And they never will be. They consistently have been and remain extremely reactionary on issues of military intervention and foreign policy. Still, it is a hopeful sign that both Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the Republican U.S. senators from Maine, have been forced to run away at full gallop from their true pro-war positions in the face of strongly anti-war public opinion.
Recently we have observed Snowe breaking with Bush and joining with Senator Hagel as the only Republican co-sponsors of the Levin-Reed Iraq troop re-deployment amendment to H.R. 1585, the 2008 Defense Authorization. But while a measure that runs counter to Bush initially seems welcome, this is hardly even a baby step in the right direction. It is designed more for the purpose of continuing U.S. intervention in Iraq while attempting to address the grind-down of the U.S. military that the occupation has caused. At the same time, it allows the politicians to appear to be doing something to stop the war.
Meanwhile both senators are under White House pressure to stay on board. In a Newsweek story about President Bush "losing GOP supporters in Congress" in Newsweek this week, Collins is quoted describing a recent conversation with Secretary of State Rice,
The secretary of State was cordial, but forceful and insistent. Wait until September, Condoleezza Rice told Sen. Susan Collins of Maine over the phone last week. Wait until the commanders on the ground can report their progress. "It was a strong plea for me not to join in any calls for a change of mission in Iraq,"
I view this as disingenuous posturing that in no way suggests either senator is ready to reverse the U.S. occupation of Iraq despite possible disagreements with the president over strategy.
I must say then that I do not support the approach of Reed, Levin and the Democratic senators either. Take a look at the actual text of the amendment under Section (c) of SA 2087 on Senate page S9044:
(c) Limited Presence After Reduction and Transition.--After the conclusion of the reduction and transition of United States forces to a limited presence as required by this section, the Secretary of Defense may deploy or maintain members of the Armed Forces in Iraq only for the following missions:
(1) Protecting United States and Coalition personnel and infrastructure.
(2) Training, equipping, and providing logistic support to the Iraqi Security Forces.
(3) Engaging in targeted counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda, al Qaeda affiliated groups, and other international terrorist organizations
These are exceptions big enough to encompass practically any level of intervention and permanent basing following simple declarations of the Secretary of Defense.
At any rate, I am reminded how very angry I remain at the role Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe have played in starting, supporting, and maintaining this war along with all of its underlying horrors--while from years prior to the war right to the present day--they continue to ignore the constant, vigorous anti-war lobbying we have conducted at their offices here in Bangor, Maine. Nothing they are doing now changes that.
Water carriers for war
I have some background on both Snowe and Collins posted in my old blog, Deep Blade Journal. While I don't post there anymore, I will provide here a few references describing the immoral support these reactionary senators have provided for war, intervention, and torture about which I have posted in the past. Read these and judge for yourself where the real positions of Snowe and Collins lie.
Olympia Snowe job
She has always been viewed as moderate. But during the Cold War years of the 1980s, US Representative Olympia Snowe, Republican from Maine’s Second Congressional District, never was shy about promoting a hard-line foreign policy. Supposed intelligence information about Soviet expansionist intentions, communist infiltration of popular movements in the Americas—the usual array of they’re-coming-to-get-us stories that filled the airwaves of that era—were part and parcel of Ms. Snowe’s political toolbox. I remember well those scary years as her constituent, as she regularly ignored my calming advice while helping the Reagan administration dump a trillion taxpayer dollars into weapons of planetary destruction and devastating proxy wars....
In her floor speech (See the Congressional Record: October 9, 2002; Page S10141-S10145), Ms. Snowe made with great flourish, even those President Bush did not make in his October 7 speech in Cincinnati, all the claims concerning Saddam’s weapons:
I have come to the conclusion – based on the facts – that Saddam Hussein’s continued, aggressive production of weapons of mass destruction presents a real and immediate global mess... they were unable to account for [laundry list of scary-sounding quantities]...As reported in the U.S. intelligence community document made public on October 4, 2002, [Hussein] has been seeking to revamp and accelerate his nuclear weapons program. The report concluded that if left unchecked, Iraq would "probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade", and that if Hussein could acquire weapons-grade fissile material from abroad "it could make a nuclear weapon within a year"....
Hussein, following the departure of U.N. inspectors in 1998, is aggressively pursuing development of a nuclear capability, and is undeniably seeking items needed to enrich uranium, such as fissile material and gas centrifuge components like vacuum pumps and specialized aluminum tubes. Tellingly, the report also documents Iraq’s attempts to buy large quantities of uranium from Africa....
...the October 4 report states that Iraq is capable of "quickly producing and weaponizing" a variety of both chemical and biological agents, including anthrax, "for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives, including potentially against the U.S. homeland." Both reports highlight that Hussein’s weapons are hidden in "highly survivable" facilities, some of them mobile,....
Today, we know from Secretary Rumsfeld that "al-Qaida is operating in Iraq"...that we have "accurate and not debatable" evidence of reportedly the presence of senior members of al-Qaida in Baghdad, and other associations....
And now the nexus between Hussein and terrorist groups and individuals – is that we simply can’t afford the risk to humanity. Some say we should wait until the threat is imminent. But how will we know when the danger is clear, present and immediate? When people start checking into hospitals? When the toxin shows up in the water supply? When the dirty bomb goes off? Because, in the shadowy world of terrorism, as we have seen, that will already be too late....
In fact, Richard Butler, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, was asked in an interview on October 8, 2002, "how easy it would be ... for the Iraqis to arm a terrorist group, or an individual terrorist, with weapons of mass destruction." It would be "extremely easy", Ambassador Butler told the interviewer. "If they decided to do it, it would be a piece of cake"....
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
The world can no longer ignore the tiger in Iraq.
Senator Susan Collins: servant to the Masters of War
She purported to deliver a speech on "The Ethics of Conscience: Continuing the Legacy of Margaret Chase Smith" Tuesday afternoon [March 23, 2006]. She was not allowed to forget how her utter lack of skepticism, despite strong protest from the peace community at the time in 2002 and 2003 has led us into the disaster of death and destruction that Iraq is today.
On October 9, 2002, she spun a fabric of lies before her colleagues in the US Senate:
...the evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of biological and chemical weapons is overwhelming...
Collins needs clarity on war and torture
As Hilzoy points out, Collins is quoted in a "somewhat frustrating" June 12 New York Times Sunday Magazine piece by Joseph Lelyveld:
Members of Congress say they receive a negligible number of letters and calls about the revelations that keep coming. "You asked whether they want it clear or want it blurry," Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said to me about the reaction of her constituents to the torture allegations that alarm her. "I think they want it blurry."
I guess I should expect Collins to take us for foolish sheep following leader into the moral basement of responding to terror with terror, including blatantly illegal designation by American presidential fiat of a sub-human species called "enemy combatant" — often located through paid bounty.
Collins shameless on Iraq and Afghanistan
[In March 2005, Collins had published in local newspapers an op-ed glorifying U.S.-led destruction of Iraq. The Iraqi refugee situation referenced there has developed into one of the most devastating in the entire world, while it is nearly deleted from reporting in US media.]
I find it ironic beyond belief that Senator Collins in her piece admits while trying to talk up potential US "success" and its "tipping point", that the real picture of the US occupation are conditions (well after the January election) where
our Senate delegation could not drive along the streets of Baghdad. We were transported in armed Black Hawk helicopters to the heavily fortified "Green Zone," where American and British headquarters as well as the Iraqi government offices are located. We wore 45-pound armored vests and heavy helmets much of the time and had to return to Kuwait each night.
But this is the paragraph from the oped Collins wrote that struck me hardest:
The most encouraging part of my visit to Iraq was our trip to Fallujah, a city once synonymous with danger and firmly in the insurgents’ control. Once a sanctuary for insurgents, Fallujah is now what one Marine described as the "safest city in Iraq" due to a fierce battle in which the Marines rooted out the insurgents and destroyed scores of weapons caches. This success has also encouraged more than a thousand Iraqis in the Fallujah area to have the confidence to come forward to fill police and army positions.
That’s all the US did to achieve "success"? Root out some weapons caches? What sickness ignores the overall leveling of a city once with a population of about 300,000, creating a massive refugee problem and thousands of deaths? War crimes committed in the process included destroying hospitals, shooting fleeing civilians, and prohibiting relief from entering the city — actions all specifically condemned by the Geneva Conventions.
More material is available...
on Snowe, and on Collins.
It is unfortunate that the intrepid yet unknown Jean Hay Bright never was given a chance to unseat Olympia Snowe last year. The DSCC particularly was cruel to her campaign, refusing to provide even token support.
The same mistakes will not be made with respect to the effort to unseat Collins. Though I do distrust most Democrats on the war too, I do support the campaign of the much-better-known Rep. Tom Allen (current 1st District ME) in his race to move up into Collins's seat. More on Tom can be found here on Daily Kos. Be generous...
Update: minor spelling correction