Roll call
Democrats- grab your 2008 Presidential scorecards and don't let this important moment pass. Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate voted on an amendment to a military spending bill brought forth by John Kerry and Russ Feingold that would have set a July 2007 date for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The statement of purpose of Kerry Amend. #4442 read: "To require the redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq in order to further a political solution in Iraq, encourage the people of Iraq to provide for their own security, and achieve victory in the war on terror." Only 12 Democrats and Independent Jim Jeffords backed the measure.Notable Democratic votes:
Bayh (IN)- Nay
Biden (DE)- Nay
Clinton (NY)- Nay
Durbin (IL)- Yea
Feingold (WI)- Yea
Harkin (IA)- Yea
Kennedy (MA)- Yea
Kerry (MA)- Yea
Lieberman (CT)- Nay
Obama (IL)- Nay
Six Democrats-- including Lieberman above-- also voted against a second, watered-down version of this measure that would have declared only "the sense of the Senate" that redeployment from Iraq begin by year's end. Senator Biden was correct when he postulated that Republicans, by contrast, "are totally united in a failed policy" in Iraq, but this can hardly explain why Biden would cast a vote against declaring an end date to that failure and encouraging Iraqis to provide for their own security.
---
The always tenacious Dan Rather was unceremoniously dismissed by CBS news last week. Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic Tom Shales offered this epilogue.
posted by CM @ 7:00 PM
2 Comments:
The occupation is certainly a losing battle, and the character of our presence is so arrogant that it can only fan the flames to stay. My question is, where is the middle ground between the current occupation and total abandonment of Iraq? Security may improve in some senses if we pull out--but other scenarios, from complete ethnic chaos to an Islamist dictatorship, are a real possibility. At least when we went into Taliban Afghanistan, we didn't have to worry about leaving it worse than we found it. But if Iraqis get a worse dictator (it's always possible), or strict sharia law, or outright ethnic cleansing in the wake of our departure, its on our conscience (seemingly not a big factor in current policy, I know...). I don't have any ideas here. The rest of the world probably isn't too eager to help us out, and by dint of the reputation America has made for itself, we're pretty much impotent to do anything constructive ourselves...
The middle ground-- it seems to me-- is setting a timetable for full withdrawal. What incentive do Iraqis have to govern themselves and provide for their own security when Donald Rumsfeld is drawing plans for a decade or two of U.S. occupation?
Post a Comment
<< Home