Defund the War in Iraq

Glenn Greenwald and Commisar exhort Left Blogistan to push hard for de-funding the war in Iraq. I agree.

I'm extremely unhappy with my Representatives and Senators. I'm extremely unhappy with the Democratic party. For all of my adult life, they have wilted in the face of pressure from the Republican party. From the Iran/Contra scandal, through "free" trade deals that sell out the fundamental human and environmental protections that the Democratic party worked for decades to establish, the war in Iraq, and George Bush's egregious and blatant violations of fundamental Constitutional rights, and the election of faux "Democrat" Joe Lieberman, the Democratic party has consistently failed to even minimally resist the Republican party's clear and blatant program to destroy the middle class, enslave the poor and turn the United States into a third-world military dictatorship.

There can be only one explanation for such consistent and unrelieved failure: cowardice.

This cowardice is all the more inexplicable because it's utterly unnecessary. Even with the right-wing elitist Republican's almost total control of the mainstream news media, Clinton was re-elected. In the face of this relentless propaganda Al Gore actually won the 2000 Presidential Election, John Kerry lost the 2004 Presidential election by the narrowest of margins, the party has always had a filibuster-capable minority in the Senate, and has now re-taken control of Congress. All of this despite of Fox News, CNN, The New York Times, and virtually every major commercial media organizating cheering 24/7 for Bush, the war in Iraq, the necessity of dismantling our economic infrastructure and Constitutional liberties to save ourselves from a bunch of bearded religious nutjobs living in caves.

The people are not so stupid as you think. Not even the most dishonest full-throttle propaganda can fool all of the people all of the time. Such dishonest propaganda does not work by influencing very many of us, the people; it works by intimidating you, our leaders, into cowardice. And the right-wing propaganda machine will never reward you for that cowardice.

This is it. This is the party's last chance to show it can fight and fight for good. In the face of the right-wing propaganda machine, the Democratic party was given control of Congress for precisely one reason: To end the war in Iraq. Not next year, not next month, but today.

To my congressman, Tom Lantos, my senators, Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and to my neighbor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, I urge you, I exhort you, I howl to you: Grow a spine already! Stop the war in Iraq now. No bullshit, no excuses, no compromises, do whatever it takes to stop the war. And stand up and tell the people straight out what you're doing, why you're doing it. The truth, plainly spoken, will always defeat dishonest propaganda.

Perhaps a principled stand might cost you your jobs. Well boo hoo. If you fail to take a principled stand, if you fail to stand up to the Republican party's evil, there won't be a country left for you to govern.

To (both) my readers: Write your Representatives and Senators. Today. Tomorrow. Every day. Be brief, don't argue the point, just let them know where you stand. You're a voter by damned, and they serve at your pleasure. Let them know that you are very displeased.

I don't care if you're "liberal" or "conservative". The Republican party has long ceased to represent even conservatives. They represent none but a handful of the ultra-rich, and the brain-dead clusterfuck war in Iraq benefits only this handful. The undemocratic Republican party and its war in Iraq threatens even honest American conservatism as much as it does liberalism, because it threatens democracy itself.

Support our troops! Bring them home now!