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SUPPORT
OUR TROOPS -- BRING THEM HOME
Democrats and the Antiwar Movement--an opinion
When voters gave the Democratic party control of Congress in November,
2006. it was a clear rejection of Bush’s Iraq policy, and
a mandate for both Bush and the Democrats to end the war. In May
of 2007, after a lot of tough talk, the Democratic-controlled
Congress voted to give Bush another 100 billion dollars to continue
the war, including the “surge” that the Democrats
all said they were against. The bill contained no timetable for
withdrawal, and no prohibition against expanding the war to Iran.
Congress also made no effort to revoke the war powers it granted
Bush in 2002, nor has it used its subpoena power to investigate
how the Administration deceived the Congress and the public into
supporting the invasion in the first place.
Many genuinely antiwar Democrats in Congress voted against the
funding bill, and some phony ones as well, but the Democratic
leadership let it pass. In doing so, they not only angered their
base, they capitulated to a President who has the worst approval
rating of any President in the last thirty years. Why?
Most experienced political analysts think that the Democratic
leaders simply want to let Bush own this disastrous war until
the 2008 elections, so they can watch him and his party go down
in flames. Some other, perhaps more idealistic observers, believe
that the Democrats still don’t feel strong enough to take
on Bush and the Republican PR machine, so they are waiting until
the war is even more unpopular, and many Congressional Republicans
switch sides. (In fairness, some Democrats think that waiting
for the other party to come around is not exactly a bold strategy)
Still other observers feel that Congress, like the White House,
seems to have no idea where it’s going, and no real exit
strategy for Iraq.
One thing is for sure: the Democratic Party wants to be known
as the antiwar party, regardless of what it actually does. It
continues to criticize Bush’s war, despite continuing to
fund it, and it has been working to redirect the energy and manpower
of the antiwar movement into Democratic political campaigns. But
the gap between the Party’s rhetoric and its actions has
been a huge disappointment for members of the antiwar movement.
And it’s causing tremendous disagreement within the ranks,
as many antiwar activists are pretty loyal Democrats, who think
that all criticism should be aimed at Republicans, while others
consider such a stance to be pure hypocrisy.
A good example of the friction that this can cause occurred here
in Las Vegas this past March. When our group announced that we
were going to rally outside the Democratic presidential candidates
forum at UNLV, the Service Employees International Union and the
group Democracy For America --both close allies of the Democratic
Party--asked us not to do it. DFA even sent an email to its local
members urging them not to participate. Two weeks earlier, DFA
had called on its members to take to the streets to protest the
fourth anniversary of the war. Apparently they did not mean the
streets outside Democratic Party events. Still, DFA and the SEIU
are pretty good groups, and they did not make a fuss when we went
ahead and demonstrated anyway, proudly displaying our “Out
of Iraq” banner as Hilary’s motorcade drove by.
The bottom line is that the antiwar movement does not need all
this internal conflict, and at the end of the day, we are all
more or less on the same side. But politicians who enable Bush’s
war to continue, ignoring the will of the people, are no more
immune to criticism than the men who sold us this war in the first
place, and who continue to profit from it to this day. We hope
that the Democrats will step up and begin to de-fund the endless,
pointless occupation of Iraq. In the meantime, we will continue
to watch what they do, and not what they say.
For
questions, comments, or to get on our email list, email lasvegasantiwar@cox.net
or call (702) 241-8578.
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