Casualties among both Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops are rising to their highest levels yet, with the prediction—by none other than President Bush—that they will go even higher in coming months. Public opinion polls show overwhelming public opposition to the Iraq war.
Yet, on May 24, Democratic Party leaders in the House and Senate joined with their Republican counterparts to push
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Meeting President Bush’s demand, the new bill has no strings attached. The legislation carries a price tag of $120 billion and will also pay for continuing the war in Afghanistan, as well as some legislators’ pet projects.
Added to the funding bill is an amendment to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade—from a miserable $5.15 an hour today to a miserable $7.25 in 2009. Even that “concession” was modified by $4 billion in new tax breaks for “small business” owners. They claim that paying employees such a meager wage will cause them terrible suffering.
The vote for expanded war funding came six months after the Democrats won majorities in both the House and Senate, a victory that was clearly a product of growing opposition to the Iraq war.
But rather than take straightforward action to stop appropriating funds for the war budget, the Democratic leaders began a series of smoke-and-mirror maneuvers involving “benchmarks” and “timelines.” The cheap theater was designed to make it appear that they were actually trying to end the war. In reality, it was nothing but a charade from the start.
While some of their supporters maintained illusions about their intentions, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and other members of the Democratic leadership clique knew from the start that they would end up granting Bush and the Pentagon everything they wanted.
Take for example, MoveOn.org, which much of the corporate media has recently anointed as a leading anti-war organization, despite never having organized a significant anti-war demonstration. MoveOn expressed shock and dismay at the Democratic leadership’s move.
In 2006, the organization raised millions of dollars for Democrats in their successful campaign to capture majorities in both houses of Congress. Its pitch was that electing Democrats would help end the war. MoveOn had itself been supporting expanded war funding, as long as it was adorned with some “benchmarks” for “progress” in Iraq. Some “anti-war” group.
Underlining the loathsome character of the May 24 deal—and those who engineered it—was the stated motivation behind it. The Democratic leaders’ explanation for the deal was slightly less crude than Bush’s “give the troops their money” reasoning, but no less dishonest.
“I cannot vote … to stop funding for our troops who are in harm’s way,” said Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who also voted for the bill, said, “The problem here is that we have troops in harm’s way who must have the necessary equipment and support.”
In this circular and cynical logic, as long the “troops are in harm’s way,” the Democrats must continue to fork over the funds to keep them there—fighting, killing and dying.
Corporate payoffs
The same phony “support the troops” reason was given by Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, a leading Democratic liberal from Rochester, New York, in a May 24 National Public Radio interview. Slaughter said that cutting funding would mean that the U.S. troops in Iraq, “would have to do more with even less than they have now.” But Slaughter, who heads the powerful House Rules Committee and who played a key role in pushing through the vote on the bill, had a very material interest in the legislation.
An article in the May 26 Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, two days after the Congressional vote, included the following facts about the bill and a corporation based in Slaughter’s home district:
“Tucked within the Iraq supplemental spending bill passed Thursday is language that maintains an agreement for Harris’ RF Communications Division in Rochester to supply the Army with radio systems.
“The deal was in jeopardy, officials said, after Harris RF hired 250 employees and invested $17 million in a new facility in Rochester to ensure it could meet the Army’s needs. The Army had planned to switch from using three vendors to supply it with Single Channel Ground-to-Air Radio Systems, or SINCGARS radios, to using one vendor.
“Harris was one of the two vendors slated to lose out on the business. However, Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-Fairport [a suburb of Rochester], announced Friday that language passed by the House last night ‘prohibits the U.S. Army from breaking their procurement agreement with Harris RF.’”
How many other similar payoffs to home district corporations helped grease the wheels of this corrupt deal is a question yet unanswered.
‘Wait until September’
“September is the moment of truth for this war,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaimed after the vote. Pelosi, in another act of hard-to-match cynicism, both helped to engineer the passing of the war funding bill and voted against it. Her reason for voting “no” is that she is from San Francisco, one of the most overwhelmingly anti-war districts in the country.
For Pelosi and the entire rotten establishment in Washington, another four months of war in Iraq is no problem. In that time, tens of thousands more Iraqis and hundreds more U.S. soldiers will die. Tens of thousands more will be wounded. Tens of billions of dollars that could be meeting people’s needs, here and there, will go down the rat hole of endless war.
The Democrats and the Republicans are both engaged in positioning themselves for the 2008 national elections, when they will once again compete over who gets to administer the capitalist state with its multi-trillion dollar budget. But despite their undeniable greed and venality, electoral ambition is not the prime force uniting the two parties of big capital on the Iraq war issue. It is instead a shared dedication to the imperialist ruling class’s strategy of global domination. Control of Iraq and the entire oil-rich Middle East is a pillar of that strategy.
The vote on May 24 should put to rest once and for all the idea that Congress can be an effective vehicle for the anti-war movement.
