New Congress, Non-Binding Resolution: Is This What You Voted For?

2/19/07: Under their time honored
guise of “supporting the troops”, Congressional Democrats last week pushed
through a resolution declaring their support for the war in Iraq.  They also noted their disapproval with the way Bush
is waging that war (read resolution below).

In the Senate a couple of days later, a
similar measure didn’t come to a vote, because enough Senators support both the
war and the way Bush is waging it.

These votes reflect intense
differences among the political elite over the
way the war is being led, not over the war itself.  They are not intended to, and in no way will,
lead to ending the unjust and brutal US military occupation of Iraq.  The resolutions address, as the New York Times accurately wrote, a
“specific battlefield tactic proposed by the president”.

How the conflicts within the
political power structure will play out in the days and weeks ahead over the
best way to pursue the war in Iraq is in great flux and is in no way predetermined.  The
widely (and rightfully) despised Senator Joe Lieberman said in a recent speech
that the measure for Congressional “micromanaging” a war is a “first step
toward a constitutional crisis that we can and must avoid”.

But one thing is eminently
clear.  The sentiments of millions of people in this country who want an end to
this unjust and immoral war were in no way reflected in the Congressional
“debate” or in the resolutions voted on last week.  The suffering of the Iraqi
people under an ongoing US military occupation was not a factor in the voting. 
Consider what a man in Baghdad
said on February 19 after yet another bombing in that city killed at least 60
people: “I hold the American forces responsible for this”.

Multiply this sentiment by
the millions, and multiply the Iraqi dead of last weekend by hundreds of
thousands.  And ask yourself if you can really go along with this charade of
“opposition” that doesn’t even put up a pretense of ending the war, only
finding more “efficient” ways of conducting it.  What is needed is, as Molly
Ivins wrote in her last column, “people in the streets, banging pots and pans
and demanding, “Stop it, now!””

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Text of House resolution:

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring) that –

(1)
Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect
the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who
have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and

(2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

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What’s
wrong with “supporting the troops”?  Click here to find out.