No Timelines or Benchmarks on Our Future

By Paul S. Peete

All rights reserved

The inevitable passage of the Military Funding through September 30^th will take place without the stipulations the Democrats wanted to impose, thanks to the intransigent Republicans in the House and Senate. While Democrats argue over the speed and type of withdrawal, redeployment, or re-tasking of the troops, Republicans stand with Bush in refusing to recognize the inevitability of the results of placing our troops in the midst of a civil war.

Alqaeda is definitely weaving a tapestry of sectarian separatism designed to embroil tensions and place our troops in the crosshairs of all the factions, and recruiting disaffected Muslims from Arab states throughout the region. Iran and Syria are all too willing to assist in the arming, training, and transmigration of jihadists to kill Americans to dislodge them from the region. Presidential candidates of the two parties echo the stand of their cohorts in Congress with the exception of Republican House member Ron Paul, whose Libertarian leanings make him dovish, and Senator John McCain, who so stridently supports the President that his only complaint is that we aren’t deploying enough forces to win.

The whole affair has exposed the Democrats weakness in first granting Bush the right to wage the war in the wake of 9/11, though their arguments about having been misled by Powell and Tenet and Cheney and Bush are valid, and secondly of being unwilling to vote for a complete de-funding of the conflict for fear of looking weak in the face of adversity. Buckling to Bush’s demand of a “clean” funding bill, they now look like they are incapable of affecting the political landscape in any meaningful way. Even the Republican tactic of recommit, wherein they force bills back to committees on technicalities, has exposed the fact that the Democrats could have exerted power even when they were in the minority.

In the meantime the American public is experiencing the highest gas prices in history, the greatest disparity between haves and have nots, and the sense that the desire to see us clear of this Civil War squandering blood and treasure means nothing to those in power. Tax Cuts and an all volunteer service absolve the wealthy from paying any cost of this war, while China reaps trillions of dollars in interest and trade imbalance revenue, mortgaging our future to a former sworn enemy. Our infrastructure is eroding, Homeland Security is a joke named FEMA, and our former allies in Europe see us as fools.

Is there any question as to why the American electorate has a sense of futility about the value of voting? Though the 08 Presidential race has the appearance of historical significance with the viability of a minority and a female candidate, my sense is that regardless of the election’s outcome, the eight years under Bush has so devastated the Economy, International stature, judicial system, and divisiveness of Red and Blue state tactics, it will take decades to recover.