De Bitterness of De Foot Soldiers
… As they endure de agony of defeat. It’s been a rough seven years. Gore. Kerry. Now this:
WASHINGTON — Bowing to President Bush, the Democratic-controlled Congress grudgingly approved fresh billions for the Iraq war Thursday night, minus the troop withdrawal timeline that drew his earlier veto.
80-14 in the Senate. 280-142 in the House. Ouch. The Dems can’t muster those kind of votes. Even with graft. Hillary, who was for it before she was against it, went with Obama. That’s what you want in your commander-in-chief. A vote against troops in the field fighting al-Qaeda and anti-American Iranian stooges.
“This debate will go on,” vowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was even more emphatic. “Senate Democrats will not stop our efforts to change the course of this war until either enough Republicans join with us to reject President Bush’s failed policy or we get a new president,” he said.
That has a kind of non-binding sound to it. There’s a fair amount of self-loathing going on.
“I hate this agreement,” said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who played a key role in talks with the White House that yielded the measure.
And yet he voted against it. Has a bit of a for it before he was against it. Meanwhile, there’s the against it before they were for it crowd.
“I cannot vote … to stop funding for our troops who are in harm’s way,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D- Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I simply cannot and I will not do that. It is not the proper way that we can bring this war to an end.”
Dawn over Capitol Hill. But I don’t think he really means that. Anyway, here’s the reaction from the party unfaithful. There seems to be a lot of surprise and disgust that the people who advocate surrender practice it. Odd. You try to make sense of it:
Matt Stoller at MyDD: How dare they surrender when we are trying to force a surrender? Don’t they understand you can’t win by surrendering?
Greg Sargent at TPM Cafe: Oooooooooo, scary! He adds:
But look, what’s done is done. And now that we’re finished popping off, it needs to be said that generally this new Dem Congressional leadership has repeatedly defied expectations with its willingness to take on the White House. Just not this time.
Gentlemanly that he doesn’t want to kick his people in the head while their down, but I’m not sure what he’s talking about. The non-binding resolution? The trip to Syria?
Kos wants to know “when beltway Democrats will realize that no one likes Bush or his war? And when will they realize that every time he opens up his trap, his poll numbers drop another few points?” I dunno, Kos. They’re gutless but they aren’t morons. Maybe they know something you don’t.
Crooks and Liars takes comfort in anti-war polling numbers. But seems to sense that Americans really don’t like losers:
The Democratic Party has a 53% favorable rating to only 38% for the Republicans… “Americans also choose the Democratic Party as more likely to make the right decisions about U.S. foreign policy, the war in Iraq, and immigration.” I wonder how this will change in the new polling…
Good question. If polls are what guide you.
Newshogger sees a bright spot. At least the Dems didn’t act on principle. They demanded to be bought off!
A profoundly dispirited Shakesville, Dems gave in to bullying! OK, but I thought it was called a veto they couldn’t override.
Sparkypuppypuddle smells coffee: Surrender-happy Defeatocrats aren’t going to start winning just because the calendar flips over to September.
An awful lot of earnestness over at Huffpo.
Meanwhile, at last check, MoveOn is still leading with a campaign to get Congress to vote no. Time to move on.
(Welcome Punditeers! I hope you can adapt, or you’re dead. Warmth kills! Quick quiz: was King Tut black, white or kind of a shiny yellow color? That’s a western conspiracy, but this isn’t. Speaking of history, the DPRK casts a wistful Marxist Leninist Stalinist Kimmist glance back at it.)
Topics: pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:03 pm Comments (16) on Thursday, May 24, 2007
16 Responses to “De Bitterness of De Foot Soldiers”
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May 24th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
There seems to be a lot of surprise and disgust that the people who advocate surrender practice it.
Maybe these lame Congresscritters decided to practice surrendering before, y’know, they actually surrender? *Snort!*
May 24th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
China’s leaders probably laughed so hard they crapped themselves when they saw the results of today’s Iraq votes.
May 25th, 2007 at 4:34 am
[...] The MoveOn bloggers are not too happy. They are deploying all sorts of militaristic terms in their description of the legislative miscues by their patrons. Irony is always in season. Jules Crittenden has a nice post about that. [...]
May 25th, 2007 at 4:51 am
2007.05.25 Iraq/Iran Roundup
See previous: 2007.05.24 Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan/The media sucks Roundup Below the fold (newest items at the top): De Bitterness of De Foot Soldiers Bowing to the Inevitable U.S. Urges New Sanctions as Iran Stands Firm on Nuclear Policy Sadr Back in Iraq…
May 25th, 2007 at 7:36 am
[...] here are the reactions courtesy of Jules [...]
May 25th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Go on gloat. Bush just forced the Dems to hand out cups to the Republican party for the poison kool aid he’s making. Come fall Repubs can do the right thing and break with the boyking or vote with him again and make other career plans. Why?
It’s not patriotic to leave our soldiers in Iraq to fight and die for a Shiite theocracy. Whether this president or the next withdraws from Iraq there will be dancing in the streets of Baghdad. Shiites and Sunnis alike will celebrate their “victory” over the occupiers. That’s the only “victory” that’s going to be won there. As soon as the aid money buyoffs run out the stooges who run the country, whether it’s Maliki or another set of Iranian backed goons will start making public anti-American utterances in order to hang onto their phony baloney jobs or just to keep themselves from being strung up from lampposts. They’ll tear up any godawful hydrocarbon law Cheney manages to force down their throats.
Why would they be so ungrateful? First of all because they’re Arabs and live in the ME. The US has been getting bad press in those parts for decades. Secondly because Bush 1 told them to overthrow Saddam in 1991 and then had coalition soldiers stand idly by, sometimes as Republican Guard troops moved right through their ranks to massacre them. Then we sanctioned the whole country into the poorhouse for over a decade for Saddam’s sins. Now we’ve invaded, occupied and destroyed their country. We’ve arrested them without charges, locked them up without trial and tortured them. 4 million are displaced. 2 million outside the country. Probably a million have died. 53% in the last poll said they have a close friend or family member who has been killed or wounded by the violence. 69% say coalition troops make the security situation worse, not better. 71% say killing American soldiers is justifiable. 60% are unemployed with no way to feed their families. A majority say there may be a short term spike in violence once we leave but they still want us out.
Bush knows all that and it’s the reason he won’t withdraw. If he can just hang on til January ‘09 someone else, be it a Repub or Dem, (and there’s no way it’s going to be a Repub if we’re still in Iraq) will be left holding the bag, taking the blame for his latest failure as has been the case his whole life.
Al Qaeda is raking in cash and rebuilding their organization in Pakistan and Afghanistan from their rackets, kidnapping rings, and possibly, – I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out – aid money stupidly funneled to them mistakenly by Republican boneheads in Iraq. Meanwhile the US Army is crumbling.
So go ahead and gloat Crittenden. And have a nice summer.
May 25th, 2007 at 9:30 am
The Dems won, if they only knew it. Too bad the habitants of the fever swamps like Markie Mark took over. The Dems long said that we needed more troops. I didn’t think so and neither did President Bush. We were wrong. So we sent more troops and look what happens. Lots of good stuff. You can tell by the way all the celebs are the only thing in the news. Yeah, not since Carter have the Dems been so helpless. And if the War is so lost why would any Dem want to be Ptresident only to have to retreat?
Defeat, snatched from the jaws of Victory!
May 25th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Wow, Markg8, that’s kind of a long screed about the Iraq, the Republicans, and the US Army considering:
1. that you’ve never been to Iraq,
2. you aren’t a Republican, and
3. you’ve never been in the Army.
I guess in the proud tradition of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, you are still willing to bloviate on something you know nothing about, simply because you are intellectually superior than the rest of us.
May 25th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Come fall Repubs can do the right thing and break with the boyking or vote with him again and make other career plans.
Hate to disappoint you, you being a genius and all, but “boyking” isn’t running again. We’ll have to vote for somebody else.
May 25th, 2007 at 10:39 am
[...] IT BEFORE THEY WERE AGAINST IT BEFORE THEY VOTED FOR IT: Jules Crittenden looks at last night’s war vote and finds widespread unhappiness on the antiwar [...]
May 25th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Iraq Funding Measure Approved
How is that the case when we’re supposedly told that Democrats oppose the war in greater numbers now than when the issue came up in 2002. What’s changed? Pork? Well, that’s got something to do with it since the Iraq funding bill contains nearly $20 …
May 25th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Per usual, alphie’s non sequitor….
And Markiemark, boyking and failure his whole life – these pejoratives are sooo passe. Get with the program. “the army is crumbling”? Whose? Which one is yours? Because ours is anything but crumbling.
Alphie and markymark, must suck to be in the ranks of the marching morons when their surrender program can’t muster more than a airplane ticket to Syria for the wicked witch of the west. KOS goes best with your morning coffee I suspect.
May 25th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Patriotism 101 : The Iraq War
1) Administrations do not go to war, nations do. We did not fight the Nazis, we fought the Germans. The Nazis had no armies, the Germans did. America is at war. This is not Bush’s war, it is ours. If…
May 25th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
We’ll have to vote for somebody else.
Shhhhh, Rebecca! You’ll spoil Markie’s fantasy!!!!
May 25th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
All of this past few months has done nothing but cause hope for our enemies, anger for the non-insane people of the U.S. Laughter and ridicule from others the world over, except from the Saudis and others who know if Iraq falls, Iran wins.
So in September when we must again squeeze the crats for money for these first two battles of this long war, we must suceed. In doing so, the crats and the radical left will be so frantic and insanely angry that they will hopefully do their party so much damage in the eyes of the rest of America that they will have no chance of electing a democrat President of this Republic.
We must suceed in these first two battles, they are as important as the first two sea battles fought in the Pacific against Japan, and the first battles in France after we came ashore in Europe.
No, they are not just as important but a hundred times more important. Our sucess in Iraq and the Afghan is the only way to protect our Republic from more mass murders and defeating the radical Islamics, but the only way to protect our Republic from becoming a socialist, liberal nightmare is defeating the crats. If they win, thus starts a nightmare that will destroy us as a Free Republic, just as surely as the Islamics would.
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
February 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 am
[...] Well, that would be because that while polls consistently have indicated that while Americans may not like fighting wars, they like losing them less. Same thing with pols, when push comes to shove. [...]