NOTE: The Moderate Voice from time to time runs Guest Voice columns from people who don’t have their own weblog or who want to discuss something here. Guest Voices do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice. This is by Nicholas Rivera who has the libertarian blog The Coming Realignment.
By Nicholas Rivera
The U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday 246 to 182 to pass a non-binding resolution that opposes President Bush’s plan to send an additional 21,500 troops troops to Iraq. Seventeen Republicans, headed by Congressman Chuck Jones of North Carolina joined the Democrats in supporting the resolution while two Democrats opposed the resolution.
The seventeen Republicans who supported the resolution:
Mike Castle – Delaware
Howard Coble – North Carolina
Tom Davis – Virginia
John Duncan – Tennessee
Phil English – Pennsylvania
Wayne Gilchrest – Maryland
Bob Inglis – South Carolina
Timothy Johnson – Illinois
Walter Jones – North Carolina
Ric Keller – Florida
Mark Kirk – Illinois
Steven LaTourette – Ohio
Ron Paul – Texas
Thomas Petri – Wisconsin
Jim Ramstad – Minnesota
Fred Upton – Michigan
James Walsh – New York
The two Democrats who opposed the resolution:
Jim Marshall – Georgia
Gene Taylor – Mississippi
While I’m glad that this resolution passed, I’m disappointed that the Democratic leadership seems to be investing all of its time and energy on a non-binding resolution instead of offering concrete steps to actually end this ill-conceived war. Already, Republicans have maneuvered Majority Leader Steny Hoyer into declaring that the Democrats would not cut off funding for the troops.
One has to wonder, if the Democrats aren’t willing to wield their Constitutionally-granted “power of the purse” to cut off funding for the war, just how do they propose that we end this four-year-long (and counting) misadventure in Iraq? A supplemental appropriations bill to fund the war through 2007 is coming down the pike in about a month. Can we count on the Democrats, who rode a wave of anti-war sentiment to take back the House for the first time in twelve years, to vote against this supplimental appropriations bill? Or are they simply going to let this war drag on for another year or two, gambling that the voters will again take their frustration out on the Republicans as they did during the 2006 midterm elections?
The continued funding of the war is an issue that Congressman Ron Paul (who was among the seventeen Republicans who voted in favor of the resolution) addressed in a speech that he delivered before the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday:
This resolution, unfortunately, does not address the disaster in Iraq. Instead, it seeks to appear opposed to the war while at the same time offering no change of the status quo in Iraq. As such, it is not actually a vote against a troop surge. A real vote against a troop surge is a vote against the coming supplemental appropriation that finances it. I hope all of my colleagues who vote against the surge today will vote against the budgetary surge when it really counts: when we vote on the supplemental.
He then went on to harshly criticized the war as well as the tactics being employed by his colleagues on both sides of the political aisle:
The biggest red herring in this debate is the constant innuendo that those who don’t support expanding the war are somehow opposing the troops. It’s nothing more than a canard to claim that those of us who struggled to prevent the bloodshed and now want it stopped are somehow less patriotic and less concerned about the welfare of our military personnel.
Osama bin Laden has expressed sadistic pleasure with our invasion of Iraq and was surprised that we served his interests above and beyond his dreams on how we responded after the 9/11 attacks. His pleasure comes from our policy of folly getting ourselves bogged down in the middle of a religious civil war, 7,000 miles from home that is financially bleeding us to death. Total costs now are reasonably estimated to exceed $2 trillion. His recruitment of Islamic extremists has been greatly enhanced by our occupation of Iraq.
Unfortunately, we continue to concentrate on the obvious mismanagement of a war promoted by false information and ignore debating the real issue which is: Why are we determined to follow a foreign policy of empire building and pre-emption which is unbecoming of a constitutional republic?
Those on the right should recall that the traditional conservative position of non-intervention was their position for most of the 20th Century-and they benefited politically from the wars carelessly entered into by the political left. Seven years ago the Right benefited politically by condemning the illegal intervention in Kosovo and Somalia. At the time conservatives were outraged over the failed policy of nation building.
It’s important to recall that the left, in 2003, offered little opposition to the pre-emptive war in Iraq, and many are now not willing to stop it by de-funding it or work to prevent an attack on Iran.
The catch-all phrase, “War on Terrorism�, in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against criminal gangsterism. It’s deliberately vague and non definable to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere, and under any circumstances. Don’t forget: the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with any terrorist attack against us including that on 9/11.
–Nicholas Rivera
ANOTHER VIEW comes from Captain Ed Morrissey who writes, in part:
This was an unprecedented move by Congress to interfere in the command of American troops during wartime. Congress has threatened to cut off funding before to end conflicts and deployments, but no one can find an example of Congress scolding the President over a specific strategy while the military implements it. It declares a military operation in its opening stages a defeat before it has a chance to succeed, a mind-boggling statement, and one entirely performed for partisan purposes.
Seventeen Republicans voted for the resolution. A new joint project, the Victory Caucus, lists the GOP Representatives who voted to declare a defeat before the Army and Marine Corps have entered the field in full…….
Why are we listing these members? The Victory Caucus wants to ensure that we find suitable primary opponents for them in 2008. If you live in their districts, we need your help to find people who either support the mission or do something tangible to end it, and not to sit on the sidelines and try to run a war by complaints.
Read his entire post..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.