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Despite WikiLeaks Revelations, Congress Votes for War Funding
Never was the case so weak for throwing another $33 billion into the Afghanistan sinkhole, but that's what a defensive US Congress did anyway on Tuesday evening. The vote was 308-114, with Republicans supplying most of the prowar votes.
Washington-based peace groups, after weeks of e-mailing messages to Congress, put the best face possible on the vote, claiming a "significant" gain of fourteen additional antiwar votes over the 100 cast for a similar amendment by Representative Barbara Lee two weeks ago. (The new Democratic votes were cast by Corrine Brown, Kathy Castor, John Conyers, Rosa Delauro, Lloyd Doggett, Anna Eshoo, Chaka Fattah, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Hank Johnson, Marcy Kaptur, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Gregory Meeks, James Moran, Christopher Murphy, Carol Shea-Porter, Mike Thompson, Lynn Woolsey and David Wu; while five Republicans joined the opposition: Paul Broun, Vernon Ehlers, Jeff Flake, Phil Gingrey and John Linder.)
Those casting prowar votes from safe liberal districts included Lois Capps, James Clyburn, Susan Davis, John Hall, Patrick Kennedy, Nita Lowey, Lucille Roybal-Allard, John Sarbanes and Joe Sestak. Significantly, Speaker Nancy Pelosi abstained from voting, which meant retreating from the chance to draw an antiwar line more firmly.
The highest measure of House opposition remains the 162 votes, including Pelosi's, cast in the House recently for Representative Jim McGovern's amendment requiring an exit strategy including a withdrawal timeline. Only eighteen senators voted for an identical amendment by Senator Russ Feingold earlier this spring. The dissenting numbers have almost doubled since last year.
In the moments after Tuesday's vote, a representative of Barbara Lee's office said new antiwar measures may be put forward around the defense appropriations bill later in this session. No concrete plan yet exists.
Those Congressional antiwar votes are in part due to years of grassroots work and mobilization, according to Rusti Eisenberg of the legislative committee of United for Peace and Justice. Is the glass half-full or half-empty?, she asks. What is clear is that there was never a better time to stop or delay this war. The political climate around Afghanistan turned extremely sour in the days leading up to Tuesday's vote. The Washington establishment was shaken by the spilling of 91,000 classified documents by the independent muckrakers at WikiLeaks.org. The raw documents revealed a much grimmer situation in Afghanistan than portrayed by the White House and the Pentagon with its information-war strategy. As millions read the WikiLeaks revelations in the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, a nervous White House pressed for an immediate House vote. "We don't know how to react. This obviously puts Congress and the public in a bad mood," lamented one White House official.
The president could have declared that the newly released materials only add to a growing consensus that the war is unwinnable. Instead he sent his spokesperson Robert Gibbs out to discredit the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, who is fast becoming a hero in the global info-wars.
Gibbs was offended by a German interview with the elusive Assange, in which he said "I enjoy crushing bastards," a sentiment that will do him no harm with Assange's readers and collaborators.
The Pentagon also is seeking to muzzle and imprison the American Private First Class Bradley Manning, 22, charged with downloading the documents and sending them to Assange. Manning, who is known by his hacker name Bradass87, copied the secret information on a CD labeled "Lady Gaga" while pretending to hum along to her music.
"I want people to see the truth, the non-PR version," said Manning. While downloading the materials, he had discovered "awful things that belong in the public domain and not on some server stored in a darkroom in Washington, DC.... I just couldn't let these things stay inside of the system and inside of my head."
Manning calls his action "open diplomacy.... It's beautiful and horrifying. It belongs in the public domain."
WikiLeaks founder Assange announced Monday that he has another 15,000 documents ready to release.
For now, funding for the escalation has been salvaged by the House vote. But the full impact of the documents remains to be seen. If the Pentagon finds a way to shut down WikiLeaks, it is likely that a huge media and public protest will follow. Going forward with upbeat messages about the war becomes hazardous for Obama too, especially with the release of more documents threatened. Pressures thus will increase here and across the NATO alliance to begin reducing the military presence.
On the very day the disclosures were splashed across front pages, American officials were quarreling with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai over whether fifty-two civilians were killed by Western rockets in Helmand Province, a scene of the current offensive. And, according to official sources interviewed by Dexter Filkins of the New York Times, Karzai is "pressing to strike his own deal with the Taliban and the country's archrival, Pakistan, the Taliban's longtime supporter."
Instead of bending to these apparent realities, Obama instead seems intent on doubling-down with the military offensive in Kandahar and his secret attacks in Pakistan.
No one in the government has found a way to stop him, despite 73 percent of Democrats and a majority of independents opposing his Afghanistan policy. By voting for war funding without conditions, Congress has yielded its checks and balances function, and now is being usurped and outperformed in its oversight responsibilities by the twentysomething geeks of WikiLeaks.
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43 Comments so far
Show Alland not one person here at CD saw that coming
So another 15,000 documents are about to be released. That's over 100,000 documents, and how many pages are in these documents? Assange could release 80 million documents and it wouldn't change a thing. Evidence that this "war" is nothing but a total fucking fraud from its inception to today, that Karzai and all his minions are hopelessly and devotedly corrupt, that our brave and valiant soldiers have been killing and raping innocent Afghan women and children repeatedly and routinely for 10 years, that the US has ONLY its own economic and political interests at stake there (oil, mineral resources, Christianity's triumph over Islam, a capitalist power base in the Middle East) and doesn't give a damn about democracy there or here and never has, and that Obama is possibly even more guilty of war crimes than Bush and is by far a greater liar in service to American triumphalism, which is the opposite of how this is all turning out (we're losing, we're lost, we're screwed, we're virtually bankrupted by our war addiction)--all this could be part of the evidence of these leaked documents, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to our war makers on Capitol Hill.
They will fund this fiasco to the bitterest of bitter ends, even if a few more barely manage to vote against funding from one year to the next. The majority will always vote in favor of More War All the Time. They don't know anything else to do, since that might mean breaking stride with everything we stand for: WAR. War and the profits that flow from it--we don't amount to anything else. The more fraudulent and unwinnable the war, the better! Then that war can go on forever, we don't have to withdraw because the job's not quite done, we can stay forever, killing and lying, wrecking and plundering, and lying lying lying. Halliburton, Bechtel, DynCorp and all the other corporate monsters and masters of war can make all the money on earth and We the People can go fuck ourselves for all they care. Since we're too stupid and dazed by decades of TV and commercial culture to do anything to stop them, they know we're pushovers and will rally behind their phony-ass wars year after year, no matter how screwed we know we are. Feeling "patriotic" is always the correct button to push on the American public's psyche than worrying about doing what is rational or responsible. Mass insanity is just so much more fun!
If the documents change nothing, that would be a first.
To imagine that they will make all the changes we might like is ridiculous, of course. The pro-death faction is strongly if strangely motivated.
To imagine that they will do much unaccompanied by action is naive. But all action keys on information, as does all the power we call "political." 0bama - or Geitner, for that matter - are not powerful because they do pushups, but because many people accord them a consideration that passes for "legitimacy." 0 is the president and Geitner is the $$ baron because many agree that it is so. Many accord this power because they fear force, but many out of some idea that God is with "us" or that the government of the US of A enjoys some sort of moral authority, or is at least "the best we have for right now."
Politicians and corporations pay Mad Ave to lie creatively for a reason; they need people to buy in.
Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and those working with them or working similarly are the sharp end of a wedge that stands to separate all or some of this goon squad from all or some of its power.
Of course, action requires the rest of a wedge and a good thwack.
After the respite accorded Barry 0, public approval of American government in and outside of the States continues to shrivel -- within the States more rapidly, for now. We may be watching the mallet rear back.
"By voting for war funding without conditions, Congress has yielded its checks and balances function, and now is being usurped and outperformed in its oversight responsibilities by the twentysomething geeks of WikiLeaks."
Congress yielded its function long ago, allowing the Supreme Court and the White House to legislate and declare war while abdicating its duty to investigate Executive and Judicial misconduct.
I see no reason to be surprised at all. The Democrats in Congress let alone the Republicans don't care what even their loyal supporters on FluffyPost say when they wake up and start to question their voting behavior. Wikileaks is no more of a threat to Congress than vocal public opposition. A trillion documents can be released through Wikileaks and Congress wouldn't budge. Mr. Hayden should be providing a list of those 308 traitors who need to be voted out of office this November and inform the people in their districts of better possible replacements. Otherwise, I see no point in hoping for some Internet miracle to wake up Congress only to be followed by another "that didn't work either" mourning.
P.S.: Ask yourself how many of those 308 seats are likely to be changed in November. Then you'll know why even Wikileaks means nothing to Congress.
There is absolutely no need for the congress to respond to the very small minority of Americans who actually oppose the overseas empire because they know that even when Americans get impatient about a particular war that is not being won fast enough they can easily be turned into a bloodthirsty mob ready for another slaughter of foreigners wnen the need arises. This is the beauty of having the most ignorant population in the industrialized world.
"...even when Americans get impatient about a particular war that is not being won fast enough they can easily be turned into a bloodthirsty mob ready for another slaughter of foreigners wnen the need arises."
That is the central problem that needs to be addressed before we can elect members of Congress who will say no to continued wars and occupations. Thanks for bringing this up.
I have no doubt that the two parties are owned and controlled by the big corporations lock, stock, and barrel. Even now, despite the obvious, out here in MO everyone is either rooting for Carnahan or Blunt for the senate seat. No matter how much I tell them about the issues, they never stop insisting that they "vote safely". The people supporting Blunt are without doubt strongly pro-war but even those who claim to be anti-war are still clinging to Carnahan even when she made her positions clear on her support of more military buildup and "defending Israel". They still believe that Blunt will win and hurt Obama if people switch to voting for Potts. I had to put up with two young workers going door to door for Carnahan. I didn't want to tear up their brochures in front of them or slam the door but the more they kept trashing Potts as a spoiler, the shorter my temper became. I feel sorry for those kids already unless the Democratic Party gives them permanent positions and pays them really well. The corporate media sure knows when to crank up their machines to corrupt the voters into impatiently making the wrong decisions just when most of them are starting to wake up. Speaking of no way out, California is leading the way to that doom. How long will it be before other states follow?
A short diversion
About loyalty to Democrats and Obama: I really dropped my jaw when environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote a mildly critical article on Obama, published in Mother Jones and here on CD.
The title: "Mr. President: Time to Quit Fibbing and Spinning" (fibbing? isn't that what little kids do? Isn't it called "lying" when presidents do it and the consequences are dire?)
McKibben writes: "I knocked on doors, made phone calls, gave money, and celebrated his victory—I think he’s the best president of my lifetime."
"I’ll always knock on doors for Obama."
David Brower, I'm sure, is rolling and roiling in his grave. I'm glad he doesn't have to be hear to watch all his many years of work end up here, with the environmental movement and Bill McKibben's obsequiosity to power and money.
rvrwalker, I'm almost certain that the McKibben piece you reference was published here last November. I'm not sure what prompted you to reference it today.
I tried to dig up the link so you could check out the comments thread; I recall many exasperated, snarky comments, including my own.
But FWIW, the only trace I could find on CD is a link to the article in Mother Jones as part of its "Copenhagen Coverage".
I found the title under http://www.commondreams.org/views_articles/2009/11 . There was a CD link to that article but unlike most CD links, it just goes straight to the MJ page. I would guess it to be a technical glitch but since you mentioned that comments for that article had existed, I don't know what to say. Is it possible to ask the webmaster to fix that possible glitch?
You, too, are mistaken. The central problem is that the Congress exists, and with it, parties. If we were to install a true democracy, in which citizens express their will directly, we would be able to make the changes so many recognize as desirable.
And how do we proceed to install a true democracy? Direct democracy is hardly feasible. The problems that would entail with that are too numerous to even contemplate. Doing away entirely with political parties is so unprecendented and unconscionable for Americans, you may as well advocate colonizing Jupiter.
Hayden sez: "Obama ... seems intent on doubling-down with the military offensive in Kandahar and his secret attacks in Pakistan."
***
Um, Tom?
The "secret" has been out for a couple of years now on those Pakistan attacks.
Maybe we need to feel sorry for Obomba, because he is smart enough to know he is nothing but a prisoner of the MIC, while Bush was a psycho path with very little conscience, Obomba has to be smart enough to know America's foreign policy is egregiously, corrupt and evil. Obomba has to realize the war in Afghanistan is an unwinnable graveyard and that he is guilty of the highest, treason to the American people. I think the Wikileaks, leaks just confirm what he must already know. He must know that he is sacrificing American and Afghan civilian lives to save his own.
By "prisoner," do you mean "house pet"?
"Prisoner" is not the usual word when one is kept.
Obama is a prisoner of his own choosing. What Malcolm X called a " house Negro ". But I like house pet also!
Hey, even though they are agents of empire, they're human (I won't go into what that suggests about humanity). I see only superficial differences between Bush and Obama.
Even GW was tentative about giving more tax cuts to the wealthy. When further cuts were suggested, I remember - it was reported somewhere - he said something to the effect of: "Didn't we just give big cuts to the rich?"
Why would you think that Obama is not as psychopathic as Bush? You must know, Ted Bundy was loved. He was a community organizer of sorts, a very charismatic and likable individual.
You gotta watch what they do. Psychopaths are famous for fooling people.
Okey dokey. Bush was a dumb psychopath that could not fool many and Obama is a smart psychopath, con man that still fools many. Not really much difference. I agree the differences are superficial.
My letter to my Congresswoman:
Do the right thing: Vote No on Afghanistan war funding bill H.R. 4899
The American people (those not kept ignorant by the corporate funded mainstream media) don't want war. They want a secure future that comes from full employment, respect for the environment, a health care system that cares about health, not insurance company profit. You know, those basic kinds of things.
Of course, the weapons industry needs the USA to keep shooting bullets and dropping bombs, so they can keep manufacturing more of these child-maiming tools for obscene profit... which, come to think of it, gets funneled back into your campaign contributions.
Why am I even writing this letter? You're going to vote to keep funding the war, aren't you?
In the last election, when I did my best to tell people they were being conned by Obama and to support third party candidates; wasting your vote and electing Republicans, was the mantra I heard over and over and over again.It worked in 2008 and I am sure it will work again in 2012!
Great comments, I agree: the winner-takes-all, corporate run, two-party system does not provide meaningful democratic choice or accountability. A de-facto one-party state and some describe this as the best democracy in the world.
Exactly, Rich M." The Democrats are a fake opposition"!
Isn't the "lesser of two evils" still an evil? So, why would someone intentionally want to vote for an evil?
I believe RichM would say YES to the first question. The second question is a very good question and deserves a lot of discussion and debating. As one who used to fall for "lesser evil", I think I can explain. The Democratic Party has a way of hiding its flaws and past serious errors just like the Republicans. Most voters who picked Obama were misled into believing that he is not just less evil but that he is that "star change to believe in". As for the remaining voters, the Democrats try to frame third party candidates as if they are symbols of political loneliness and fantasy. By making the voters feel that voting for third party is voting for fantasy and trying to induce a warning that they will regret that decision should the Republican win, they want the voters to have cold feet. By cold feet I mean that the voters will say that they support Nader or others but will push the button for "lesser evil" in the end. Note that the Republicans do likewise but their efforts to push third parties away are not as noticeable. Such a process makes it nearly impossible if not absolutely impossible to break free of the duopoly.
If I wanted to elect Republicans I'd vote for a Democrat.
Hayden's talk of antiwar sentiment in the Democratic Party is rubbish. If there is one thing Party Leaders know how to do it's count. If more Democratic votes had been needed to pass the bill they would have been there.
So now they can appeal to what passes for the left that there is hope (sorry) in the Democrats. After all, there is an election coming up. The existence of Kucinich, Grayson, et al in the party is used in the same way. They are gatekeepers, used to provide the illusion that progressive change is possible with the Democrats.
The institution of the Democratic Party itself is hopelessly compromised and corrupt. It has become the place where reform goes to die.
I have often read here on CD words to the effect that "...if the Dems would only grow a spine, show some backbone and fight..." Well, they are very capable of fighting...just not against the Republicans and the MIC, etc.
It's the left that needs to grow a spine, show some backbone and quit supporting these charlatans. Hell with 'em.
exactly.
and it was Tom Hayden that supported and campaigned for Obama. How is that going for ya Tom?
It's also worthy to note that he said almost nothing in the article above that wasn't reported a thousand other places.
"Despite WikiLeaks Revelations, Congress Votes for War Funding," thus demonstrating that democracy in the U.S. is defunct. It was nice while it lasted, though.
When was that, precisely?
Touche!
It is time, friends, to walk the talk and put your money where your mouths are. Private Bradley Manning has risked his very life to expose a bit of the ugly and bitter truth which the corporate media largely serve to hide and obfuscate in support of the global US military empire. Now Manning needs your financial support to help mount a vigorous legal defense. His admitted leaking of the 2007 helicopter slaughter of civilians is worth thousands of words as it sears the truth into ever more parts of the public mind. A vigorous public movement can be built around defending Manning and his actions. His brave action may have made others bold enough to release the thousands of pages of documents to Wikileaks which were made public this week. Courageous actions against the warmongers, murderers, and liars builds a community of truth tellers, just as it did during the US wars in SE Asia in the 1960s. The vivid truth telling of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War transformed the energies of the anti-war movement, as eyewitnesses told the ugly truth. Google "Help Bradley Manning" for the latest information.
Good point. Thanks.
Come on, progressives! Grow a spine!
If you can't/won't, why in the world would you expect them to?
"By voting for war funding without conditions, Congress has yielded its checks and balances function, and now is being usurped and outperformed in its oversight responsibilities by the twentysomething geeks of WikiLeaks."
I have been asking for some time now, where are the 20 and 30 somethings... why aren't they visibly protesting in large numbers? It's good to know that at least a few aren't afraid to get the truth out on matters which directly effect their future.
Tom Hayden is a jerk. Why are articles from this tool posted anywhere but in the caricature section of the playbill?
Here's a quote from Tom:
"That leaves Barack Obama. I have been devastated by too many tragedies and betrayals over the past 40 years to ever again deposit so much hope in any single individual, no matter how charismatic or brilliant. But today I see across the generational divide the spirit, excitement, energy and creativity of a new generation bidding to displace the old ways. Obama's moment is their moment, and I pray that they succeed without the sufferings and betrayals my generation went through. There really is no comparison between the Obama generation and those who would come to power with Hillary Clinton, and I suspect she knows it. The people she would take into her administration may have been reformers and idealists in their youth, but they seem to seek now a return to their establishment positions of power. They are the sorts of people young Hillary Clinton herself would have scorned at Wellesley. If history is any guide, the new "best and brightest" of the Obama generation will unleash a new cycle of activism, reform and fresh thinking before they follow pragmatism to its dead end.
Many ordinary Americans will take a transformative step down the long road to the Rainbow Covenant if Obama wins. For at least a brief moment, people around the world -- from the shantytowns to the sweatshops, even to the restless rich of the Sixties generation -- will look up from the treadmills of their shrunken lives to the possibilities of what life still might be. Environmental justice and global economic hope would dawn as possibilities.
Is Barack the one we have been waiting for? Or is it the other way around? Are we the people we have been waiting for? Barack Obama is giving voice and space to an awakening beyond his wildest expectations, a social force that may lead him far beyond his modest policy agend. Such movements in the past led the Kennedys and Franklin Roosevelt to achievements they never contemplated. [As Gandhi once said of India's liberation movement, "There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader."]"
- Tom Hayden, January 27, 2008 04:49 PM
"An Endorsement of the Movement Barack Obama Leads"
What a moron.
Anyone seen the Obama mania movement?
Thanks for bringing this up. I vaguely remember Hayden shilling for Obama like this, but seeing the black and white version as a reminder is chilling and disgusting. Hayden was speaking for millions of lily-white liberals in that puff piece. Obama was heralded to be the great half-black savior of the American meltdown initiated by Reagan, continued by Bush 1 and Clinton, and jellified by Bush 2. But it was never to be, as thousands of us on the real left never listened to by our liberal friends and acquaintances shouted for 2 years. Obama was clearly a fraud then and no one with half a brain can deny it now. Yet many liberals STILL DO. They still believe this capitalist-loving clown will deliver the progressive goods, if only we have faith, or patience, or hold his hooves to the fire, or support enough Democrats for reelection, or whatever fairy tales they tell themselves. Liberals are as impervious to obvious political reality as dickweed reactionaries are.
These war-vote numbers mean the anti-war movement must disconnect war-funding Democrats and Republicans from Congress. Unfortunately the Obamaniac know-littles, including most of the Democratic-talking-points pundits like Maddow, Schultz, Press, etc. have given Obama and war-funding Congressional Democrats a pass on their cowardly decision to expend a trillion depression-deepening, deficit ballooning dollars sending a 21st Century, highest tech, highest firepowered, heavily body-armored force of troops and US-financed murdering, sadistic contractors against a 19th Century, low-tech, low firepowered, no body-armored insurgency that is fighting against a US-imposed brutal, courrupt Drug Pusherocracy that stole the last election and the latest occupier of their country -- the USA. The world knows the Taliban poses no threat to the US and never did -- that no Afghans flew into the WTC or Pentagon and that the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral third country prior to our cowardly terroist war against the Afghan population.
If the Anti-war movement is serious, it will vote out any Congressman or Senator who voted to continue funding for the war without worrying about which Party controls Congress. Anti-war voters must disconnect any Congressman who voted for this latest funding from his/her position,regardless of Party.
We must not listen to closet warmongerers like Hartmann, Maddow, Schultz, etc. who loudly whine against the war and then say we must vote Democratic. If a Democrat voted to fund -- disconnect him/her from the job.
Corporatist war criminals Obama and Pelosi believe that progressives have no choice but to vote with the Obamaniac "know-littles" as opposed to the Palin/Republican "know-nothings", so they think they can shove the war down our throats. We must show them they're wrong and vote out anyone voting to fund this cowardly, barbaric, wholly unaffordable Afghan war. Voting for someone who funds the war means you're a warmongerer and war criminal, not a progressive, no matter how good that candidate may be on other issues.