Kennedy - Escalation: It’s Not Up To Him
Yesterday afternoon Senator Kennedy, Massachusett’s senior senator, introduced a bill (pdf) “to block Mr. Bush from sending additional troops to Iraq without the consent of Congress”. (CBS News)
JK joined Sen. Kennedy as a co-sponsor of this bill.
Sen. Kennedy has set out a very clear case on why the escalation of troops in Iraq is wrong. His speech at the National Press Club and posts at dailykos.com and Huffington Post were widely discussed.
Check out his speech at the National Press Club:
Thanks, Senator Kennedy.
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The Washington Post describes Republican senators as panicking wishy-washy equivocators looking for the closest rock to crawl under - leaving NH’s vulnerable Sunnunu twisting in the wind with reporters hounding him for a clear position on the surge. All he could do was hem and haw.
Meanwhile, the Dems are insecurely wringing their hands, knees knocking loudly, in fear of the right’s noise machine labeling them as unpatriotic and not in support of the troops.
The notion that cutting off funding for the war, even all of it, is not supporting the troops is more hogwash. In fact, the opposite is true - per usual. An announcement ofa cutoff of all funds and unilateral withdrawal in a few months would be the best gift we could ever give our soldiers at this juncture.
And the American people would stand up and cheer while the Republican noise machine goes into fits of hysteria.
With the new CNN poll giving support for the surge at 11% and the fact that many of the additional troops will be driving around in unhardened Humvees, you have to wonder why the Dems are so hesitant to solidly back Kennedy. Kennedy is not speaking for some left fringe group; his position is mainstream USA. The Dems need to look outside the conventional wisdom of the beltway and listen to the people.
We want out now and if cutting the funding is the only way to achieve it that so be it. Pelosi and Reid should embrace Kennedy’s initiative, not distance themselves from it. The people are waiting.
There’s a nice diary at dailykos about Sen Kennedy titled Edward Kennedy: The Lion In Winter.
1971 was an event-filled year.
“Mistakes have been made” - Bush talking about Iraq.
Yea, like electing you president in 2000. That was a BIG mistake.
The escalation is very disturbing and counter to the best ideas from the Iraq Study Group.
I have just written an entry called “The Tar Baby” Strategy on my blog that I believe is worth reading :).
We are going in competely the wrong direction.
Bob
John Kerry for President 2008
What time is Bush’s speech on tonight and will there be a democratic response?
According to the C-Span schedule, Bush is on at 9, and the Dem response from Sen Durbin is live at 9:25
http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/schedule.csp
Robert Freedland,
Nice post you wrote. I hadn’t realised there was so many people advising Bush against what he’s doing with the escalation.
The ‘surge’ isn’t a strategy. I heard on the radio that “They’re going to get serious about Iraq now…” Well, that’s ridiculous to throw more there to show a sudden interest in getting ‘serious’ now!
Don’t people realize that he had 5 years to ‘get serious’ or rather to BE SERIOUS. It’s this type of knee-jerk response from him that has allowed him to waste lives, to have the audacity to meet the fallen soldiers’ familes with callous disregard, ie “So…who we honoring today?”, and to decide that to save his own image of being a ‘war president’ is more than saving lives! He’s 5 years too late to realize all talk and no action doesn’t work. And the media is 5 years late in telling people the truth.
Iraq=Tar=Vietnam
But it didn’t have to be this way. Yet apparently, more Generals will be discarded, more advise will be disgarded, and more lives will be disgarded…just so Bush can continue to stay the course.
Thanks, Uncle Teddy.
Your consistency and connection with your core is a godsend.
Kerry was on the radio on NPR earlier. Great rebuttal. Too bad it was not on one of the cable or broadcast network.
Hopefully, you will have the transcript and/or MP3.
Senators Kerry and Kennedy, you really should be the leaders of the Democratic Party. You know what must be done to realistically end this illegal and utterly immoral war as soon as humanly possible. You recognize that it’s not enough to just voice opposition and hope for the best, like what happened four years ago. You need to take action to get things done, and this resolution aims to do just that. It’s absolutely vital that you persuade less resolute Democratic and Republican lawmakers to support this cut-off, and deprive Bush of the funds he wants to escalate this already tragic conflict. You cannot accept a mere “debate” on this very important issue; the American people will not accept talk over action. Congress needs to express the will of the people that they duly serve; otherwise, they too will lose their support.
“Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship.”
Does that line not conjure up Bush standing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in his flight suit?
Did to me.
The Bush Administration is so locked into victory and defeat, they don’t want to understand the 3rd alternative - withdraw and contain.
Brett
In my book they really ARE the leaders of the Democratic Party.
Senator Kerry to be on Fox News at 9:00 a.m. this morning.