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Today's Top News
What Price for an "Advisory" Timetable? Bar an Unauthorized Attack on Iran
Congressional Democratic leaders are moving to make their proposed timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq "advisory," the Washington Post reports.
Many Americans looking to Congress to take decisive action to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq will be very disappointed if this turns out to be true. And many anti-war Democrats in Congress will again face a dilemma: whether to support the leadership's strategy on the war in a close vote.
On the one hand, many were already justifiably unhappy with the bill that passed the House. On the other, many will find the political logic for supporting the leadership compelling, as they did before, knowing that ultimately, the political story that will be told will be either "Congress voted to condition funding on a timetable for withdrawal" or it won't be. Congressional action moves the debate forward in a unique way. As even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has acknowledged, the Congressional debate has already had a positive impact.
This is worth considering now, because if the outcome, ultimately, is going to be that the House is going to accept the leadership's strategy, more or less, of passing something closer to the Senate version, then it's worth considering whether the more anti-war Democrats in Congress could win something substantive for going along.
Last time, the Out of Iraq caucus won a commitment from Speaker Pelosi that the provision barring an attack on Iran without Congressional authorization, dropped from the supplemental, would be voted on at a later date. The "later date" is likely to be the defense authorization bill, The Hill reports, with Senator Jim Webb and many House Democrats pushing for a vote on the Iran provision.
Since the "deal" on the supplemental is being re-opened with the proposed removal of binding language on the timetable for withdrawal, it makes sense to re-open it from the other side. In particular, it makes sense to put barring an unauthorized attack on Iran back on the table. Doing so would move the debate forward on U.S. policy towards Iran, even if the effort to enact this provision into law, or even to get it through the House or the Senate, is ultimately unsuccessful in this round.
The logic for doing so is the same that Secretary Gates acknowledged: Congressional action moves the debate forward. So far the debate around the Iran provision has been, relative to the debate around the Iraq withdrawal provisions, an insider game. The debate around the Iran provision has mainly been reported in the "insider" press, not outside.
In the "insider" game, insider forces, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have the most leverage. Contrary to the beliefs of many, it is possible to beat AIPAC in Congress, as was demonstrated when Americans for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, and others beat AIPAC on the "Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act." But this requires extending the debate beyond the usual suspects.
If a significant bloc of Congressional Democrats were to say, we will go along with the leadership on this, but in exchange we want something that really restricts the ability of the Administration to unilaterally pursue a policy of military confrontation with Iran, and forces the Administration to pursue a policy of serious diplomacy, that would put the issue on the table for wider debate, even if the demand were not immediately successful.
Getting the debate out into the wider press would be a significant advance. It would send a signal to people in the region that Congress and the American people are not going to support a policy of military confrontation with Iran, so issues with Iran are going to have to be resolved diplomatically.
Robert Naiman is Senior Policy Analyst and National Coordinator at Just Foreign Policy .
Comments
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9 Comments so far
Show AllWhy hasn't any other commentor noticed that the author is counseling anti war Democrats to accept meaningless text that does absolutely nothing to end this war in return for getting meaningless text stating that an unauthorized attack is in fact unauthorized. Is Naiman working for the White House, or is he just cowardly and stupid?
Something about those permanent bases and a war for oil makes it impossible to believe these time tables mean anything. It's like appointing another committee to STUDY global warming, just an amoral delay tactic... I hope I am wrong on this one, but it's not encouraging that the "front runner" democratic presidential candidates STILL sound mostly like Republican lite pro-military solution clones. When progressive intellects can gain more media exposure (mass media, not just internet), we have a fighting chance at getting this democracy back... and back on track, i.e. answerable to the ingenious system of checks and balances the Founders devised.
Whatever is "the political story that will be told" Democrats need to stop negotiations and unequivocally demand immediate withdrawal. It is the presence of our troops that cause the violence, and we must get the troops out to allow a government to emerge.
Make no mistake, this administration knows full well what it is doing; they keep Iraq in chaos while their corporate cronies steal that country blind. The deaths of thousands of our troops and of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis is inconsequential to those souless bastards.
USA's policy choice will depend on the reality in Iraq. As in Vietnam War casualties must increase manifold before the incentives for the USA to cut their losses and move out become "attractive" enough. More people need to die. It is that simple.
If we had a Free mainstream press that reported motives, profits, and exposed lies then these wars would not even start. The American press is not being duped by the administration and the other dogs of war; rather they are essential collaborators necessary to maintain support of just enough people.
The solution, of course, is to make media such as CommonDreams.org a mainstream staple of information.
There will be no "unauthorized attack on Iran." The attack will be fully authorized--by those same spineless suckers who gave us the authorized attack on Iraq.
If these "right to life" warriors attack Iran, nature will send America worse lessons than Katrina. Here is the quote from a master Yogi, Yogananda as spoken at the United Nations in l949. Don't forget this period was one of optimism, still echoing the promising words of Winston Churchill, "Never to go to war again..."
Yogananda's prescient words: "Partial dissolution of the world is brought on by the evil activities of people in general. If we all begin to fight with explosives, by this direct action we can reduce drastically the extent of civilization. When we desecrate the world, the environment undergoes violent change. Such upheavals have occurred many times, one example if Noah's flood. These partial dissolutions are due to the wrong actions and ignorant errors on the part of mankind. Everything thta has happened throughout the ages is recorded in the ether. The vibrations of evil that mankind leaves in the ether upset the normal harmonious balance of the earth. These etheric disturbances cause the world to give way to earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters." Please understand, I realize that patterns of over-consumption and over-population act as contributing factors. Our minds have been trained by linear equations to see simplistic black-white cause effect relationships, when in reality MANY factors act on circumstance. We know that a war of aggression is the SUPREME crime, and indeed a dramatic act of evil... living in Florida I saw the "cosmic parallel" of my state falsifying the election, that in turn gave the world Bush and his wars... and the unleashing of SEVEN hurricanes within a 2 year span. When that didn't get enough attention, because voices that are capable of connecting the dots are silenced, in came Katrina. Think of the metaphor! Gulf War and Gulf of Mexico... "Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me." Our world is an incomprehensible web of strands woven together, and when strands (of life) are bombed and broken, ALL feel the reverberations. Martin Luther King spoke about this shared garment of destiny... science can measure all the effects and I'm glad that minds have invented tools to do so, but linear thinking also misses a great deal. That's where artists, mystics, poets and metaphysical philosophers kick in, but of course when heretics cannot be burned, they can always be silenced.
We need to seriously consider the people of Spain and follow their example. After their leadership lied about who was responsible for the bombing in Madrid, the Spanish people turned out and VOTED those people out of office. Something like 80% of all Spainards registered to vote did. The first item on the new government's agenda was to pull out of Iraq. There were no "non binding" resolutions, the new Prime Minister brought all the Spanish troops home, then and there. The democrats in Congress lack the courage to do the right thing which is to tell the president, this so called "war" is over and bring the troops home NOW. Honestly, if we do that, will Iraq be any worse off than they are now? I hardly think so.
Everyone in Washington not delusional as the president now says this "war" is a huge mistake which brings us back to a statement made by the young John Kerry testifying before Congress about Vietnam:
"How does one ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
Indeed...
On the table - Off the table!
On the table - Off the table.
On the table - Off the table?
Do they think we're not watching how they're not conducting business in a way that is representative of the people in the United States?
Are they considering that a war with Iran will be any different than the one we're facing in Iraq? Have they forgotten that the war in Iraq CAN NOT be won militarilly and that our invasion of that country has created a civil war? Are they willing, as it appears, to give this president free reign to invade another country instead of insisting on a diplomatic solutions?
Well, we apparently do have ONE NATIONAL POLITICAL PARTY with two branches that step into line when so ordered by the ruling faction a/k/a the "billionaires club".
As I've stated before: Political leaders that have no conscience do not deserve a seat in the House or Senate. It is up to the people of this country to eliminate the pervasive politics of corruption in this country and replace it with a politics of conscience.
In short, we must END corporate control of the federal government because removing dishonest politicians every few years isn't working in a system manipulated by, and carefully designed by elitists to breed corruption.