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Congresswoman Blasts Obama's War-Funding Request
President Obama's new $83.4 billion supplemental war request, which brings the cost of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq to $1 trillion, drew fire Thursday from anti-war North Bay Rep. Lynn Woolsey.
Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D- Cali.) in this file photo. Woolsey, who co-chairs the Progressive Caucus, had said in an earlier interview that she can't support raising troop levels. (File Photo) Former President George W. Bush disguised the cost of the wars in
annual "emergency" supplementals, which then-Sen. Obama criticized. The
Obama White House promises that this will be the last one.
Press secretary Robert Gibbs said the request is a Bush holdover that is needed to fund the wars this fiscal year, before the Obama budget kicks in.
Until now, anti-war Democrats had been undecided about how to position themselves against the Afghanistan escalation under one of their own.
Woolsey, D-Petaluma, who co-chairs the Progressive Caucus, had said in an earlier interview that she can't support raising troop levels. She came out Thursday with this statement:
"As proposed, this funding will do two things - it will prolong our occupation of Iraq through at least the end of 2011 and it will deepen and expand our military presence in Afghanistan indefinitely.
"I cannot support either of these scenarios. Instead of attempting to find military solutions to the problems we face in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama must fundamentally change the mission in both countries to focus on promoting reconciliation, economic development, humanitarian aid, and regional diplomatic efforts."
- Posted in
34 Comments so far
Show AllO Bomb A. Enough said.
Perhaps we should have voted in a president that was truly against these wars. A few candidates come to mind:
Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Bill Richardson and, yes, even Ron Paul...
Yeah ... a lot of us did and we don't intend sitting on our butts and making snarky comments ... instead we are out trying to organize and resist ... which is what a lot of armchair 'progressives' should really be doing. 95% of this country is still split between 2 parties and nothing is going to change that. Instead we need to focus on certain policies and raise enough hell to try and change it. Attempting to demonize Obama will not force positive change. Twiddling our thumbs and waiting for a third party to coalesce is the least productive form of resistance.
Lynn Woolsey is a hero!
There are no winners in war. Even the people who materially profit accrue deadly Karma.
How about closing some of the more than 1,000 bases we have around the world? (Over 800 regular bases and more than 200 in Iraq alone).
Quite a simple, profound statement. Whether some want to admit it or not, the Progressive Caucus could become a factor, if for no other reason that to apply pressure on mainstream Democrats to either change course or maintain the criminality they now find themselves in.
We're all against war, but come on-do you really think it's so simple? We should not have gotten into this war, but we can't just pick up our toys and go home. There has to be thoughtful egress from this. I want out, too, but if we just exit suddenly, there will be hell to pay for the people we leave behind. We need a new Marshall plan for the areas we have subjected to our military presence, so that our exit leaves some hope for the future, not just destruction and then good-bye.
It's that simple.
The Bush Administration jumped into the Middle East for the oil. We created 4.5 million Iraqi refugees. We temporarily bought off many of the people who were shooting at our soldiers, and so we got Sunnis to kill Shiites and vice-versa until the survivors all hated each other more than they hated the occupier. Our friends in Iraq turned out to be our original friends, the old Saddamist soldiers who had temporarily slid over to Al Qaeda. Actually Osama Bin Laden used to be Bush Senior's good buddy buddy.
We sided with the Afghani heroin warlords to put on a sham of democracy by day and to grow opium poppies under the gun at night. The populations are already paying hell today, unfortunately.
Our war in Pakistan is destabilizing that nuclear-tipped country.
A Marshall Plan based on the promotion of a stable democracy would be nice. One based on sham construction by Halliburton while we poison the countryside forever with depleted uranium and while we keep people in serfdom perpetually is an ill-thought-out plan. Maybe the really dumbest American taxpayers will buy the idea.
It really is just that simple. We pick up our toys and go home. That's what happened in VietNam, and it worked. If we feel that we need to help by cleaning up the horrific mess that we made(and that would be a very good idea,) we don't leave armed forces in there to do it, we send in people who did not create the mess in the first place.
Lynn Woolsey is my representative in Congress, and I'm very happy to be able to say that. She speaks for me!
"We can't just pack up our toys and go home."
That was the same argument used to keep the war going in Vietnam. Finally, after 58,000+ Americans had been killed, countless others had their lives destroyed through PTSD and poisoning, over a million Vietnamese were dead and they are still suffering from the effects of poisoning their country, we were finally driven out.
Now, we are doing the same thing in the ME. Just going to keep on messing around there because we are there and haven't the sense to cut everybody's losses and just get the hell out!
Hell, all we have to do is declare victory, or admit defeat, and shut down the shop. Then arrest, try, and convict the legion of bloodthirsty, profit-minded warmongers that promote this sort of thing. A new "Nuremberg" is badly needed today. It was supposed to have taught the world a lesson about starting wars of aggression, and the mistreatment of human beings. Apparently, a new lesson is needed, NOW!
I agree. Anyway, they aren't toys that we have to pick up. It is killing hardware and software. And this is not a game to be played out on a video screen or in a think tank.
When I recall how much I love each of my children - how warm and solid they felt - the details of cheeks and lashes and soft hair - and that someone would kill one deliberately -
Just get the fuck out.
Joe
Except, there is no such thing as Al Qaeda, its an invention of the Bushies. Osama is just a figure head for propaganda purposes that had nothing to do with 9/11.
The real reason Obama supports the military budget is because he is not well enough entrenched to challenge the military. They control 60% (that's more than half) of the US budget, so it only makes sense to get a lot of other things done first before challenging them. Otherwise he risks never getting any of those other things done, since it would snarl him in a very different battle.
The question is, can he maintain the determination to take control of this country out of the hands of the military and the corporations while he gets the other things done, or will he become their patsy in the process?
"...or will he become their patsy in the process?"
Don't kid yourself. He's as much a corporatist as the rest of them. How else do you think he was propped onto the national stage, and into the Oval Office, in such a relatively short amount of time?
His selections of Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers to head Obama's Treasury and National Economic Council, respectively, and their horrific bailout program ("TARP 2.0"), should be evidence enough.
Peace on this holiday weekend...
end.corporate.personhood
No, we aren't all against the war(s). Apparently 50 million Americans want the wars because they voted for Bush. And Obama said he was against the wars, or so we were led to believe.
Yes, it is very simple. We can pick up our toys, remove the tons of depleted uranium shells we used to smash thousands of Iraqis. We can rebuild the water system we destroyed. We can rebuild the sewage treatment facilities we destroyed. We can rebuild the electrical systems we destroyed. We can rebuild the hospitals and medical facilities we destroyed. But, unfortunately, we cannot rebuild the lives of the thousands of people we killed and maimed (see Dahr Jamail) with 19 years of bombing raids and savage attacks.
mdotsie's excuses are the same ones we heard 40 years ago when the U.S. was kicked out of Vietnam, Laos, & Cambodia. "Oh, we can't leave now.!" Study Howard Zinn. Study "Open Veins of Latin America." Study Major General Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket."
The Marshall plan was not what it seemed. It was a chance for corporate America to get back on its feet, and, using tax dollars, just as what is now done to give trillion dollar gifts to bankers & the military industrial complex, the U.S. government paid corporations for their goods, and donated them, mostly, to Europe.
Time to start studying history and see why the U.S. is involved in continuous wars around the globe, to complete its empire.
PaulK, and Guapo, good posts
-A Marshall Plan based on the promotion of a stable democracy would be nice. One based on sham construction by Halliburton while we poison the countryside forever with depleted uranium and while we keep people in serfdom perpetually is an ill-thought-out plan
-Apparently 50 million Americans want the wars because they voted for Bush. And Obama said he was against the wars, or so we were led to believe.
Thank you Congresswoman Woolsey.
ditto thank you Congresswoman Woolsey. I just hope my two Senators, Boxer and Feinstein will go the same route.
Don't know about the Rep. rep..... McClintock......... we've never agreed on anything before.
Let's all remember that War is not healthy for children and other Living things.
(Another Mother for Peace)
Yankee Come Home NOW
And the worst attack on our soldiers in a year coincidentally happens in Iraq. I wouldn't put it past Petreus or the other general dork in charge of our troops in Iraq to have deliberately murdered they're own troops to get the war money. Killers are killers, period.
Good for Rep. Woolsey. Too bad there aren't more Representatives like her.
Mine is a Boeing lacky who has son in Iraq working as an overpaid contractor.
Too bad the Progressive Caucus isn't more effective. One or two of them will standup and whine but a meaningful group has yet to buck the Party line. If they would, the Democrats would be unable to pass anything and they would exercise a great deal of power.
Democratic Party "leadership" (the moneymen) never really objected to Bush's military adventurism they only complained that Bush and Cheney botched the job.
They seem unable to grasp the fact that the American People are not behind these wars and that they are a violation of international and domestic law.
Americans have not done a good job of letting the power brokers know that they object.
Obama looked like a great leader compared to Bush but he's still a politician and would say what needs to be said to get elected. Promises before an election and actions after an election are generally two different things, why are we acting surprised?
If each State would remove their National Guard troops from these illegal wars as the Constitution clearly gives them the right to do, there wouldn't be enough troops to continue fighting.
It's clearly stated that National Guard troops can only be called into Federal service in the case of National Emergency, not illegal foreign wars.
Pressuring State government to withhold National Guard troops from foreign service should have started seven years ago but it's not too late to start. Call and write to your Representatives and Governors regarding this issue.
Wars are profitable to Global Corporations and they wont allow the Governments that they control to end wars and cut into their bottom line, until the populace starts raising hell. Now is the time.
Well said.
I campaigned, gave money to and voted for Obama. I now want him locked up for war crimes over the bombings on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border and his escalation of the wars.
Lock him up and let Noriega go!
www.meetyourworld.com
What are American's winning from these wars?
The estimated population of the United States is 305,979,787
so each citizen's share of this debt is $36,520.86.
The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.87 billion per day since September 28, 2007!
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
The Federal deficit is a money war crime against humanity!
There is no war and has not been a war since 2003. It's an occupation.
Anyways, the good news Obama will end the supplementary budgets when he officially announces the end of the war that isn't a war, and the beginning of the occupation that has been on-going for 5 years, called by some other name.
The clueless will cheer despite nothing changing, except perhaps more troops sent home to maintain "order" at home if the economy worsens.
Contact your representative and tell him to vote against funding. Then have him place a bill in Congress giving back states control of their national guard formations. Also take back power to wage wars; which this is not. We could be out of Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of this year. If, the will was there. Fire Patreaus and the ego centric warlords running these campaigns. Congress has the power to demand anything but they are controlled by lobbyists and corporations who fund their next election. That's all they care about. There isn't a patriot among them. Well, maybe a few.
We are not free. A few hundred people at the head of our government keep starting wars and confiscating our money to pay for those wars. But its even worse. They borrow the money for these wars, money that we taxpayers have to repay with interest. They steal money out of the Social Security trust fund to finance more war and then tell us that we can't afford to keep funding Social Security any longer, and that universal health care, single payer health care would be too expensive.
Most of us taxpayers don't want these wars. We taxpayers need to shut off the money. This is money that ultimately the government will use weapons and/or threats of prison to continue stealing from us to finance wars we don't want against people that would never be a threat to us.
They are supposed to represent us. They do not. We must stop paying them, paying for their wars, and paying for the enormous profits collected by "defense" contractors who also happen to own the mainstream media that keeps telling us we must go to war.
We are not free. How can "they hate us for our freedoms" when we are not free? Do you think you are free? Could you go one month without a paycheck? Some of you can. Most of you can't. You are not free. You are a slave to the defense contractors. You are a slave. Get it? A slave. Now shut up and pay up, peasant.
Why is anyone trying to make this so complicated? Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, who surely isn't being accused of being old Labor or left wing, has said personally that he favors "talks with the Taliban. If he favors negotiation, how can anyone seriously consider confrontation as anything but a disaster as a policy in Afghanistan. This ought to be easy. Common Sense seems to be getting short shrift. The British way back got kicked out of Afghanistan when the British empire was very stong, Moscow got kicked out with much more military resources than the US military could come close to putting into that country. Also when the British lost way back, no other country was giving any help to the unsurgents, yet the great British military went down to defeat at the time.
Negotiation and economic rebuilding is the solution. Military madness isn't at all a realistic option.
AD
OK the word should be "strong" not "stong."
AD
Bring America Back !!!!........Kudos to Rep Lynn Woolsey, D==Calif for standing up and speaking Truth to Powers !!!!
***Obama promised to get out of Iraq, and he has Failed miserably !!!!
We knew when He allowed a Neocon Right Wing war criminal--Robert Gates to
remail Sec of Defense, and appointed a Senator who voted FOR the War
without even reading the Intelligence Estimate==Hillary Clinton to Sec of State, that HE had no intention of fulfilling campaign promises !!!!
***Nearly everything Obama has done has defied the promises of CHANGE, and
has given us the Third Term of the hated Geo W. Bush !! The Justice dept
of Obama is obstructing investigation into Bush war and civil crimes of
Treason !!!
Let us all write to Lynn Woolsey thanking her, and motivate her to line up
more and more congressional friends to her way of thinking !!!
WOOLSEY FOR PRESIDENT IN 2012 !!!!
OUT NOW!!!
Give O'bomber two more years in Iraq, while he escalates in Afghanistan?
Here's the best proposal for the Offense Budget (pssst. I mean what they call Defense): $0.00
Mike Morin
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com
Sadly, there always is money for wars. Peace just has to wait its turn...even if it kills us.
Obama is proving to be little more than a slick talking George Bush. Same policies, but expanded. Even more money for war in Afghanistan and no one can say (or will say) why we are really there. Yes, Vera Gottlieb, plenty of money for war, no money for single payer health care.