THE U.S.S. BUSH IS SINKING

COMMENTARY

THE RATS ARE BEGINNING TO ABANDON SHIP


About five years ago, in the summer of 2002, I went to my first anti-Iraq war demonstration in downtown Boston. At that time, if you remember, we were fighting for no attack on Iraq. It is hard to believe, but not really surprising, that five years later we are still in the quagmire and prospects of getting out any time soon look pretty dim. As witnessed by the numerous commentaries that I have made at this site concerning the dead-end strategy used by the mainstream anti-war movement of reliance on parliamentary maneuvering, mainly by the opposition Democrats, I have, in any case, held out little faith in that way of ending the war. I stand by that position. However, today’s bit of political wisdom revolves around a very, very belated if tepid Republican parliamentary opposition to continuing the war.

Over the past couple of days two key Republican United States Senators, Richard Lugar and George Voinivich, have made it very clear they are not going down with the Bush ship. These guys are not marginal renegades but the heart of the Republican parliamentary establishment. Moreover, at the most practical political level- survival- their decisions make perfect sense. As anyone east of the Oval Office knows by now this whole military ‘surge’ strategy cooked up by the Bushies as a last gasp effort to gain ‘victory’ is in shambles. Christ, the latest American governmental reports on the readiness of Iraqi troops and police to take charge are like some chamber of horrors. According to the accounts nobody here has any clue about how many Iraqis are ready and where all the money went. Assuming they ever wanted to know.

But let us be blunt-on hard military grounds what is required in Iraq is probably another couple of hundred thousand more American troops for five to ten years. I won’t quibble over the numbers or the time frame but is any rational politician ready to go down the line with Bush on that ship. Hell, no. He is gone in January 2009 and will leave the Iraq mess to his successor so few aspiring American politicians want to go down in history as Bush’s poodle at this stage. This is where the senators’ ‘every person for him or herself’ throwing in of the towel comes from.

I have long argued that the parliamentary Democrats have been at least a year, if not more, behind the curve on Iraq. The Republicans, as witnessed by this spring’s fiasco over the war appropriation budget, are at least two years behind. However in neither case are the participants any more committed to immediate withdrawal, meaning literally starting to pull out today, than previously. Thus, the new Republican opposition, like the tamed Democrats, is in no hurry to just stop the damn war in its tracks. But we are. Organize those anti-war soldier and sailor solidarity committees in order to call for the troops to lead the way out of Iraq. Pronto.