It isn’t happening – at least, not in Congress

by Justin Raimondo

The Republican offensive in support of the Iraq war should have crashed shortly after launching: unfortunately, they had some essential allies who helped fuel their shaky effort – the Democrats. As one news report about the House debate put it:

“In both the House and Senate, Democrats appear to be divided into three camps. Some want troops to leave Iraq this year. Others object to setting any kind of timetable. A number of them want the United States to start redeploying forces by year’s end but don’t want to set a date when all troops should be out.”

But the Republicans, too, are divided. Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) complains that the administration has unnecessarily politicized the war and the debate, as it did in November when Republicans put together a one-sentence resolution calling for withdrawal from Iraq – and turned it into a political circus during which Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) smeared Marine veteran Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) as a “coward.” “It was ludicrous,” Gilchrest said. “It had nothing to do with saving lives. It had nothing to do with the war. It was one-upmanship against the Democrats.” The Washington Post reports:

“That sentiment spurred Gilchrest and four other Republicans to break with their leadership this spring and sign on to a Democratic petition pushing for debate. Boehner pledged to do so weeks ago.”

The fulfillment of that pledge came in the form of a Republican resolution that sets a new standard for political and intellectual dishonesty. In language redolent of a Soviet-era proclamation from the Presidium, the non-binding statement starts out by declaring:

“The United States and its allies are engaged in a Global War on Terror, a long and demanding struggle against an adversary that is driven by hatred of American values and that is committed to imposing, by the use of terror, its repressive ideology throughout the world.”

Yes, we are engaged in a global war, although it is not a “war on terror” – terror being a technique, rather than a specific adversary – but a war against al-Qaeda. What that war is “driven” by has nothing to do with “American values,” whatever those might be, and everything to do with American foreign policy – and most especially, at the moment, resentment throughout the Muslim world of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This nonsense that they hate us because of the Bill of Rights, or because of our increasingly sleazy cultural mores, is an article of faith with the War Party: it lets them see themselves as Western knights clad in the shining armor of democracy, rationality, and modernity. The only problem is that it just isn’t true. As Michael Scheuer points out in his best-selling Imperial Hubris,

“The fundamental flaw in our thinking about Bin Laden is that ‘Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and think, rather than what we do.’ Muslims are bothered by our modernity, democracy, and sexuality, but they are rarely spurred to action unless American forces encroach on their lands. It’s American foreign policy that enrages Osama and al-Qaeda, not American culture and society.”

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