Razzle Dazzle: 'Surge' Another Neocon Job

Razzle Dazzle
'Surge' Another Neocon Job

By RICHARD STEIER

Four years ago, a couple of months before we invaded Iraq, Congressman Charles Rangel introduced legislation to reinstate a military draft, leading most of his colleagues to react as if he were a live grenade.

They sought to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the proposal, for much the same reason that Mr. Rangel suggested it.

"I truly believe," he wrote in an op-ed piece in January 2003, "that decision-makers who support war would more readily feel the pain of conflict and appreciate the sacrifice of those on the front lines if their children were there, too." He noted that just four members of the Congress which the previous fall voted to authorize President Bush to go to war had children in the military.

Mr. Rangel recently reintroduced his bill on the subject, once again setting off protests and uneasiness among Washington officials. This time, the resistance to the idea seems to owe less to the chances of it being acted upon than to the underlying questions Mr. Rangel raised then and now.

Volunteers May Be Scarce

With recent polls showing Mr. Bush's popularity plumbing new depths, and the primary reason being growing public disenchantment with the war in Iraq, there was something spooky about the President's call in his State of the Union speech Jan. 23 for Congress to authorize an increase of 92,000 troops for the Army and Marine Corps over the next five years. Where would the military get that many recruits, short of acting on the Rangel proposal that others regard as a political weapon of mass destruction?

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow A GULF IN WAR: President Bush during his State of the Union speech framed the debate over his proposed military buildup in Iraq by asking Congress 'to support our troops in the field and those on their way.' Two days earlier, Congressman Charles Rangel said his hope for those who might soon be risking their lives was that 'no more will they have to go overseas and not know the reason.' When he began his campaign, the Harlem Congressman, a decorated Sergeant during the Korean War, stated that two of his objectives were to emphasize his opposition to a unilateral pre-emptive attack on another country and his belief that "if there is a war, there should be a more equitable representation of all classes of Americans making the sacrifice for this great country."

But just as integral to his op-ed was the implication that the country and its elected representatives were being stampeded into a dubious war by the Bush Administration, without reflecting much on either the reasoning behind the invasion or the possibility that it might not go as smoothly as then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was predicting.

Mr. Rangel's words have come to seem prophetic rather than merely provocative. Mr. Bush's failure to think through what he described in those days as a crusade was branded on his face during the State of the Union address, as he could muster nothing more than tight smiles in accepting applause before he acknowledged his miscalculations - ''This is not the fight we entered in Iraq but it is the fight we're in" - and implored Congress and the TV audience for a chance to let his "surge" strategy work to stabilize a nation in the grip of a civil war.

In case anyone couldn't read the scene of a subdued President and a sobered Congress, newly elected Virginia Sen. Jim Webb offered a compelling translation in providing the Democratic response afterwards.

Mr. Webb, who unseated an incumbent, George Allen, whose prime claim to fame was being the son of a popular former coach of the Washington Redskins, is not an easy target for the Bush spin machine: he was a combat veteran in the Marines during Vietnam who served as Secretary of the Navy during President Reagan's second term. When Mr. Bush, trying to be friendly at a White House reception a few weeks ago, asked how Mr. Webb's son - a Marine in Iraq - was doing, the new Senator responded, "That's between me and my boy."

'Took Us to War Recklessly'

If that was a slap in the President's face, the portion of last week's response that dealt with Iraq amounted to a full-scale beating.

Talking about military personnel serving from a love of country, Senator Webb said, "On the political issues, those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death, we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it."

He continued, "The President took us into this war recklessly," noting that Mr. Bush had disregarded warnings from some of his top advisers and past and present military commanders.

"We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable and predicted disarray that has followed," Senator Webb said. "The war's costs to our nation have been staggering. Financially. The damage to our reputation around the world. The lost opportunity to defeat the forces of international terrorism. And especially the precious blood of our citizens who have stepped forward to serve."

He contrasted Mr. Bush with better Presidents, including Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, who put national interests above ideology and politics on matters from economic justice to war, noting that Mr. Eisenhower, convinced that the Korean War was mired in a "bloody stalemate," brought it to an end soon after he was first elected.

What ought to be more troubling to Mr. Bush is that there are Republican members of Congress who take just as harsh a view of his stewardship of the war.

'Ping-Pong With Lives'

Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a possible candidate for President, said of the additional troop plan the day after the speech, "There is no strategy. This is a ping-pong game with American lives."

As Mr. Bush laid out a plan that one anonymous White House adviser had told a Daily News reporter amounted to "stay the course reheated," NBC's camera fixed itself on Arizona Sen. John McCain, who called for the troop buildup before Mr. Bush. The fact that the President is actually moving forward - with the potential risk of escalating American casualties - could undercut Mr. McCain's status as the front-runner for the 2008 Republican nomination, and that may have been on his mind as the camera lingered on him - eyes closed, chin tucked into his chest - for eight seconds before cutting away.

Congressman Rangel had made clear his reservations about Mr. Bush's proposed surge two days earlier, during a speech at the Center for Jewish History in Greenwich Village. "When they say there's no military victory [in store], then we don't need military people putting their lives at risk," he remarked. "No President should be able to send our troops into harm's way unless they can prove to the Congress and the American people that our great nation is threatened."

Bush Got Blank Check

Unfortunately, Congress did not demand such proof before it authorized Mr. Bush to go to war in October 2002, with some members later saying that they were misled by the administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction or believed that the President would not invade unless the United Nations weapons inspectors established that Saddam Hussein had such weapons at his disposal.

Mr. Rangel told reporters following his speech that he did not believe Democratic primary voters would punish presidential candidates including Hillary Clinton and John Edwards for voting to authorize the war; that they would focus on who has done the most since then to try to extricate the nation from the quagmire in Iraq.

Asked then why Democrats in Congress seem reluctant to oppose funding the additional troops - instead confining their activities to pushing resolutions to express disapproval of Mr. Bush's plan - Mr. Rangel replied, "People who support the war can distort the facts in such a way that it would appear that voting against the funds is undercutting the troops."

The basis for such a belief can be seen in the Swift-boating of John Kerry during the 2004 election, when supporters of Mr. Bush flayed his challenger with specious claims about his heroic service in Vietnam. They painted him as a traitorous coward alongside a President and Vice President who had used family connections and the draft system itself to ensure that they would not have to put their lives on the line.

Cowed by White House

That sort of White House-orchestrated spin was undoubtedly a spur to many Democrats voting yes on the war authorization resolution in the first place, fearful that a no vote could be used to question their patriotism, just as Republicans used other phony patriotism claims to unseat Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, whose Vietnam service left him a triple amputee.

Yet if Mr. Bush's re-election proved Abraham Lincoln's line about being able to fool some of the people long enough to win a second term, the polls would seem to suggest that he and his party no longer have the credibility to make such charges palatable. Democrats may believe that the safer course is to give the President enough latitude to further undermine his case while taking away the argument that he could have brought an honorable solution to the mess in Iraq if they had only funded the extra troops.

But as Mr. Kerry, in announcing the day after the State of the Union that he would not run again for President, said in quoting himself 36 years earlier as the head of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, "How do you ask a man to be the last person to die for a mistake?"

Keeping War's Toll Hidden

Mr. Bush has tried to keep the grim reality of what is going on in Iraq from infecting public consciousness, barring TV cameras from filming the coffins of soldiers that are transported home to Andrews Air Force Base, not attending funerals for any of the dead.

He has also asked no sacrifices of the American public, from higher taxes to pay for the war to limiting gasoline use. His announcement last Tuesday night of a plan to balance the budget "without raising taxes" conveniently sets a five-year timetable, meaning any pain in eliminating the mountainous deficit he has made of a healthy budget surplus he inherited from the Clinton Administration would be the political responsibility of his successor.

The President's call for a 20-percent reduction in gasoline usage over the next 10 years was both piddling - particularly given the growing popularity of hybrid cars - and something else that would require no action on his part that might incur voter anger.

Mr. Bush's past positions in those areas have allowed much of the American public to remain immune to what is happening in Iraq, unless they have family members serving.

No Draft to Feel

The lack of a draft also contributes to that sense of removal from the conflict. However ignorant this administration may be as to why we lost the Vietnam War, the past history of insurgencies or the tribal conflicts within Iraq, it clearly went to school on how public opinion turned against our presence in Vietnam during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

John Kenneth Galbraith's remark during that era that college students were among the most conservative people he knew had seemed ironic given the anti-war activism that was taking place. That was the last time that a student movement in this country really influenced political change, however, and the diminution of its vitality is more than likely the direct result of the military draft being eliminated three years before we finally left Vietnam in 1975. There was no longer a fear that graduation would also mean an end to student deferments from military service and a possible tour in a war zone; no longer a reason to feel guilty that others who couldn't get such deferments had been sent off to die by the tens of thousands.

A Missing Urgency

In a war fought by volunteers - even one where some reservists have been dragooned into serving three or four tours in Iraq - there isn't the same immediacy either for those of draft age or their parents. That was why the Jan. 27 anti-war rally in Washington didn't draw the kind of media coverage that the Vietnam protests of the late 1960s attracted.

And so where President Johnson essentially was forced from office because of sentiment against a conflict that he had inherited (and greatly expanded) from the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations, Mr. Bush won a second term 26 months ago even though by then it was clear that he had lied about the reasons for initiating the war and it had turned into anything but the easy enterprise that he and his advisers had predicted.

In his speech last week, he called the war "a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance. To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred."

Unfortunately, this administration's actions in Iraq have arguably done more to stir that hatred of the United States than Saddam ever did, while also creating instability in the country that has allowed terror groups including Al Qaeda to gain footholds there.

There was further irony in Mr. Bush's remark, "We didn't drive Al Qaeda out of their safe haven in Afghanistan just to let them set up a new safe haven in a free Iraq"; Al Qaeda was able to rebuild its forces in large part because American troops were diverted away from eradicating the organization in order to invade Iraq.

"Every one of us wishes this war were over and won, yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk," Mr. Bush said.

Unkept Katrina Pledges

Perhaps those words explained why, during the portion of his speech dealing with domestic matters, he never mentioned the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina and the promises unkept and people abandoned in the poorer parts of the still-ravaged New Orleans as a result of Federal efforts that fell a galaxy short of Mr. Bush's rhetoric when he appeared in Jackson Square two summers ago.

Mr. Rangel, who noted last week that his ascension to Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee will give him the chance to steer national spending priorities toward equity, asked his audience Jan. 21, "Why can't we say in this country that poverty is against our national security?"

President Reagan eliminated such discussions from the national dialogue more than a quarter-century ago, and Mr. Bush has kicked that sort of malign neglect into overdrive. Spending any amount comparable to what's been squandered in Iraq to assist people who weren't part of his voting base was not on the Bush Administration's neoconservative agenda, which has been aimed at gutting the social programs introduced by Democratic Presidents beginning with Franklin Roosevelt and continuing through Lyndon Johnson.

No Easy Man to Trust

From the time he took office, Mr. Bush's focus on tax cuts whose overwhelming benefit went to the wealthiest Americans made clear that his 2000 campaign theme of "compassionate conservative" had been nothing but phony rhetoric. That alone is enough to make you wonder how some Democrats who now regret their votes can credibly argue that they took the President at his word when he contended that the danger posed by Iraq was serious enough that he needed the authorization to go to war.

Mr. Rangel four years ago sought to start a serious debate on the merits of going to war by raising an issue that could have literally brought it home to many Americans who weren't yet asking questions. That debate is finally beginning in earnest, 3,000 American lives later, with many times more Iraqi civilians dead, because of misplaced trust in a man who last week asked for just a little more indulgence.

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