Let's Ask to Defund the War. Now.

Originally posted on Street Prophets

President Bush is hellbent on increasing the number of our troops in Iraq.  Sen. Harry Reid almost went along with it -- see Surge Protection.

This is not good news for our newly Democratic majority in Congress.  As Dave Lindorff writes on CounterPunch, Only the People Can Save Us Now; Sell-Out Democrats Walk Into a Bush Trap on Iraq:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is a lot written about the war recently, including:

Runaway Inflation, Widespread Unemployment, Death Squads, Malnutrition, Blackouts, Ethnic Cleansing ... and Next Year Will Be Worse!; The Pentagon Measures the Chaos in Iraq by Winslow T. Wheeler on CounterPunch

Bush and Blair Have Destroyed Iraq, Revived the Taliban and Given a New Surge to Terror Threat; The War is Lost by Tariq Ali on CounterPunch

Iraq chaos 'will not be solved by military force' by Rupert Cornwell in The Independent

I could go on.

I was really touched by reading Sean Penn's acceptance speech at the Christopher Reeve First Amendment Awards, Where's the Accountability for the Dead and Wounded?: Georgie, There's a Crowd Downstairs.  We can walk and chew gum at the same time!  We can call a halt to this war so we can afford to get the progressive agenda passed and call for accountability.  Accountability?

In Mr. Penn's words (which cry out for being read aloud):

Words may be our most civil weapons of change, when they connect to actions of sacrifice, or good will, but they have no grace or power without bold clarity. So, if you'll bear with me, borrowing a line from Bob Dylan, "Let us not talk falsely now--the hour is getting late."

Global warming

Massive pollution

Non-stop U.S. war in Iraq

Attacks on civil liberties under the banner of war on terror

Military spending

You and I, U.S. taxpayers, spend 1 1/2 billion dollars on an Iraq-war-'focused' military everyday, while social needs cry out.

Health care

Education

Public transit

Environmental protections

Affordable housing

Job training

Public investment

And, levy building.

We depend largely for information on these issues from media industries, driven by the bottom line to such an extent that the public interest becomes uninteresting.

And should we speak truth, we stand against government efforts to intimidate or legislate in the service of censorship. Whether under the guise of a Patriot Act or any other benevolent-sounding rationale for the age-old game of shutting down dissent by discouraging independent thinking and preventing progressive social change.

The most effective forms of de facto censorship are pre-emptive. Systemically, we are encouraged to keep our heads down, out of the line of fire--to avoid the danger, god forbid, that someone in the White House, on Capitol Hill, or a media blow-hard might take a shot at us.

But, as a practical matter, most of the limits on creative expression and other forms of free speech come from self-censorship, where the mechanism of corporate clout offers carrots and brandishes sticks. We avoid a conflict before the conflict materializes. We reach for the carrots and stay out of range of sticks.

Mr. Penn makes a forceful argument for proceding with calls for accountability.  Another snippet:

Now, there's been a lot of talk lately on Capitol Hill about how impeachment should be "off the table." We're told that it's time to look ahead--not back...

Can you imagine how far that argument would go for the defense at an arraignment on charges of grand larceny, or large-scale distribution of methamphetamines? How about the arranging of a contract killing on a pregnant mother? "Indictment should be off the table." Or "Let's look forward, not backward." Or "We can't afford another failed defendant."

Our country has a legal system, not of men and women, but of laws. Why then are we so willing to put inconvenient provisions of the U.S. constitution and federal law "off the table?" Our greatest concern right now should be what to put ON the table. Unless we're going to have one set of laws for the powerful and another set for those who can't afford fancy lawyers, then truth matters to everyone. And accountability is a matter of human and legal principle. If we're going to continue wagging our fingers at the disadvantaged transgressors, then I suggest we be consistent. If truth and accountability can be stretched into sham concepts, we may as well open the gates of all our jails and prisons, where, by the way, there are more people behind bars than any other country in the world. One in every 32 American adults is behind bars, on probation, or on parole as we stand here tonight.

Which is to say that, globally, the United States is number one at demanding accountability and backing up that demand with imprisonment. But, when it comes to our president, vice president, secretary of state, former secretary of defense...this insistence on accountability vanishes. All of a sudden, what's past is prologue. And we're just "forward-looking." But some people can't just look forward. Men and women stationed in Iraq at this moment, under orders of a Commander-in-Chief so sufficiently practiced in the art of deception, that he got vast numbers of American journalists and the most esteemed media outlets of this country, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and PBS to eagerly serve his agenda-building for war. And the process also induced vast numbers of artists and performers (probably even some in this room tonight) to keep quiet and facilitate the push for an invasion in Iraq.

I called my Senators and emailed Sen. Reid's office and my Representative's office about my opposition to the "surge".  And perhaps the calls and letters from people like me helped -- because Sen. Reid backpeddled PDQ.  I think it is time to repeat the procedure with a demand for defunding of this war -- Congress can make clear that an orderly withdrawal will be paid for (see The McGovern/Polk Plan for Disengagement from Iraq for ideas) but $250,000,000 a day for more of the same will not be tolerated -- and more money for a "surge" is right out of the question.  And I hope you will join me.  The more noise, the better.

The stakes are high.  Writing as a "Ghost of Christmas Future", Ray McGovern and Col. W. Patrick Lang write on CounterPunch in Wrong Answer to the Wrong Question; To Surge or Not to Surge?:

A major buildup would commit the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to decisive combat in which there would be no more strategic reserves to be sent to the front. As Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway pointed out Monday, ``If you commit your reserve for something other than a decisive win, or to stave off defeat, then you have essentially shot your bolt.''

It will be a matter of win or die in the attempt. In that situation, everyone in uniform on the ground will commit every ounce of their being to ''victory,'' and few measures will be shrunk from.

Analogies come to mind: Stalingrad, the Bulge, Dien Bien Phu, the Battle of Algiers.

It will be total war with the likelihood of all the excesses and mass casualties that come with total war. To force such a strategy on our armed forces would be nothing short of immoral, in view of predictable troop losses and the huge number of Iraqis who would meet violent injury and death. If adopted, the ''surge'' strategy will turn out to be something we will spend a generation living down.

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., spoke for many of us on Sunday when George Stephanopoulos asked him to explain why Smith had said on the Senate floor that U.S. policy on Iraq may be ``criminal:''

``You can use any adjective you want, George. But I have long believed in a military context, when you do the same thing over and over again, without a clear strategy for victory, at the expense of your young people in arms, that is dereliction. That is deeply immoral.''

If you would like some talking points, David Swanson has provided a set here.  Don't be shy.  Our future depends upon the people's voice now.