Senate double-talk

With opposition to the Iraq war spreading, U.S. casualties rising and President George W. Bush’s poll numbers plummeting, Senate Republicans have acted to distance themselves from the open-ended “stay the course” policy of the White House and the Pentagon in time for the 2006 election campaign.

Attached to the $491 billion military appropriations bill that just passed 90 to 0 in the Senate were two amendments supposedly directed against the White House. The first said that 2006 “should be a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with Iraqi security forces taking the lead for the security of a free and sovereign Iraq, thereby creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq.”

The amendment, which passed 79 to 19, was introduced by John Warner, a Republican from Virginia. It called for the administration to give quarterly reports to Congress outlining the progress of the war and directed it “to explain to Congress and the American people its strategy for the successful completion of the mission in Iraq.”

It directed its puppets to unite against the resistance, demanding that “the administration should tell the leaders of all groups and political parties in Iraq that they need to make the compromises necessary to achieve the broad-based and sustainable political settlement that is essential for defeating the insurgency.”

Warner rewrites gutless Democratic amendment

This amendment was a rewrite by Warner of a Democratic amendment defeated earlier in the day 58 to 40. The Warner version omitted Democratic Party language that had called for the administration to provide “estimated dates” for redeployment of U.S. troops once a series of benchmark conditions were met, while containing a gigantic loophole for “unexpected contingencies [that] may arise.”

The amendment had been introduced by Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. This gutless resolution, which gave the Bush administration miles of room to continue the war, was denounced by the Republicans as a “timetable“ and a proposal to “cut and run.”

But both versions of the amendment were equally ridiculous in their posturing. No one bothered to explain how the urgings of a Senate amendment would make the puppet troops in Iraq any more capable of fighting than they are now. No one explained how the requirement to report to Congress every three months was going to make the Iraqi people hate the occupation any less or be less determined to expel the imperialist invaders.

Washington’s problem in Iraq is its total inability to stop the resistance. If 160,000 U.S. troops, 25,000 British troops and all their modern means of warfare cannot subjugate Iraq, how can an amendment instructing the White House to bolster its efforts to win and get out solve their problem?

The irony was that all this gesturing about wanting to end the war took place in the context of passing a $491 billion military spending bill, at least $50 billion of which was for continuing the occupation.

McCain’s amendment

The other amendment, opposed by Bush, was from Sen. John McCain. This provision made the language of the Geneva Convention against torture into law. It declared that no detainee in U.S. custody could be subject to “cruel, inhumane or degrading” treatment. Bush adamantly declared he would veto the military bill if it included the McCain amendment. The latest word is that his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, is quietly negotiating with McCain over the bill.

What is significant about both amendments, beyond the political posturing, is that they were each introduced by arch militarists. Warner is a former secretary of the Navy and head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. McCain was a pilot and officer in Vietnam; his father, an admiral, was commander of the Pacific Fleet during the Vietnam War.

Both have deep misgivings about the military strategy of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld group. The Senate amendment is not binding on the administration and allows the war and the killing to go on. Nevertheless, it is a message to Bush that sections of the military and of the ruling class are fearful that the present Pentagon strategy is not viable. No provisional government, no elections, no constitution has been able to reverse the steady advance of the Iraqi resistance.

While the Republicans have denounced the Democrats for proposing a “cut and run” timetable, Warner’s amendment more or less told Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld that rhetoric about “completing the mission” is not going to work any more. The mighty high-tech U.S. military machine, which was supposed to strike fear into the hearts of the Iraqi people and the rest of the world, is being humiliated on a daily basis by a grassroots resistance with small arms, small-scale explosives and widespread social support.

The British military recently did a secret poll in which it found that 82 percent of the population in Iraq is opposed to the occupation. Tony Blair has begun to talk about troop withdrawal. The Iraqi puppets are all beginning to talk about ending the occupation—just in order to maintain some credibility. Warner said about the amendment that “we really mean business, Iraqis, get on with it.” In other words, by 2006, the time of the elections, the Republicans want some results that they can point to and the U.S. military wants to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Behind the ‘protest’
of the talk shop

Ordinarily, Congress is an impotent talk shop when it comes to exerting any influence on the wars of the Pentagon. The business of Congress is to deal with lobbyists; to serve as conduits for big corporations; to do the bidding of the Pentagon, and to get elected and reelected. Rarely do they assert themselves, even with the type of timid, light-weight jabs they are throwing at the White House.

John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and the entire galaxy of present-day dissenters, along with former Bush loyalists like Bill Frist, majority leader from Tennessee, and John Cornyn of Texas all voted for the war. What gives these opportunistic legislators the temerity to even sound like opponents now? Of course it is fear of the growing opposition at home, but it is also because of the leadership of militarists like Warner and McCain, who have generals and admirals behind them.

The basis for these amendments, which may be watered down when they get to the House-Senate reconciliation process, was the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. The indictment of Libby was a blow at Cheney, the architect of the war, along with Donald Rumsfeld and the nest of right-wing neo-cons that surround Bush.

The indictment of Libby was followed by the humiliating defeat of Cheney’s attempts to get the Senate to defeat the McCain amendment. All the accusations about falsifying pre-war intelligence and the exposures of torture and secret CIA prisons that have been championed by Cheney have dealt the secretive right-wing cabal a severe blow.

Nevertheless, none of the senators or would-be strategists of despair has even one clue about how to change the dire situation for the Pentagon in Iraq or to defeat the Iraqi people’s struggle against the occupation.

But for the workers and the oppressed and the movement in this country, all these debates within the ruling class over timetables and conditions for “success” and withdrawal are just delaying tactics for imperialism. Each day they remain in Iraq to perpetuate their invasions, their raids, their arrests, their killing and humiliation of the Iraqi people is another day of brutal colonialist occupation.

All the congressional posturing should not deter the movement from fighting to get the troops out now, completely and without conditions.