Patrick Martin
[vedi anche art. WSWS, 21 nov. 2005: Gran gazzarra nel Congresso sul voto di ritiro dall’Irak]
Il leader democratico John Murtha (Pennsylvania), ha chiesto il ritiro entro sei mesi delle truppe americane dall’Irak; i suoi compagni di partito democratici ne hanno preso le distanze.
Motivazione della richiesta di Murtha: la guerra sta distraendo gli Usa da minacce globali molto più importanti che non «possono essere ignorate», come l’Iran e il Nord Corea (ha combattuto nella guerra di Corea N.d.R.).
La presenza delle truppe americane in Irak sta «compattando il nemico contro di noi, […] i nostri militari hanno compiuto la loro missione e fatto il loro dovere. Hanno catturato Saddam Hussein e ucciso il suoi più stretti sostenitori, ma la guerra continua ad intensificarsi».
Murtha ha chiesto venga mantenuta in MO una forza di reazione rapida.
Murtha, uno dei falchi del Congresso, è stato 37 anni nella marina, e si è ritirato con il grado di colonnello dell’intelligence, (ha combattuto nella guerra di Corea e – n.d.R.) in Vietnam; fa parte della sottocommissione per le spese della Difesa della Camera dei rappresentanti, è stato un fervente sostenitore sia della prima guerra del Golfo Persico che dell’attacco all’Irak nel 2003.
La Casa Bianca sa che Murtha parla non solo per sé ma per una quota rilevante del comando militare del Pentagono, con cui da decenni mantiene stretti legami politici.
L’iniziativa di Murtha porta alla luce il conflitto all’interno dell’establishment militare americano. Una rilevante quota dei militari riconosce che l’Irak è divenuto un disastro, non solo per la difficoltà nel reclutamento di nuovi soldati ma anche per il mantenimento del morale di chi è ancora in servizio. Le perdite americane sono giunte a 2094, 67 caduti nei primi venti giorni di questo mese, il più alto tasso dal novembre 2004.
A completare il quadro nell’opinione pubblica sulla guerra in Irak si sono aggiunti gli scandali sulla corruzione di funzionari americani negli appalti, rivelazioni di torture, e squadre di assassini nelle forze di scurezza irachene addestrate dagli americani, l’abuso contro i prigionieri e l’utilizzo di armi vietate contro i civili.
I repubblicani hanno voluto mettere al voto la proposta per mettere a nudo l’ipocrisia dei democratici che, mentre lodando la sfida sferrata da Murtha a Bush, ne hanno preso le distanze alla prova dei fatti: la proposta è stata respinta con 403 NO contro 3 Sì; la leader dei democratici ha invitato a respingerla.
Tra i democratici dichiaratisi espressamente contrari al ritiro: Reid, Kerry, Biden.
Nella gazzarre al Congresso sulla discussione della proposta di Murtha, democratici e repubblicani sono quasi venuti alle mani.
La violenza del dibattito al Congresso riporta, in forma di farsa, quella scoppiata nel 1856 sulla questione dello schiavismo, prima della guerra civile americana.
Cheney ha rafforzato l’attacco di Bush contro coloro che criticano la conduzione della guerra, ribadendo la corresponsabilità dei democratici nella decisione di sferrare l’attacco all’Irak.
La campagna di Bush per la rielezione nel 2004 ha fatto leva sul timore di attacchi terroristici, sfruttando le contraddizioni dei democratici, il cui candidato John Kerry appoggiava la guerra nonostante i sentimenti degli elettori democratici.
Il segretario alla Difesa Donald Rumsfeld ha dichiarato in un talk shaw: «Il nemico sente il grande dibattito in corso negli USA e forse si chiedono se non basti aspettare per vincere… La battaglia è qui negli Stati Uniti».
Kerry su Cheney: «continua a ingannare l’America sul come siamo entrati in Irak e su cosa occorre fare per completare la missione ancora incompiuta».
Harry Reid, leader dei democratici al senato: i repubblicani anziché cercare di riconquistarsi la credibilità attaccando i loro critici «devono concentrarsi sul lavoro in corso, fornendo alle nostre truppe una strategia per il successo in Irak».
L’ex presidente americano Bill Clinton, il cui appoggio alla guerra è stato più volte sottolineato da Bush: l’invasione dell’Irak è stata «un grande errore», è stato un errore lo smantellamento dell’apparato statale iracheno, specialmente il discioglimento dell’esercito, e non si è capito «come sarebbe stato difficile unire il paese». Così «Non abbiamo mai inviato un numero sufficiente di truppe e non abbiamo avuto truppe a sufficienza per controllare e bloccare i confini».
Il WSJ ha interpretato le dichiarazioni di Murtha come indice del calo di consenso sulla conduzione della guerra; il giornale ha attaccato anche i repubblicani che hanno chiesto rapporti regolari sull’andamento della guerra.
Il WP ha ridicolizzato i democratici, che se la sono data a gambe, non dall’Irak, ma da Murtha.
Il NYT, seguendo la posizione della dirigenza democratica, ha respinto qualsiasi ritiro anticipato delle truppe americane dall’Irak.
WSWS 05-11-19
Political conflict intensifies over Bush’s Iraq war lies
By Patrick Martin
The political conflict within US ruling circles over the debacle resulting from the American intervention in Iraq intensified sharply this week. Vice President Dick Cheney denounced Bush’s critics as “reprehensible,” saying they were “playing politics in the middle of a war,” while a leading Democratic war hawk, Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania, startled official Washington on Thursday by calling for the immediate withdrawal of US troops in Iraq.
Republican congressmen responded to Murtha’s statement with furious denunciations, accusing the congressman of cowardice and
all but branding the Democrats as allies of terrorists and traitors. Leading Democrats reacted either by distancing themselves from his remarks, disavowing them, or refusing to comment.
Speaking Wednesday night at a dinner sponsored by the right-wing Frontiers of Freedom Institute, Cheney had escalated the attack on critics of the war begun by Bush in his Veterans Day address in Pennsylvania. Cheney declared that “the suggestion that’s been made by some US senators that the president of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.”
Cheney reiterated Bush’s argument that in voting to authorize the war in October 2002, leading congressional Democrats “arrived at the same judgment about Iraq’s capabilities and intentions [as] that made by this administration and by the previous administration…. There was broad-based, bipartisan agreement that Saddam Hussein was a threat, that he had violated UN Security Council Resolutions.” “What we’re hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war,” Cheney continued. “The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out.”
The duplicity of the vice president’s last comment can hardly be overstated. It is true that the US soldiers in Iraq are being subjected to “cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out,” but the lies are emanating from the Bush administration, not from opponents of the war. Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a Baghdad role in the September 11 terrorist attacks, Iraqis welcoming US soldiers as liberators—these and similar lies have been spread endlessly by the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and the US media. Within the Bush administration, Cheney himself has played the leading role in their dissemination.
As for the claim by Cheney and Bush that their critics are “playing politics in the middle of a war,” that is an accurate description of the methods employed by the Republican administration. Well before the decision to invade Iraq was finalized, in early 2002, Bush’s top political aide Karl Rove was telling Republican operatives to plan on using the war as an issue against Democratic opponents in that year’s congressional elections—a tactic employed successfully against Senator Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat and triple amputee in Vietnam who was smeared as unpatriotic.
Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004 was based entirely on such fear-mongering and smear tactics, while exploiting the contradictions in the Democratic Party, whose candidate John Kerry supported the war despite the antiwar sentiments of Democratic voters.
Cheney’s comments provoked a series of responses from leading Democrats, who reiterated charges of deceiving and misleading, while indicating they still supported a US military victory in Iraq. Senator Kerry said that Cheney “continues to mislead America about how we got into Iraqi and what must be done to complete the still unaccomplished mission.”
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said, “I would urge the members of the Bush administration to stop trying to resurrect their political standing by lashing out at their critics. They need to focus on the job at hand, giving our troops a strategy for success in Iraq.”
Former president Bill Clinton, whose support for the war has been widely cited by Bush and his congressional and media apologists, made his most critical remarks about the war in a speech Wednesday to an audience of Arab students in the United Arab Emirates, a Persian Gulf sheikdom which has provided logistics facilities for US military forces.
Clinton called the invasion of Iraq “a big mistake.” While still endorsing the initial intervention to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Clinton criticized the dismantling of the Iraqi state apparatus, especially the military, and the failure to understand “how hard it would be to unite the country.” As a result, “We never sent enough troops and didn’t have enough troops to control or seal the borders,” Clinton said.
Most significant was the declaration by Murtha, a former Marine intelligence officer and Vietnam veteran and the senior Democrat on the Defense appropriations subcommittee of the House of Representatives. “It is time for a change in direction,” he told a Thursday morning press briefing. “Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region.”
The 16-term congressman called for the pullout of all US troops within six months and said he would introduce a resolution to that effect in the House of Representatives. Murtha was a fervent supporter of the invasion of Iraq, but he said the war was becoming a distraction from more important global threats to US interests that “cannot be ignored,” such as Iran and North Korea. He called for maintaining a rapid response military force in the region.
The presence of US troops in Iraq was “uniting the enemy against us,” he said. “Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, captured or killed his closest associates, but the war continues to intensify.”
Murtha was particularly bitter about the Bush administration’s latest propaganda offensive, including both Cheney’s remarks and Bush’s earlier speech on November 11. “I resent the fact that on Veterans Day, they criticized Democrats for criticizing them,” Murtha said. Referring to Cheney’s avoidance of military service in the 1960s, he added sarcastically, “I like guys who’ve never been there that criticize us who’ve been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and have never been there and send people to war, and then don’t like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.”
The Republican speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, responded to Murtha’s press briefing by accusing Murtha of delivering “the highest insult” to US troops, adding, “Murtha and Democratic leaders have adopted a policy of cut and run. They would prefer that the United States surrender to the terrorists who would harm innocent Americans.”
Majority Leader Roy Blunt of Missouri charged that the Democrats “undermine our troops in Iraq from the security of their Washington DC offices.”
Rep. Geoff Davis of Kentucky said the terrorists “have brought the battlefield to the halls of Congress… and frankly, the liberal leadership have … cooperated with our enemies and are emboldening our enemies.”
The Wall Street Journal, in a Friday
editorial entitled “Washington Retreat,” denounced Murtha’s statement as indicative of a general waffling of support for Bush’s conduct of the war, declaring bitterly that “American troops can’t be defeated, but American politicians can be.” The Journal centered its fire on Senate Republican leaders such as Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner and Majority Leader Bill Frist, attacking them for sponsoring a resolution, passed November 14, that called on the Bush administration to provide Congress with regular updates on the progress of the war.
In his policy prescription, Murtha went well beyond the position adopted by the rest of the congressional Democratic leadership. The Washington Post’s Capitol Hill columnist, Dana Milbank, accurately characterized their response to Murtha’s statement and the McCarthyite attacks of the Republicans, writing on November 18, “… Democrats were cutting and running yesterday—not from Iraq, but from Murtha.”
A front-page news article in Friday’s Post reported that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi “had told colleagues at a closed meeting yesterday morning that she, too, would advocate an immediate troop withdrawal, according to several who attended.” But at her afternoon news conference, she was, according to Milbank’s column, “meticulous in avoiding any agreement with Murtha’s ‘very provocative’ statement.”
Milbank recounted the following exchange between the California Democrat and a reporter: “‘But you do agree with the call for immediate withdrawal?’
“‘As I said, that was Mr. Murtha’s statement,’ she replied.”
Giving a picture of the cowardice of Murtha’s Democratic colleagues, Milbank wrote: “In the Speaker’s Lobby off the House floor, Democrats ran for cover. Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.) walked away when reporters asked if Murtha’s move would change the Democrats’ position. Asked if he agreed with Murtha, Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the ranking Democrat on the Armed Service Committee, replied, ‘Talk to you later.’”
Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a former aide to Bill Clinton and now head of the House Democrats’ reelection campaign effort, said, “Jack Murtha went out and spoke for Jack Murtha.”
On the Senate side, Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid said curtly, “I don’t support immediate withdrawal.”
The New York Times, reflecting the position of the Democratic Party leadership, published an editorial the morning of Murtha’s press conference criticizing Bush’s conduct of the war while expressly rejecting any early withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
The significance of Murtha’s intervention is underscored by the description of the Pennsylvania congressman published by the Associated Press, which wrote: “First elected to Congress in 1974, Murtha is known as an ally of uniformed officers in the Pentagon and on the battlefield. The perception on Capitol Hill is that when the congressman makes a statement on military issues, he’s talking for those in uniform.”
Murtha’s intervention thus brings to light a conflict which runs right through the US military establishment. A sizeable section of the military brass recognizes that Iraq has become a disaster, not just for the recruitment of new forces, but for maintaining the morale of those currently in military service, especially in units of the Army, Marine Corps and National Guard, which have suffered heavy casualties, including both deaths and crippling wounds.
The officer corps is itself becoming politicized by the conflict over the war—a development that has the most ominous implications for democratic rights. A top US military commander in Iraq made an extraordinary public intervention in the debate going on in Washington, denouncing calls for a timetable for withdrawal of US troops as “a recipe for disaster.”
Only two days after the Senate voted by 58-40 against a Democratic resolution that would have called on the Bush administration to draft such a timetable, Major General William Webster attacked the idea, telling reporters, “Setting a date would mean that the 221 soldiers I’ve lost this year, that their lives will have been lost in vain.” Webster commands the Third Infantry Division, which controls the bulk of Baghdad.
It is highly irregular for an active-duty military officer to comment publicly on a political debate taking place in Congress. The tone of Webster’s remarks amounted to an incitement to the soldiers under his command to reject civilian authority, should Congress or a future president ultimately decide to impose a withdrawal timetable in Iraq.
What must be understood about the escalating debate in official Washington is that it is a conflict with the ruling elite over how best to safeguard the interests of American imperialism. Bush’s Democratic critics are not “antiwar” in any serious sense of the word. They largely backed the Iraq war to begin with and, as the statements of Clinton, Kerry and others demonstrate, they still support the goal of the intervention, which was to seize control of a key oil-producing country and transform it into a US client state.
The Democrats have become more vocal in their criticism, not because of US casualties or the horrors visited upon the Iraqi people, but because of the evident failure of the enterprise, evidenced not only in the ongoing resistance to the US occupation in Iraq, but even more so in the growing hostility to the war among the American people.
They fear, as Murtha emphasized, that the Iraq war now prevents the Pentagon from intervening in any other crisis around the world—not only because it ties down the bulk of deployable US ground forces, but because the brazen lies and aggression have discredited military action in the eyes of the American public.
———————-
Uproar in US Congress over Iraq withdrawal vote
By Bill Van Auken
The US House of Representatives was thrown into an uproar Friday when the Republican majority forced a vote on a sham resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq.
The measure was placed on the agenda at the conclusion of the House’s final pre-vacation session in a bid to embarrass the Democrats and retaliate against Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, who the previous day had called for a pullout of US occupation forces over the next six months.
Murtha’s proposal shook politicians in both parties and was an unmistakable sign of the deepening crisis confronting the American intervention in Iraq. The 16-term congressman spent 37 years in the Marine Corps, retiring as a colonel. As a veteran officer and the most experienced congressional figure in defense appropriations, he enjoys the closest ties with the military brass.
The raucous congressional debate came after White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan made the absurd charge that Murtha, a consiste
nt hawk who supported both the first Persian Gulf war and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was “endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party.” His call for a rapid withdrawal of US troops, McClellan said, amounted to “surrender to the terrorists.”
The New York Times reported on the House session: “Republicans and Democrats shouted, howled and slung insults on the House floor,” adding that the debate “descended into a fury over President Bush’s handling of the war and a leading Democrat’s call to bring the troops home.” The Washington Post reported that Democratic and Republican congressmen “nearly came to blows.”
The fury was triggered by a remark from Ohio Republican Representative Jean Schmidt—the most junior member of the House—who declared that one of her constituents, a Marine, had told her “to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.”
The insult to one of the most senior members of the House, a Vietnam veteran, was a violation of the body’s customary decorum as well as its rules, which bar members from directly addressing each other.
In response, Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee and other Democrats shouted and lunged toward the Republican side of the chamber. Newsweek commented, “The melee was so intense that it brought the soothing presence of Rep. Tom DeLay from his secure undisclosed location, and Schmidt eventually apologized.”
The Times quoted two Republican congressmen Sunday claiming that Schmidt made the remark unaware that Murtha was a former Marine. If this is true, it is testament to the abysmal intellectual level of the crop of Republican House members like Schmidt who have been elevated to Congress through appeals to reaction and the backwardness of the Christian right.
Most House observers, however, saw the statement as a deliberate provocation by a Republican congressional leadership that has become increasingly desperate over the plummeting popular support for Bush, the war in Iraq, and the party’s domestic political agenda.
In the end, the Republican measure calling for “immediate withdrawal” was voted down by an overwhelming margin, with 403 voting against and just 3 Democrats voting “yes.” Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi had urged Democratic congressmen to vote against the measure.
In the wake of the vote, the Bush administration continued its provocative attacks on Democratic critics of the administration’s war policy, calling forward military officers to attack its opponents and making threatening statements implying that those opposed to the war were endangering US troops.
The White House knows that Murtha speaks not just for himself, but for significant sections of the Pentagon’s uniformed command, with whom he has built up close political ties over decades. Vietnam was the formative experience of many of these senior officers, who once again see the threat of the US military disintegrating under the grinding pressure of a dirty colonial war.
The evidence that the war represents a catastrophic and humiliating failure grows daily. The US death toll in Iraq has reached 2,094, with 67 American soldiers killed in the first 20 days of this month alone. The rate of fatalities is the highest since November 2004.
Meanwhile, damaging corruption scandals involving US officials and politically connected contractors, revelations of torture and death squad murders by US-trained Iraqi security forces, and the American military’s own abuse of prisoners and use of banned weapons against the civilian population have all combined to expose the criminal nature of the US war.
It is a measure of the administration’s crisis that Bush—eschewing the longstanding convention that partisan politics end at the water’s edge—was compelled to interrupt his appearance at the Asian economic summit in South Korea to launch blistering attacks on his domestic critics.
Addressing another captive audience of US military personnel at Osan Air Base Saturday, the US president declared, “In Washington there are some who say that the sacrifice is too great, and they urge us to set a date for withdrawal before we have completed our mission. Those who are in the fight know better.”
He then went on to quote approvingly a statement by one of the senior commanders in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William Webster, that setting a deadline for troop withdrawal would be a “recipe for disaster.”
The statement itself was an extraordinary breach of the subordination of the military to civilian government and a flouting of the longstanding proscription against US military officers intervening in partisan politics. In citing it, Bush essentially encouraged elements of the military command to come out in defiance of Congress and those who hold elective office.
“General Webster is right,” said Bush. “And so long as I am commander in chief, our strategy in Iraq will be driven by the sober judgment of our military commanders on the ground. So we will fight the terrorists in Iraq, and we will stay in the fight until we have achieved the victory our brave troops have fought and bled for.”
That the president’s constitutional role as commander in chief is meant to assure civilian authority over the military, and bar military commanders from setting government policy, is apparently lost on Bush.
Similarly, the Pentagon staged a teleconference with military commanders in Iraq Friday to counter Murtha’s proposal. “I think we have to finish the job that we began here,” Army Col. James Brown of the Texas National Guard told the Pentagon press corps. “It’s important for the security of this nation, it’s important for the security of this region, and certainly it’s important in the vital interests of the United States of America.”
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, appeared on morning talk shows Sunday to insist there would be no timetable for US troop withdrawals and to issue ominous warnings against continuing the debate on a pullout from Iraq.
“The enemy hears a big debate in the United States, and they have to wonder maybe all we have to do is wait and we’ll win…. The battle is here in the United States,’’ he told “Fox News Sunday.”
On the ABC News “This Week” program, he charged that calls for pulling out of Iraq could demoralize US troops deployed there. “We have to all have the willingness to have a free debate,” he said, “but we also all have to have the willingness to understand what the effect of our words are.”
The bitter insults thrown across the aisle in the House chamber and the threat of physical confrontation Friday recalled the acrimony and violence that gripped the halls of Congress in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Then, political tensions erupted in 1856 in a Southern congressman’s brutal caning of Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber in retaliation for Sumner’s anti-slavery “Crime against Kansas” spee
ch.
But, as Marx famously noted, history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
The Republican-engineered vote was in every sense a political stunt, much as was Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid’s maneuver earlier this month to bring the Senate into secret session so as to force onto the agenda the Bush administration’s use of false intelligence on Iraqi weapons.
Both were indications of the deep crisis of Congress and both political parties in the face of massive popular opposition to their policies of war and reaction, which are being pursued by all branches of the US government.
The Republican leadership used the vote to highlight the hypocrisy of Democratic leaders who praised Murtha for challenging the Bush administration’s war policy, while distancing themselves from the congressman’s demand for withdrawing troops in six months.
House Democratic leader Pelosi denounced the Republicans on the floor of the House and praised Murtha for having “dealt the mighty blow of truth to the President’s failed Iraq policy.” But when asked if she agreed with his proposal for troop withdrawal, responded, “I think that Mr. Murtha speaks for himself.”
Similarly, Reid declared, “I don’t support immediate withdrawal.” The Democrats’ 2004 presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, said, “I respectfully disagree with John Murtha.”
Senator Joseph Biden (Democrat, Delaware) told the Associated Press that it would be a “mistake” to withdraw US troops. He lamented the polls showing massive popular support for precisely that demand. “We’re losing the American people, and that is a disaster,” Biden said.
Murtha’s proposal itself is not a repudiation of US militarism and aggression, but merely a recognition that the present strategy in Iraq has failed, endangering Washington’s ability to intervene elsewhere in the world.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, the Pennsylvania congressman stressed that he was advocating that the Pentagon “redeploy our troops to the periphery.” He has called for the US to keep a “quick reaction force” in the region, together with an “over-the-horizon presence of Marines.”
Nonetheless, the Democratic leadership opposes even this proposal. The Republicans’ decision to call the Democrats’ bluff by putting a withdrawal resolution up for a vote imparted an especially acrimonious character to Friday’s House debate.
From the outset, using American military power to impose US domination over Iraq and its oil wealth and to secure US hegemony in the strategic Persian Gulf has been a consensus policy shared by both the Democrats and Republicans, whatever their tactical differences over how this policy was to be implemented.
Now, the catastrophic failure of this policy has exposed the vast gulf that separates the two parties—and the financial elite they both represent—from the needs and aspirations of the American working people.
