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POLITICS-US: Peace Groups See Glimmer of Light

Aaron Glantz

SAN FRANCISCO, Mar 26 2007 (IPS) - Peace activists reacted with cautious optimism to a vote by the U.S. House of Representatives Friday giving President George W. Bush an additional 100 billion dollars to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the first time in four years, the appropriation contains a requirement that combat operations in Iraq cease by September 2008.

“It’s a bit of political theater,” said Carolyn Eisenberg, a professor of foreign policy at Hofstra University and co-chair of the legislative working group of the umbrella antiwar group United for Peace and Justice. “It is an effort to say that somehow or other this war needs to end and that’s what this House bill does.”

Eisenberg expressed concern, however, about specific provisions of the bill, which give President Bush considerable wiggle-room.

“It does not specify all troops coming out, it says ‘combat troops,'” she noted. “That’s a giant hole. What’s a combat troop? What’s a counter-terrorist troop who’s allowed to stay? What’s someone who’s training Iraqi troops who’s allowed to stay? It’s a gray area. We have to be realistic. This act really doesn’t end the war.”

Former Democratic Congressman Tom Andrews, who heads the Win Without War coalition, was happy to see the legislation pass, but expressed concern that provisions directing the embedding “of our troops as training troops into Iraqi units during a civil war. That is a horrible situation and a major flaw in this legislation.”

Andrews was also upset that House leaders struck a provision forbidding President Bush from going to war with Iran without Congressional authorisation.

United for Peace and Justice had lobbied Congress to refuse to give President Bush any additional funds to continue the war. Only by using the “power of the purse”, they argued, could Democrats effectively stop a conflict whose unpopularity helped sweep them to power last November.

Activists found some support among more liberal members of Congress.

Representative John Lewis, who worked with civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said on the House floor, “If he could speak today, he would say this nation needs a revolution of values that exposes the truth that war does not work. If he could speak today, he would say that war is obsolete as a tool of our foreign policy.”

“Tonight I must make it plain and clear that as a human being, as a citizen of the world, as a citizen of America, as a member of congress, as an individual committed to a world at peace with itself, I will not and I cannot in good conscience vote for another dollar or another dime to support this war,” Lewis said.

But Lewis turned out to be one of only a few Congresspersons to take that stand. The night before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with leaders of the body’s Out of Iraq Caucus, who agreed to stop lobbying against the measure.

In addition, legislative leaders agreed to spend 21 billion dollars on programmes unrelated to the Iraq war, including peanut storage, spinach subsidies and rural schools.

Many of those programmes appeared to be directed at progressive lawmakers who had previously voted against war funding.

Among Congressmen benefiting from the so-called “earmarks” was Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio, who voted against launching the war four years ago. Last week, the Oregon State House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for a withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq. The cities of Portland, Covallis, and Eugene have all passed similar resolutions, but DeFazio’s spokesperson said the school funding was more important.

“That’s pretty vital for our district, so we’ll be voting for the bill,” his spokesperson Danielle Langone told the website Politico.com last week.

After casting his vote, however, Congressman DeFazio put out a statement saying he voted for the war funding because it “both provided essential equipment to the troops and an enforceable deadline to end the war. To say the least, it’s more than a bit of a stretch to take a staff member’s comments out of context and imply that my vote hinged upon a domestic spending addition to the bill.”

“It was the right vote,” he said, “a vote to set an end to a war launched with massive deception that should never have been fought. Any suggestion that I had another motive for supporting the bill is flat out wrong.”

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to debate a similar war funding bill this week. Once they pass their version, the two houses of Congress will form a conference committee to work out their differences. After that, the bill will go to President Bush for his signature. Bush has already threatened to veto it.

“Democrats in the House, in an act of political theatre, voted to substitute their judgment for that of our military commanders on the ground in Iraq,” he said. “They set rigid restrictions that will require an army of lawyers to interpret. They set an arbitrary date for withdrawal without regard for conditions on the ground.”

Bush said the showdown in Washington could have effects on the ground in Iraq. If the spending bill is not approved and signed into law by Apr. 15, Bush said U.S. troops and their families “will face significant disruptions.”