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House Backs Obama's Afghan Surge, Amid Calls for Exit Strategy
McGovern is a Democrat who supported Barack Obama for president last year.
But McGovern is not willing to write Obama a blank check for endless warmaking.
And he is not alone.
The congressman was one of five dozen House members who voted Thursday against the "emergency" supplemental, which passed the House on a 368-60 vote. Of the 60 "no" votes, 51 came from Democrats, almost all of them members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Nine Republicans, some of them anti-war, some of them budget hawks, voted "no."
The level of Democratic opposition was significant and reflected concerns that were summed up by McGovern.
"The mission has greatly expanded and the policy is vague," the Massachusetts congressman explained Thursday. "The more stuff I'm exposed to the more uneasy I get about what we're doing here. I get this sinking feeling that we're getting sucked into something that we'll never be able to get out of."
Despite the fact that veterans of the Afghanistan fight were lobbying in opposition to the supplemental funding it was always expected that the spending plan would gain House approval Thursday, just as the Senate is all but certain to approve a variation on the plan next week.
These rubber-stamp votes are being taken despite a lack of serious planning by the administration or debate by the Congress.
So McGovern is doing more than just objecting. He is establishing the framework for the discussion that must be had about when and how the U.S. will exit Afghanistan.
On Thursday, McGovern introduced H.R. 2404, a house resolution requesting that President Obama provide an exit strategy for U.S. military forces in Afghanistan by the end of the year.
The measure has 73 cosponsors, most of them Democrats associated with the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Several powerful committee chairs have signed on, including Michigan Democrat John Conyers (Judiciary) and Minnesota Democrat Jim Oberstar (Transportation and Infrastructure). Additionally, there are a number of Republican backers, including longtime Iraq War critics such as Walter Jones of North Carolina, John Duncan of Tennessee and Ron Paul of Texas. Some unexpected Republicans have signed on as well, led by California conservative Dana Rohrabacher.
"In a very short-time Peace Action and a large coalition of NGOs worked with Rep. McGovern and the Congressional Progressive Caucus to garner over 70 original cosponsors to H.R. 2404 asking for an exit strategy for the war in Afghanistan," says Peace Action political director Paul Kawika Martin, who has worked closely with McGovern and members of the CPC on this issue. "This represents concerns by constituents with the U.S. policy in Afghanistan."
Martin expressed disappointment that the House Democratic leadership refused to allow the bipartisan bill to be offered as an amendment or adopted into the supplemental.
Peace Action and other anti-war groups called for members of Congress to vote ‘no' on the supplemental measure as part of a broader push to cut funding for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even as Congress rejects that wise counsel, Martin described H.R. 2404 as a vehicle to begin framing a smarter debate about the Afghanistan imbroglio.
"We call for an immediate halt in air and Predator drone strikes that kill, injure and traumatize innocent civilians and drive people to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Instead, the U.S. and international community should increase funding for Afghan-led humanitarian aid, development work, and land mine clean up while supporting regional diplomacy," explained Martin. "McGovern's bill is an opportunity for the congress to begin having these discussions."
70 Comments so far
Show AllThe US in is deep financial turmoil, and we continue to fund wars. Talk about stupid, so very very stupid.
The Dems and Repubs are all the same anymore when it comes to the Military Industrial Complex......feed it with no regard for the country as a whole.
Illegitimate STATIST control, RedTide; the problem is not capitalism or socialism, but Statism -- the "almighty" State wasting blood and treasure in pursuit of the idiotic.
Very important piece, i think!
Quadmire deja vu! Our bombs are killing innocent civilians and harming our fight against terrorists. I voted for change I can blieve in.
I'd like a blank check for new transit research, please!
The truth about transit has been known for over a century. But yeah that might stop O'Bamba's bambas.
"We call for an immediate halt in air and Predator drone strikes that kill, injure and traumatize innocent civilians and drive people to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Instead, the U.S. and international community should increase funding for Afghan-led humanitarian aid, development work, and land mine clean up while supporting regional diplomacy," explained Martin.
It's always been contradictory to fund war and not humanitarian aid; jail and not drug prevention programs or safer neighborhoods; police and not social workers ... so many examples. It's sad.
It is not that contradictory when one recognizes that what is really going on is mostly just the transfer of wealth from ordinary US taxpayers, and from murdered or bullied foreigners, to the well-connected US elite, and the justifications are made up after the fact to reduce resistance to the theft. On Wednesday on CD an article by Pepe Escobar titled "Piplineistan in Conflict" provided the big picture with regard to US efforts in Afghanistan. It is always about the money.
Friggin insanity to satisfy the MIC.....We the People and humanity continue to be sold out to greed and power......
Seems you need to convince people you have a strategy to prevent Stalin the Next from ruining your communist utopia.
When President Obama passed a defense budget that was increase over Bush's, Obama apologists said it was because the wars were included and wouldn't be funded through a series of emergency supplementals. Another excuse gone. How long until this supplemental needs a supplement? Death and destruction on the installment plan.
To find out who voted how, go to:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2009-265
"Sometimes great presidents make mistakes,"
Which "great" president is he talking about? Your last one is universaly regarded as the worst in living memory. Obama is still wet behind the ears, and yet is on track to outpace Bush to the bottom.
Uncle Tom-O-Bama just can;t seem to cowtow enough. Why did we vote for this guy? This is proof positive that race has nothing whatsoever to do with leadership. The banks, corp. rulers and the not-so-supreme-court are all on the payroll. I cannot help but feel as though we are really cooked.
This latest vote is just another example of why I call most of the people in CON- GRESS a crime family. Each of these corrupted cons that voted for more $ for war and killing of the MIC are guilty of murder and treason. When will the American people finally have enough?
Obviously, Paul Revere, the American people have not yet had enough because we keep on paying taxes. At least I do, and I hate myself for it. Hopefully I will gain enough courage to finally "just say no".
As to why "we" voted for Obama, BigEasy, maybe "you" voted for Obama but "we" did not because "I" did not, nor did I vote for John McCain. Evil is evil, whether it is lesser or greater, it is still evil.
As if voting makes any difference.
For what it's worth, you can legally divert the "war portion" of your income taxes to charity. It's a start.
Buck ,please elaborate! I have been suporting the "Peace tax fund bill" for years and to my knowlege,has not passed.If I am not mistaken about 50% of your tax dollars are used to pay for current or recent military expenditures.Please elaborate! peace , got links?
Good thing all those "Liberal" people voted out the Repubes to end war...
Have fun with your "Lesser Evil" empire now that you have both houses and the presidency...
Can't blame the repubes now for continuing wars and bailouts and outsourcing jobs...
Sometimes the "Lesser Evil" is More Evil than it's alternative...
It breeds complacency at best, and culls the growing sentiment to bring about genuine progressive change...
All those folks caught up in the "Hope & Change" are left to "Cope & Hang"...
Well, change for the worse is still change...
But hey... Obama is secretly a progressive on the inside, and is waiting for his golden moment...
That's the hope at least... We still have hope... We will always have hope... Because you stop hoping for something once you get what you are hoping for... And the people will never "get it"...
All those folks caught up in the "Hope & Change" are left to "Cope & Hang"
Excellent phrase!!
They used to say the same thing about Bill Clinton. "He's really a progressive, you'll see, after he's got his bearings." Well, we did see, and Bill never did display his "inner progressive." It wasn't there in the first place.He started us on the road to perdition, and handed over to Bush, who perfected what he'd started.Now Obama is taking up the good fight.
Sen. Dick Durbin was only half-right when he confirmed that "Frankly, they (the banksters) own the place (Congress.)
The other half is owned by our uber-patriotic military contractors, all of which are "too big to fail," most of which would if, God forbid, peace were to become some sort of crazy fad all of a sudden...
The good news is this: expanding military actions will mean an expanding need for recruits which will help drive down the climbing "homeland" unemployment numbers as more and more of the desperate sign up to feed their families.
The other half is owned by our uber-patriotic military contractors, all of which are "too big to fail," most of which would if, God forbid, peace were to become some sort of crazy fad all of a sudden...
There's a line in a Vietnam war movie spoken by an officer -- "As soon as this peace craze blows over ... "
True, our defense contractors are also too big to fail. We might as well talk in those terms, too. We need wars and the war on terror just to keep them in the pink. And we might as well call war a stimulus package or a jobs program. Isn't that why Obama and his party won't touch healthcare? Who cares if it doesn't work for us; the important thing is to keep those profits flowing to all those too-big-to-fail insurance companies.
And sometimes you can't tell defense from banking. Like take General Electric. Few did more to elect Obama than Jeffry Immelt of General Electric - both through Catalyst and through his free television campaigning for him. Now, GE is a defense contractor, but they are also a bank (and recipient of bailout money) as well as being media and a healthcare company. Lots of irons in lots of fires. I'll bet he's quite happy with his new president.
While we cast blame at ourselves for enabling these monsters, paying taxes and voting just as if we were real citizens, somebody (yes, China and Saudi Arabia, I'm talking to you) is co-signing our loans.
Plenty of blame to go around, eh?
It is stupid when justified by the incongrous arguments of the administration and supporters. However when looked at through the Pipelinestan lenz of Pepe Escobar (Liquid War: Postcard from Pipelinestan. CD 25 March) it makes a lot of sense. The only way to maintain the Empire is to adquire and consolidate control over the vast oil and gas pipeline network of Central Asia, for which the long term occupation of Afghanistan is essential. But the financial collapse will make it a lot harder: who is going to pay for it?
JohnE 2:47 ------ I hope you are not supporting the carnage in Afghanistan because you think you need oil for your auto. That would make you a war criminal and deserving of incarceration.
What if it was "your intention" as a member of the billionairefilth club to xfer ALL the wealth in this country to yourself and your class? What if you thought that the best way to do that was to break up this country like we once broke up Standard Oil of NJ? Would your comment mirror John D.'s own comment: "The pieces separate will be worth more than the unified company"?
If that was your intent: Would you empty the treasury into the hands of your corporations either directly from Congress or through Wall Street?; Would you promote massive expenditures from the taxpayers through a money funnel called the MIC?; Would you direct that all available monies should be taken from SSI/Medicare to pay for it all? Would you use a deliberately generated fiscal crisis to destroy the last surviving remnants of the organized labor movements?
If you find yourself answering yes to these questions you may begin to believe that our current Overseer in the WH is a "Waldo". Waldo is a SCI-FI term for a remote control grappling and manipulating device (similar to yet different from a "Sock Puppet").
I am told that in the last 6-7000 yrs there have been only 24 collapsed civilizations. Ours will be #25. The men who believe they can "consciously" steer the course of humanity let alone the course of this country are completely mad. Madness can often be seen as a total lack of external reference, everything is self-referential, they are incapable of absorbing "new" ideas or contradictory evidence. May all your enemies be so crippled and vulnerable. They never see the ax. They "believe" in their "systems" and their systems are brittle. They have no flexibility.
I have this eery feeling that it's 1965 again, and we're talking about sending some more troops here, bombing some more people there, with no clue about what we're going to be getting into.The frankenstein monster of "mission creep" is coming back to life, and with a little luck, we could get bogged down in an endless war in a disintegrating Pakistan.It's early days, folks.
ON ALL OF THESE ARTICLES that have a bill that has been passed, I'd like to see the BILL NUMBER and preferable a link to the LIST of how our representatives voted.
Yes, I know I can go to Thomas.gov and search for it, but wouldn't it be so much easier if it were right here in the articles?
I was to know how Henry Waxman voted NOW, not when I have time to look it up.///
Jeeveev
Try the League of Women Voters website, or the League of Conservation Voters.
Jeeveev
Try the League of Women Voters website, or the League of Conservation Voters.
Try the League of Women Voters website, or the League of Conservation Voters.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2009-265
Here it is. Read it and weep. My Congressman Waxman again is on the war side.///
"House Approves Blank Check for War"
The words of that platoon minister come to mind, proselytising his soldiers the other day. His words can be substituted to explain this phenomenon perfectly.
"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians (Capitalists), we hunt people for Jesus (Money). We do, we hunt them down," he says.
"Get the hound of heaven (Hellfire Missile) after them, so we get them into the kingdom (Capitalism). That's what we do, that's our business."
Has anyone checked lately to see if Barak O'Bush has shares of Haliburton?
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
Earlier I posted the who-voted-how list. Here's the full text of the bill, HR 2346:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-2346
I called my CONgress Rep.'s Washington office earlier and asked them to explain why my rep voted yes on this bill. I said "What part of GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST don't you guys get?" The man said that although rep. Ryan was on record as being against the war in Iraq, this bill included stuff for police, maintenance for troops and programs over there, etc. (Read the bill at the link I posted above and see if you think that there was anything but War funding... )
I said, "If he's really against the war they why doesn't he man up and say so? Mr. Kucinich spoke up! Why can't I be proud of Mr. Ryan like I am proud of Mr. Kucinich?"
He chuckled a little uncomfortably and said he was sorry to hear it, and I said "Then change my mind!"
The truth is that these guys are not who they say they are. As soon as they get to Washington they have their consciences surgically removed or something.
I've commented on the parallels before, but for those who read history, they will recognize much of this.
Hitler had promised the Junkers (the wealthy industrialists and landowners) that he would not tax them, nor restrict them. He got enormous financing and support from them. He told the Wehrmacht that they would be allowed to build the greatest military machine in history. They also threw their support behind him. When Hitler was finally elected, some SS fired the Reichstag building and it was blamed on a Dutch "half-wit" who was a communist. The Enabling Acts were immediately passed, which took away the civil rights and most of the rest of the Constitution of the Weimar Republic. This was to "protect the Reich from communists," and later Jews, etc.
The Reichstag then became a rubber stamp to legalize whatever Hitler decreed. The rest, as they say, is history.
Fast forward. The PNAC, made up largely of our "Junkers" and the same gang that were in the new administration had a plan for world conquest by the United States. One of the things they said they needed was a new "Pearl harbor" to galvanize the people into supporting new wars.
9-11 was our "Reichstag fire." The mis-named PATRIOT ACT was the modern version of Hitler's Enabling Acts, even using some of the same language. Our Congress and Senate became the American Reichstag, excusing or rubber stamping the excesses of the Cheney/Bush government. In the Obamanation, little has changed and our Reichstag continues to support the excesses of the Executive and the MIC, presumably as directed by our "Junkers" who have supported them and seen that they were elected.
Granted, this is greatly simplified, you can't put a thesis in a thousand word blog, but perhaps you get the idea. Do some research, draw your own conclusions.
This once great nation has slid so far down the slippery slope to oblivion that I don't know if we can ever claw our way back up.
Sioux Rose
MINITRUE: I was aware of all these parallels, too. One can also add that where the Nazis used the Jews, a Semitic people as their scapegoat, today it's the Muslims. And in both instances a lot of energy went towards the illusion of some form of Homeland Security State. Plus what helped make the German people desperate enough to accept a twisted authoritarian father figure was the financial collapse of Germany as a result of WW I. The U.S. today may well be approaching a similar form of financial collapse, and there are already SO many in uniforms answering to our own version of an authoritarian "unitary executive." Plus "progress" has been made in loosening Habeas Corpus, tying anti-war protestors and environmental activists with the loose language of what constitutes a terrorist. Sometimes I think the Neocons studied the Hitler play book, and where they came upon a gap, substituted another famous dictator's most favored policies. Too bad the media takes all the news that's fit to print and either distorts it, or attributes its cause to the very sources that might (if empowered or listened to) do some good. Insane.
Hi Sioux Rose,
Yeah, I had to keep it short and simple. I've had around a hundred articles posted in the Populist and others discussing and analyzing all these things and much more. Not too many outside the choir seem to be listening. Santayana was right.
Muslims have become German Jews, and then there is Palestine.
I'm a Virgo ruled by Mercury, so this is very frustrating to me. At least I'm getting old, so I won't have to worry too long about this, until the next incarnation, (I've decided to put in for another planet :-))but I'm sure sorry for all the young folks who have to try to get out of the mess that we are leaving them.
Pax tecum,
Steve
as long as we have neocons, neolibs, ziocons, and ziolibs, we will be globocop.
I suppose Obama is thinking in the same mind frame as George Bush. Over power the Arabs, give the land to the Jews, and the US will have all the oil, and become the weathyist country.
Q:
In the next election cycle how many "progressives" will still vote Democrat?
A:
Enough to defeat any third party and hand a victory to a Democrat or Republican.
Thanks Elaine for the Web address.
Unfortunately all of Oregon’s voted Yay. Not Good!
Ekaton – I think you have a T-Shirt! "Hope & Change" are left to "Cope & Hang"
To Big Easy Uncle Tom-O-Bama is so not cool
While I coined the phrase... I claim no intellectual property rights on "cope & hang"...
Feel free to put it on a t-shirt or bumper sticker yourself...
You're welcome. Did you get a chance to look at the bill itself as well? ( I posted that link earlier also.) I looked at it after I talked to my rep' office and I wish I had looked at it before. So that when they started blabbing about the other things besides war funding, (which there are, but only about 10%), I could have shot them down point by point. I think they got my message anyway.
On the question why Afghanistan matters to U.S. industrial, financial, energetic, and military interests, see Pepe Escobar's very informative article "Pipelineistan Goes Af-Pak," posted on May 12 at TomDispatch.com.
Here is an excerpt from the piece:
"In the ever-shifting New Great Game in Eurasia, a key question -- why Afghanistan matters -- is simply not part of the discussion in the United States. (Hint: It has nothing to do with the liberation of Afghan women.) In part, this is because the idea that energy and Afghanistan might have anything in common is verboten.
And yet, rest assured, nothing of significance takes place in Eurasia without an energy angle. In the case of Afghanistan, keep in mind that Central and South Asia have been considered by American strategists crucial places to plant the flag; and once the Soviet Union collapsed, control of the energy-rich former Soviet republics in the region was quickly seen as essential to future U.S. global power. It would be there, as they imagined it, that the U.S. Empire of Bases would intersect crucially with Pipelineistan in a way that would leave both Russia and China on the defensive.
Think of Afghanistan, then, as an overlooked subplot in the ongoing Liquid War. After all, an overarching goal of U.S. foreign policy since President Richard Nixon's era in the early 1970s has been to split Russia and China. The leadership of the SCO [Shanghai Cooperative Organization, which is an intergovernmental mutual-security organization founded in 2001 by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and which is nothing less than the Asian response to NATO] has been focused on this since the U.S. Congress passed the Silk Road Strategy Act five days before beginning the bombing of Serbia in March 1999. That act clearly identified American geo-strategic interests from the Black Sea to western China with building a mosaic of American protectorates in Central Asia and militarizing the Eurasian energy corridor.
Afghanistan, as it happens, sits conveniently at the crossroads of any new Silk Road linking the Caucasus to western China, and four nuclear powers (China, Russia, Pakistan, and India) lurk in the vicinity. "Losing" Afghanistan and its key network of U.S. military bases would, from the Pentagon's point of view, be a disaster, and though it may be a secondary matter in the New Great Game of the moment, it's worth remembering that the country itself is a lot more than the towering mountains of the Hindu Kush and immense deserts: it's believed to be rich in unexplored deposits of natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chrome, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, and iron ore, as well as precious and semiprecious stones.
And there's something highly toxic to be added to this already lethal mix: don't forget the narco-dollar angle -- the fact that the global heroin cartels that feast on Afghanistan only work with U.S. dollars, not euros. For the SCO, the top security threat in Afghanistan isn't the Taliban, but the drug business. Russia's anti-drug czar Viktor Ivanov routinely blasts the disaster that passes for a U.S./NATO anti-drug war there, stressing that Afghan heroin now kills 30,000 Russians annually, twice as many as were killed during the decade-long U.S.-supported anti-Soviet Afghan jihad of the 1980s."
Right on Abendland! The NATO vs. Shanghai Cooperation Organization Showdown is what this is all about. You lay it out well. This is about a geo military strategic foothold in the commies backyard.
Who ever said the Cold War was over? Welcome to Part II.
pepe has it down better than anyone.