Democrats Playing Political Chess with Iraqi and American Lives

Tweet "As the Democratic leadership has made clear, the proposal both in its current form as well as in the previous House and Senate bills is by no means a plan for a complete withdrawal from Iraq.

"On the contrary, while fully funding the war, the measure seeks a strategic redeployment of US forces, with tens of thousands of US troops remaining in the occupied country for the purposes of “counterterrorism operations”—suppressing Iraqi resistance—protecting “US interests”—securing oil fields—and training Iraqi puppet forces that have already been implicated in widespread torture and sectarian killings.

"Moreover, the Democrats are increasingly posing the issue not as a question of pulling back from the unrestrained militarism with which the Bush administration is identified, but rather an alternative strategy for utilizing US military force to pursue US global interests.

"Thus, much of the Democrats’ opposition is couched in expressions of concern over the way in which the American armed forces are being worn down by the Iraq deployment and thereby rendered unable to intervene elsewhere in the world. The House-Senate conference committee legislation retains the House version’s mandate that military units not be redeployed abroad before they have met the Pentagon’s own standards for rest, resupply and retraining. The language allows the President to waive this requirement by asserting that such deployments are necessary for “national security” reasons.

*****Last paragraphs tell the tale.

"This succinctly sums up the character of the supposed opposition of the Democratic congressional leadership to the Iraq war. In the end, they all know that they will provide the money that will keep the war going and drive up a death toll that includes hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and now stands at 3,333 US military personnel.

"The “chess game” that the Democrats are playing is designed, on the one hand, to redirect what is seen by wide sections of the American ruling elite as a failed strategy in Iraq in order to continue pursuing US interests by military means both there and internationally.

"On the other hand, it is meant to contain the mass and growing popular opposition to the war by promoting illusions that the carnage can be ended by supporting a party that is in reality determined to see this war drag on and is already preparing fresh acts of US aggression in every part of the globe.

Thanks to Sasha