- The Democratic Party and its feckless leaders in Congress
are about to fall into a trap. The trap is being sprung by President Bush
and his too clever brain trust, but the sad fact is that it was actually
laid by the Democrats themselves.
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- Taking over the Congress on a wave of popular revulsion
at the twin catastrophes in Iraq and Afghanistan, Democrats could have
issued immediate calls for an end to those wars, a return of the troops,
and investigations into the criminal causes of those costly fiascos. They
could have initiated efforts to halt funding for further war and foreign
occupation. Of course, taking such stands and actions would have opened
them to charges of being "soft on terror," but the public clearly
isn't buying that crap any more. With a little courage and leadership they
could have handled it, and come out winners.
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- Instead, they took what they thought was the easy road,
condemning not the criminal policies themselves, but only the administration's
handling of the wars. This led some to call not for an end to the wars,
but for more troops.
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- Now, Bush has called their bluff by proposing just that:
more troops for Iraq (the so-called "surge" option), and a major
expansion of the army over the longer term--the better to allow the president
to invade other countries even as the nation is already mired in two losing
wars.
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- And what are the Democrats in Congress going to do? Devoid
of any principles, their chance to demand an end to reckless imperialist
military adventures squandered, they are likely to fall in line and vote
to fund both an escalation of the Iraq War and an expansion of the military.
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- It's a double win for Bush. He gets the funding for more
war right through the end of his second term of office, allowing him to
hand the Iraq quagmire to the next president, making it someone else's
job to take the blame for the eventually unavoidable loss. And he gets
a bigger defense budget and more troops to play with--perhaps as much as
a 10 percent increase in total combat troops.
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- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the allegedly liberal, allegedly
anti-war incoming speaker of the House, and incoming Senate Majority Leader
Harry "send-in-the-cavalry" Reid can kiss their much touted "First
100 Hours" progressive agenda goodbye. With all the new money that
will have to be thrown into the Pentagon sinkhole, there won't be a dime
for domestic spending.
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- The Pentagon budgeters claim deceptively that every increase
of 10,000 new troops adds another $1.5 billion in defense costs, which
makes a 50,000 increase in troop strength sound like a manageable $7.5
billion extra--a drop in the bucket of a $500-billion defense budget. But
this figure is grossly misleading. First of all it doesn't include the
back-end costs of pensions, benefits and support costs, and the interest
on the debt, which taken together at least double the figure to over $15
billion a year. But more importantly, it doesn't factor in the costs when
those extra troops are actually sent into battle, where the costs of support,
equipment, equipment replacement, medical and long-term care can explode.
And make no mistake, the purpose of adding troops to the U.S. active-duty
roster is to use them for further war-mongering and further imperial adventurism.
-
- Singer John Fogerty had it right: this is déjà
vu all over again.
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- When President Lyndon Johnson saw that the Vietnam War
was being lost, he over-rode the best advice he was getting that the war
was a lost cause, and escalated the fighting with a massive infusion of
troops and an expansion of the U.S. military. The only result was more
killing of Vietnamese and Laotians, and more dying of American troops.
President Nixon did the same thing. Instead of ending the war when he took
over the presidency in 1968, he upped the ante again, eventually raising
the number of US troops in Indochina to over half a million, doubling the
number of Southeast Asians killed to over two million, and more than doubling
U.S. casualties to an eventual 58,000 before the U.S. finally had to admit
defeat.
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- "Surge" is the new escalation, and we're set
to repeat this tragedy, with Democrats (the new "sucker"), who
had a chance to call a halt to the nonsense, instead stupidly joining the
mad charge.
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- The end result of this betrayal of the electorate, which
has made it clear it wants an end to the Iraq War, will be a collapse of
the Democrats in 2008, with the party losing both houses of Congress and
probably the White House too. It will be a richly deserved collapse.
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- While the hour is late, there is yet a slim chance for
the public to rescue the Democrats from this course of political suicide
and the nation from disaster. If masses of committed people from all walks
of life take to the streets on January 27, when United for Peace and Justice
(UFPJ) and Impeach for Change are planning a major demonstration against
war and against the crimes of the Bush administration, maybe enough Democrats
in Congress will realize the intensity of public opposition to further
pointless mayhem and slaughter in the Middle East, and will realize the
only option is to pull the plug on the president's imperialist megalomania--and
to initiate impeachment hearings against the president.
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- I realize counting on Democrats to do the right thing,
even in their own self-interest, is a thin reed on which to rest hopes
for a return to national sanity, but we need to grasp it.
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- Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation
into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch
columns, titled This Can't be Happening!, is published by Common Courage
Press. Lindorff's latest book is The Case for Impeachment, co-authored
by Barbara Olshansky. Visit his http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/ website
for more information. Lindorff may be reached at dlindorff@yahoo.com. This
story is published in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.
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