either House with key senators and congressmen voicing the usual boilerplate about not wanting to cut off funding the troops because we have to support them. Their kind of support means letting them die or get maimed and be disabled for life for imperialism on the march. Some support.
A less than credible crumb of it came from Speaker Pelosi's backhanded pronouncement she'll link new funding requests to strict standards of resting, training and equipping the troops now off the table. Earlier, she and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote the president that "thousands of the new troops (sent over) will apparently not have the armor and equipment they need to perform the mission and reduce the likelihood of casualties (and that problem needs correcting)." Now the tactics have changed with the 2008 withdrawal proposal to damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead and on with war till we win it.
Some proposals with echos of Richard Nixon's "peace with honor," his being elected in 1968 as a "peace" candidate, and his hope history would call him a "peacemaker" at the same time he was determined never to be "the first president of the United States to lose a war." So his policies ended up killing almost as many US forces as his predecessor along with one to two million Southeast Asians during his watch alone who never got to see the "peace" he promised except the one he sent them to rest in. All the while Congress debated, and war continued another 6 and a half years with serious funding cuts stalled until 1972. Even then, Richard Nixon continued waging war until the January 23, 1973 treaty was signed in Paris ending it and the last US troops came out in March. War went on in the name of peace in the same spirit coming from the White House and Congress today couched in terms of supporting the troops and "spreading democracy."
George Bush says it and so do key Democrats like Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid as well Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, Carl Levin and Senate Foreign Relations Committe Chairman, Joe Biden. Funding war will continue showing the one way to end it won't be taken, and the best out of Congress is non-binding posturing and the latest proposal to withdraw combat forces between March 31 and September 1, 2008. The administration's response - it can barely contain its contempt and continues doing as it pleases.
Democrats spoke but who's listening and acting. Levin and Biden mentioned other congressional action, with no chance of passage, including changing the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq of October, 2002 whereby Congress surrendered its authority to the Executive on the most important of all constitutional powers presidents never should have. It followed the even more outlandish joint House-Senate resolution passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) of September, 18, 2001 authorizing "the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States."
It effectively gave George Bush carte blanche authority to attack any nation he claims threatens national security on his say alone allowing him to declare a state of permanent war that won't end in our lifetime unless Congress stops it. So far it hasn't and shows no signs it will. Whatever it does, it faces a Bush veto meaning any chance for legislative relief needs a two-thirds majority that's practically impossible on any issue opposing the president, especially as beneath the rhetoric Democrats support Bush wars as much as Bush does.
All this will be part of the interesting "debate" on the Democrats' March 8 proposal including their proposed $120 billion and rising supplemental funding to keep the war machine oiled and running plus all the added pork. The president already wants and should eaily get a nearly half trillion dollar defense budget with $142 billion more in emergency 2008 supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan and anti-terrorism efforts that don't include additional funding for Bush's planned troop "surge" to cost billions more. Combined, the funding from 2001 through 2008 raises the amount of war spending to over $690 billion eclipsing in current dollars Vietnam's war cost making Bush's war second only in amount to what was spent on WW II.
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