By Mimikatz
There are several very good articles out on what the Dems in Congress (and out) can do to bring about a conclusion to the Iraq War and prevent its spread into Iran. Two are by Rick Perlstein, one in Salon and one in TNR. For those without access to either or both, Digby has a good synopsis, with extensive quotes.
There is much to learn from history. First, the Dems in Congress were able to change the debate on the Vietnam War in 1966 with hearings, chaired by J. William Fulbright, held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. By exposing the false assumptions and policies underlying the war, they pushed the debate much farther than anyone thought possible and scared Lyndon Johnson. While we are now past this point in terms of public opposition to that war, it is a useful reminder of the power of exposure. Shine the same light on procurement and contracting, the CPA, the missing billions etc.
Later, after Nixon had won in 1968 with his "secret plan" to end the war, Senate doves stepped up their attacks on the President's war. While we are all used to thinking of George McGovern as the quintessential bad candidate, it is more useful to remember the role that his resolutions for withdrawal played in moving the debate to the Left. During this period, Nixon kept promising that the end of the war was at hand, which would quiet public opinion, but then he would escalate--bombing and then invading neutral Cambodia (the infamous "incursion" into the "parrot's beak" where the North Vietnamese were supposed to have "sanctuaries" whose destruction, if we could just find them, would bring about an end to North Vietnam's successes).
Immediately after the Cambodian invasion Senate doves rolled out three coordinated bills. (Each had bipartisan sponsorship; those were different days.) John Sherman Cooper, R-Ken., and Frank Church, D-Idaho, proposed banning funds for extending the war into Cambodia and Laos. Another bipartisan coalition drafted a repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, the congressional authorization for war that had passed 98 to 2 in 1964. George McGovern, D-S.D., and Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., were in charge of the granddaddy of them all: an amendment requiring the president to either go to Congress for a declaration of war or end the war, by Dec. 31, 1970. Walter Shapiro wrote that a "skittish" Congress made sure its antiwar legislation had "loopholes" to permit the president to take action to protect U.S. troops in the field" -- which means no genuine congressional exit mandate at all. But McGovern-Hatfield had no such "loopholes." (Of course, McGovern Hatfield didn't pass, and thus wasn't subject to the arduous political negotiating process that might have added them.) It was four sentences long, and said: Without a declaration of war, Congress would appropriate no money for Vietnam other than "to pay costs relating to the withdrawal of all U.S. forces, to the termination of United States military operations ... to the arrangement for exchanges of prisoners of war," and to "food and other non-military supplies and services" for the Vietnamese.
McGovern-Hatfield didn't pass, but Cooper-Church passed overwhelmingly, by which time US troops were out of Cambodia. The Congress had succeeded in stopping the widening of the war, at a time when public opinion was more supportive of the war than is now the case. And while McGovern lost the 1972 election, the Dems gained a Senate seat and House seats. McGovern may have lost, but McGovernism did not, and without the Senate, Nixon knew he could not continue to expand the war.
The second article debunks the legend that the Dems cut off funding for the Vietnam War. Not so. Republicans, including Barry Goldwater, opposed further war funding at that point, but the final appropriation did include funds for the withdrawal and some for the government of South Vietnam. Moreover, by that time Kissinger and Nixon had both concluded the war was unwinnable, and had secured a peace that briefly postponed the eventual fall of South Vietnam.
They had gladly negotiated their peace deal under the assumption that South Vietnam would fall when the United States left. What would it have cost to keep South Vietnam in existence without an American military presence? The Pentagon, in 1973, estimated $1.4 billion even for an "austere program." Nixon and Kissinger were glad for the $700 million South Vietnam eventually got (including a couple hundred million for military aid), because their intention was merely to prop up Saigon for a "decent interval" until the American public forgot about the problem. By 1974, Kissinger pointed out, "no one will give a damn."
That turned out not to be true. But it was Gerald Ford and the Republicans who perpetuated the myth that the Dems had cut off funding, leaving our troops stranded.
The message for today's Dems is that they need to continue to use their oversight power vigorously to expose the flaws at the core of the president's and Vice President's "strategy," making alliances with Republicans as they can. The more Bush is forced to defend his war, the more the people see through him, and the more it becomes his--and the GOP's--war. They need to continue to draw lines to keep the war from widening, and they will have more and more support for this position as the public realizes that Bush/Cheney are pushing yet a third Middle East war even as the other two deteriorate further. And they need to understand the utility of having a truly radical position--withdraw the troops starting now--on the table at all times both to move the debate to the left and to attract support for more moderate positions. Finally, they need to understand that they have more to lose if the public sees them as unable to do anything about the war. As Perlstein says, if the GOP can cast itself as more trustworthy to wind down the war, the Dems will lose in 2008. But if they assert themselves firmly as the ones pushing for an end to the war, they will have the majority of the public with them. Fortunately, there are promising signs .
