Posted on 10/16/2007 2:33:12 PM PDT by mnehring
The occupation in Iraq will begin to end on the day that Democrats -- and responsible Republicans -- in Congress decide to stop meeting the demands of the Bush-Cheney administration for more money to fund their imperial endeavor along with the massive war-profiteering by administration-linked firms such as Halliburton and Blackwater.
This is a simple reality. But it remains one that most members of Congress, including many Democrats who should know better, fail to recognize.
The essential document in the current Iraq debate is a letter of commitment, now endorsed by 89 members of the House, that says the signers "will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during FY08 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq before the end of President Bush's term in office."
In an important new letter to President Bush, the 89 representatives -- 88 Democrats and Texas Republican Ron Paul -- say, "More than 3,800 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 28,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisors gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues.
"We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come."
At a time when the president is requesting an additional $50 billion to maintain his escalation of U.S. military operations in Iraq through next April, on top of the $145 billion he requested to continue military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2008 fiscal year, the letter says what all of Congress should be saying: No.
What is now the most important anti-war initiative in the Congress began in July when the following House members signed on: Rep. Lynn Woolsey ☼ (CA); Rep. Barbara Lee ☼ (CA); Rep. Maxine Waters ☼ (CA); Rep. Ellen Tauscher (CA); Rep. Rush Holt ☼ (NJ); Rep. Maurice Hinchey ☼ (NY); Rep. Diane Watson ☼ (CA); Rep. Ed Pastor (AZ); Rep. Barney Frank ☼ (MA); Rep. Danny Davis ☼ (IL); Rep. John Conyers ☼ (MI); Rep. John Hall ☼ (NY); Rep. Bob Filner (CA); Rep. Nydia Velazquez ☼ (NY); Rep. Bobby Rush ☼ (IL); Rep. Charles Rangel ☼ (NY); Rep. Ed Towns (NY); Rep. Paul Hodes ☼ (NH); Rep. William Lacy Clay ☼ (MO); Rep. Earl Blumenauer ☼ (OR); Rep. Albert Wynn ☼ (MD); Rep. Bill Delahunt (MA); Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC); Rep. G. K. Butterfield (NC); Rep. Hilda Solis ☼ (CA); Rep. Carolyn Maloney ☼ (NY); Rep. Jerrold Nadler ☼ (NY); Rep. Michael Honda (CA); Rep. Steve Cohen (TN); Rep. Phil Hare (IL); Rep. Grace Flores Napolitano (CA); Rep. Alcee Hastings ☼ (FL); Rep. James McGovern ☼ (MA); Rep. Marcy Kaptur (OH); Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL); Rep. Julia Carson ☼ (IN); Rep. Linda Sanchez ☼ (CA); Rep. Raul Grijalva ☼ (AZ); Rep. John Olver ☼ (MA); Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (TX); Rep. Jim McDermott (WA); Rep. Ed Markey (MA); Rep. Chaka Fattah ☼ (PA); Rep. Frank Pallone ☼ Jr. (NJ); Rep. Rubin Hinojosa (TX); Rep. Pete Stark (CA); Rep. Bobby Scott (VA); Rep. Jim Moran (VA); Rep. Betty McCollum ☼ (MN); Rep. Jim Oberstar (MN); Rep. Diana DeGette ☼ (CO); Rep. Stephen Lynch ☼ (MA); Rep. Artur Davis ☼ (AL); Rep. Hank Johnson (GA); Rep. Donald Payne ☼ (NJ); Rep. Emanuel Cleaver ☼ (MO); Rep. John Lewis ☼ (GA); Rep. Yvette Clarke ☼ (NY); Rep. Neil Abercrombie ☼ (HI); Rep. Gwen Moore (WI); Rep. Keith Ellison ☼ (MN); Rep. Tammy Baldwin ☼ (WI); Rep. Donna Christensen (USVI); Rep. David Scott ☼ (GA); Rep. Luis Gutierrez ☼ (IL); Lois Capps (CA); Steve Rothman (NJ); Elijah Cummings (MD); and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).
Since Congress returned from its summer break, the following members have joined this burgeoning effort to end the occupation: Rep. Chris Murphy (CT); Rep. Jesse Jackson ☼ Jr. (IL); Rep. Corrine Brown ☼ (FL); Rep. Bennie Thompson ☼ (MS); Rep. Mel Watt (NC); Rep. Gregory Meeks ☼ (NY); Rep. David Loebsack ☼ (IA); Rep. Anthony Weiner ☼ (NY); Rep. Dennis Kucinich ☼ (OH); Rep. Peter DeFazio ☼ (OR); Rep. Sam Farr ☼ (CA); Rep. Henry Waxman ☼ (D-CA); Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA); Rep. John Tierney ☼ (D-CA); Rep. Lloyd Doggett ☼ (D-TX); Rep. Anna Eshoo ☼ (D-CA); Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones ☼ (D-OH); Rep. Richard Neal ☼ (D-MA); and Rep. Louise Slaughter ☼ (D-NY).
Unfortunately, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and other key Democratic leaders have so far refused to commit to the only meaningful challenge to the Bush administration's war-without-end demands.
What Pelosi, who admitted over the weekend that the Congress has not done enough to challenge the administration's Iraq policies, needs to understand is that the time has come to stop the senseless killing and maiming of young Americans in a distant civil war. The time has come to end what is by any honest measure a colonial occupation and to allow Iraqis to decide their own destiny. The time has come to restore a measure of balance and decency to American foreign policy.
Perhaps most importantly, the time has come to ask whether those who fail to recognize the necessity of standing up to this administration -- unequivocally, consistently and without political calculation -- understand that their duty is to serve their constituents, their country and its Constitution -- as opposed to the mad whims of George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Reads like it was written by Al Queda in America.
We should all start mailing rubber knives to Ron Paul - symbolic of the one he’s currently trying to stick in our military’s back!
Unfortunately, this gives the appearance that Ron Paul and the Dems agree on foreign policy.
However, the difference in foreign policy views between liberals and so called ‘traditional conservatives’ (jefferson, taft, buchanan, paul) could not, IMO, be more stark.
Liberals have little understanding of what make this country great, they tend to think we stole our wealth from other nations. They think the world’s problems stem from the United States, that things would be better if our sovereignty would be restrained by the ever ‘benevolent’ United Nations, that Israel is an aggressive and ‘warmongering’ nation. They kiss up to socialist dictators, and appease the rest, having a near pathological fear any violence whatsoever, are antiwar at any and all cost, and yet favor ‘humanitarian’ military interventions in backwater hell holes like Somalia, Bosnia, and Darfur. They believe a weak US military will make the world safer, and leave more $$$ for social spending and planning, that we should get weapons out of space, disarm, and discard our nukes. History has not been kind to their bankrupt ideas; they are ideologically and morally adrift.
Traditional conservative, aka noninterventionist, foreign policy, espoused nowadays by paul, buchanan, and others begin with exactly the opposite premises! They believe in the greatest and goodness of the United States, that the United States is the ‘shinning city’ on a hill. They recognize our strength comes from our liberty, from small, not large government and not from expensive and expansive foreign policy, that government intentions in foreign policy backfire just as frequently as government intentions in domestic wealth redistributions or other socialistic schemes. To hell with the UN they say, to hell with the United States as a policemen or a nation builder, to hell with the billions upon billions in humanitarian and military aid we waste on corrupt dictatorships, and on keeping our troops based all around the world, and to hell with us worrying about the stability, poverty, and democracy, of every third world rotting chunk of earth. They believe that peace in the middle east would likely exist today if Israel was not held back and had not, in effect, abdicated its sovereignty to us. They are ‘ferocious isolationists’, not reckless pacifists like those on the left, they do not favor giving up our nuclear weapons, they favor a strong defense, and a crushing response with a total declaration of war if attacked.
So, IMO, the fact that both liberals and traditional conservatives want us out of Iraq is a complete coincidence, as they are arriving at said conclusion from complete opposite reasonings and disagree on nearly every other aspect of foreign policy.
Thus, while it is certainly understandable to disagree with any and all aspects of the traditional conservative philosophy and its application, I think their views deserve respect. To lump them together with the apt described ‘antiwar moonbat left’, is fallacious.
Bush ought to recall a Marine company and order them to have the 89 signatories shot for treason.
Rp is sickening.
Perhaps we should ask about the sanity of his critics. Ten years ago, most conservatives were on Ron Paul’s side in opposing Clinton/Neo-con wars in Kosovo and Bosnia and supporting a more “humble” foreign policy and an end to nation building. Paul has stuck to his guns on those issues but, now that a Republican is president, his former allies not only have flip flopped on foreign policy but are experiencing collective amnesia about their past views.
Pelosi - Failed Speaker
Dems - Failed Majorty
Promised everything to their constituents. Delivered ZERO!
“Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).”
You know, I wasn’t for the war either “Dr” Paul but FGS, to stab the troops in the back? Tell me why you aren’t a Dhimmicrat?
What crap.
“I suspect that Ron Paul was a Republican activist when you were in swaddling clothes.”
I suspect he was a Libertarian one. Now he’s no better than Code Pink.
Unfortunately, this gives the appearance that Ron Paul and the Dems agree on foreign policy.
IT IS!!!!
Actually what's even more scary is that they DO KNOW, but choose to ignore it anyway in order to regain power.
How dare you disgrace the name of Captain Kirk.
You are so far off base about Kosovo and Bosnia that I can hardly stop laughing......
The only difference is the lack of mentions of Allah.
http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/pauls-active-service-member-donations-get-noticed-2007-08-03.html
“Rep. Ron Paul (Texas), the anti-Iraq war candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and darling of the Internet, said his colleagues have taken notice that he has raised more money from active service members than any other GOP White House hopeful.”
The above Hill story was from last quarter. This quarter Paul has doubled the amount of money from the military, and I assume it is again more than any other Republican candidate.
http://rp4.us/2007/10/15/ron-paul-gets-3961672-in-military-donations-in-q3/
Do you never get tired of telling that same lie? Ever?
For a second I thought I was reading the supporters for the Turkey Genocide bill.
BTTT
BTTT
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