Let’s be really clear about the Iraq vote coming down the pike in Congress this week.
I’m voting no on this bill. I’m tired of the false choices of Republicans and all the recycled spin of old battles and the political calculations that do nothing for our troops who bear the real costs of this war. Bottom line: we support the troops by getting the policy right, and this bill doesn’t do that. I’ve said it again and again and I’m not about to stop: we need a deadline to force Iraqis to stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, not watered down benchmarks and blank check waivers for this President. We support the troops by funding the right mission, not with a White House that opposes a pay raise for our brave men and women in uniform. Do we need to bring out the hand puppets and make the case again?
Reality about this legislation is as simple as it gets: The original Senate legislation offered a roadmap to change course in Iraq. I was proud of the progress we’d made. (I’ve still got the scars of the lonely fight Russ Feingold and I made in the summer of 2006 when we first introduced legislation to set a deadline to redeploy combat troops and only got 11 votes. But it was perseverance, not pessimism that made that a majority position less than a year later.) I’m voting no on this new version of the supplemental because it enables the Administration and Iraqi politicians to deliver more of the same.
So what do we do now that we’ve hit a bump in the road? Fold up our tents? No way – doing so would be ignorant almost of the long hard legislative struggle and forceful pressure it required to get to this point. I am determined to continue pressing this issue until President Bush changes course. Why? Because we owe our troops nothing less than a strategy that is worthy of their sacrifice.
So, yes, in this fight we threw a lot of punches, and we landed a bunch, but this is a heavyweight bout. It’s not going to be over in the first round, and this isn’t the final bell. As Kos said yesterday:
We still haven't completely lost this Iraq supplemental battle. And if we do, instead of crying and taking your ball home, resolve to fight even harder. We owe it to our troops in Iraq, to our families, to our neighbors, to ourselves …
This movement is about fighting for what we believe in, doing the hard work to transform both our party and our nation. It won't happen at once. We'll have to do this incrementally one issue fight and one election cycle at a time.
Changing course in Iraq is too urgent--restoring sanity and balance to our foreign policy is too important—to be anything but disappointed with where we are right now. Every day we follow this path is another day lost, another day of damage being done to our country. I fought for a new course—I’ll continue to fight for a new course—and I know a lot of you fought with me. Believe me: we will win this debate the same way we clawed to this point – by never relenting in the pressure to change things.
So where do we go from here? We push from every direction we can think of. Harry Reid and I have spoken about this many times, and this supplemental was only the first avenue to begin to put pressure on the GOP. There are many other opportunities, and we will seize them all. Because, make no mistake about who makes up the other side on this one: it’s the Bush White House and its GOP enablers. Now we have many, many Republicans on record as saying that September is a deadline to see how the misguided escalation is going. (So now they like deadlines?) So when September comes along, we can’t let them posture their way into throwing out some new deadline we need to reach to see if anything will happen. We’ll have another three months of pressure built, another season of activism to make them rethink their position.
I’m not going to call on you to do anything specific today; you’ve done so much already. I’m not going to ask for patience, because the truth is big policy changes like this are only achieved by impatient people – in huge numbers. I’m just telling you that I’ll continue to work every single day (every damn day as my old friend Ron says) to apply pressure to change this broken policy. There will be new avenues of attack, new paths to take. But, for right now, it’s up to folks like me to do our part to keep the battle going, so all of you can work to keep the pressure going. Together, we can win this, as long as we keep the battle joined. Keep punching.
{cross-posted at the JohnKerry.com blog}
update: I've tried to answer a few of the recurring questions below, but one of the biggest sources of frustration I see is a feeling that you don't see the process how I describe it. As Granny Doc said:
Will you PLEASE take the time to explain this line in your diary, Senator?
this supplemental was only the first avenue to begin to put pressure on the GOP
How? When? Exactly what pressure is being exerted by giving the Administration and the GOP exactly what they wanted?
I think I speak for many when I say, we really do not see what the hell is going on. If there is a Grand Strategy, please give us a clue
I want to reprint what I said up here for everyone to see:
Well, first of all, let’s be clear – I wanted this bill defeated. I’m not sugarcoating that, if I tried you’d call me on it, deservedly so. My “no” vote speaks for itself.
As for where we go from here, it's not really a secret plan. We force votes on Iraq again and again and again. We pressure them every chance we can get. And I think these Republicans who stand with George Bush’s rotten policy will squirm. That’s why I launched the Roadblock Republicans campaign that a ton of you made a success. Look, the pundits and the horserace crowd can spin this vote as good for the GOP, then again when Russ and I got 11 votes for a deadline a year ago they thought we were handing the GOP a “wedge” issue in 2006 – and look how that turned out, it helped give us a Democratic Senate elected on changing course in Iraq. I think the Republicans are scared as hell because they can’t defend this policy. So we need to move forward with bills that are different from a supplemental, where the political calculus is different for some Senators. For example, we could continue to educate people on the awful record of the GOP on actually supporting our troops (groups like VoteVets are doing wonderful work there), then make sure to include troop readiness language in bills. And we use the pressure of one bill to set up the stage for the other, such as using the supplemental to get so many Republicans to go on record saying September was a deadline for success for them. They can’t wiggle out from this mess come then.
Political pressure can come in a variety of forms, of course. And it takes time to build it up around one specific course of action, even on an issue with such wide support as a new course in Iraq. We come out of this supplemental fight with a lot of suburban GOP districts swinging our way. We have a number of groups organizing in key Senate states, such as the AAEI's campaign with USAction, that have been running ads and building field operations. All of this is slowly taking its toll -- if we continue to build it, they will crack. As an old friend of mine used to say, nothing focuses the mind of a politician like the prospect of defeat at the polls.
I hope that helps explain what I mean when I say we need to "keep fighting." I have to go for a while, but I have another time scheduled to come back. Although I have to say--over 400 comments already is a little overwhelming.
update2: Not much time right now, but one thing I want to emphasize is, I'm not blowin smoke at you about the progress we've made over months and months of fighting. Don't just take my word for it -- yes, I oppose this supplemental and I'm voting against it -- but don't discount how much we've shifted the dynamic already, it underscores why we can't stop. Here's what my original partner on this issue - Russ Feingold - just said on the Senate floor:
It's been almost one year since 13 Senators supported a proposal I offered with Senator Kerry that would have brought our troops out of Iraq by this summer. Now, 29 Senators support an even stronger measure, enforced by Congress's power of the purse, to safely redeploy our troops.
So let me just underscore -- what if we'd thrown in the towel last June? Where would we be now? This is William Wallace time -- time to dig in. -- JK
