The California Democratic Party speaks with an loud voice in national politics.
It is, by any reasonable measure, the biggest party in the biggest state in the nation.
And it is a well-organized, forward-looking organization that since the 1950s has had a tradition of delivering vital messages from the base to national Democratic leaders. Indeed, in the 1960s, California Democrats were among the first and loudest critics of President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to expand the war in Vietnam. They were not merely opposed to the war; they were worried, wisely, that committing resources, governing energy and political capital to an unwise and unnecessary war would undermine the ability of an otherwise popular Democratic president to deliver on his ambitious domestic agenda.
With their history and their heft in mind, it is reasonable to say that when California Democrats take a strong stand on a contentious issues, it matters — both as a signal with regard to popular sentiment within the party and as an indicator of the issues that could cause political headaches for a Democratic president.
So what does the California Democratic Party have to say about the global conflict that many believe could be for Barack Obama’s presidency what Vietnam was for Lyndon Johnson’s?
“End the U.S. Occupation and Air War in Afghanistan.”
That’s the title of a resolution endorsed over the weekend by the 300-member executive board of the California party.
The resolution calls for establishing “a timetable for withdrawal of our military personnel” and seeks “an end to the use of mercenary contractors as well as an end to air strikes that cause heavy civilian casualties.”
In place of a continuing U.S. military presence, the California Democrats are urging Obama “to oversee a redirection of our funding and resources to include an increase in humanitarian and developmental aid.”
That’s sound advice for a president who is wrestling with the issue of how to respond to a request from some military commanders for a surge of more troops into what looks to a many savvy observers like a quagmire.
An Afghanistan and Iraq veteran, Reyes was particularly blunt in his criticism of the corrupt regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The veteran told members of the California party’s executive board that: “We dishonor the patriotism and the sense of justice of our brave men and women by sending them to fight, proclaiming that they sacrifice for democracy and national security when really they struggle and die in support of nothing more than a proven criminal regime.”
In addition to bringing Reyes to the executive committee session, proponents of the resolution showed clips of Robert Greenwald’s groundbreaking documentary “Rethink Afghanistan” to drive home their points.
Winograd, who is challenging Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman, a war supporter, in a 2010 primary in a Los Angeles area district, called on state parties across the country to send similar anti-war messages.
“We need progressives in every state Democratic Party to pass a similar resolution calling for an end to the U.S. occupation and air war in Afghanistan,” said Winograd. “Bring the veterans to the table, bring our young into the room, and demand an end to this occupation that only destabilizes the region. There is no military solution, only a diplomatic one that requires we cease our role as occupiers if we want our voices to be heard. Yes, this is about Afghanistan — but it’s also about our role in the world at large. Do we want to be global occupiers seizing scarce resources or global partners in shared prosperity? I would argue a partnership is not only the humane choice, but also the choice that grants us the greatest security.”
…That investigative reporting was on full display here in the last week, as Reporter Aram Roston (supported by The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute) revealed that money is flowing from the Pentagon to insurgents in Afghanistan, including the Taliban. We’re literally paying insurgents to let our supply lines pass, so that our soldiers have supplies to fight insurgents. It’s an outrage, and it demonstrates once again the folly of escalation in the region as President Obama nears his fateful decision. Here’s MSNBC’s Ed Schultz and Brave New Film’s Robert Greenwald discussing the story:
Robert has been outspoken in his effort to encourage America–and the Obama Administration–to “Rethink Afghanistan.” We appreciate his work, and the efforts of Schultz, The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill, MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, and leading newspapers around the world (including The Guardian) who have helped move Aram Roston’s story into the mainstream in the Afghanistan strategy debate.
Social movements are messy, so it is often difficult to know, in the midst of the battle, which side is winning. But in the past month, momentum on healthcare reform has unmistakably shifted as liberals and progressives have taken to the streets, the Internet, the airwaves and the halls of Congress to push for a bold public option, strong regulations on insurance abuses and a progressive tax plan to finance reform.
The Obama administration and its allies in Congress now understand that permitting the unholy alliance of insurance industry muscle, conservative Democratic obfuscation and right-wing mob tactics to defeat the president’s healthcare proposal would write the conservative playbook for blocking other key components of his agenda–including action on climate change, immigration reform and labor laws. So in just the past few weeks, we’ve seen a change in strategy, a strong grassroots movement and markedly firmer resolve by the White House and liberal Democrats in Congress.
The Summer of Right-Wing Rage
At the end of the summer, pundits were already writing obituaries for major healthcare reform. Particularly during the August Congressional recess, an epidemic of right-wing anger against Obama and his policy agenda–of which healthcare reform was simply an immediate and convenient target–captivated the media, which reported disruptions at Congressional town hall meetings as though they were an accurate reflection of public opinion rather than a pep rally for extremists, encouraged by Fox News and talk-show jocks. The right-wingers stoked fear and confusion by warning that Obama’s “socialized medicine” plan would create “death panels,” subsidize illegal immigrants, pay for abortions and force people to drop their current insurance.
Republican officials, including Senator Charles Grassley, Senator Jim Demint, and Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, and conservative pundits Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Betsy McCaughey repeated these myths. And support for the public option tumbled over the summer in response. In June, 62 percent of Americans told Washington Post/ABC pollsters that they favored a public option. By mid-August, support had slipped to 52 percent. Obama’s popularly fell, too, as jobs continued to disappear and the administration’s proposals to bail out the banks and the auto industry met with right-wing attacks and public skepticism.
For months Obama had insisted that any significant reform of the healthcare system include a “public option”–an expanded version of Medicare that would compete with private insurance companies, pressuring them to reduce costs and providing Americans with greater choice. Republicans made it clear that they wouldn’t support any plan that competes with the insurance industry or challenges its runaway costs and irresponsible practices. With huge majorities in both houses of Congress, Obama didn’t need to win Republican votes, but he still held out hope for a bipartisan bill. More troubling, Obama discovered that even he couldn’t charm the conservative Democrats in Congress into supporting his plan.
By the end of August the president, unsure of his political footing, was sending signals that he might settle for reform without a public option, assuaging conservative Democrats and the insurance industry but angering many of his progressive supporters.
The death in August of healthcare reform stalwart Senator Ted Kennedy bolstered the influence of Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, which was drafting its own health reform legislation. Baucus, a darling of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, has been particularly opposed to Obama’s proposal for a public option.
In its August 17 cover story, Business Week reported that “The Health Insurers Have Already Won.” As if to confirm Business Week’s analysis, in mid-September Steve Elmendorf, a lobbyist for UnitedHealth, sent out invitations to a fundraiser at his home for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That same day, reports from CNN and the Associated Press suggested that Pelosi appeared to back off her nonnegotiable support for the public option.
Targeting Insurance Industry Giants
Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a coalition of unions, community organizations, consumer groups, environmentalists and netroots groups such as MoveOn, has been spearheading the reform campaign since the group was launched in July 2008. In Pennsylvania, a combination of HCAN activism and Representative Joe Sestak’s primary challenge to the newly Democratic Senator Arlen Specter pushed the incumbent to become a reluctant reformer. (Specter first voiced support for a public option at an HCAN rally in June.) During the summer, as healthcare reform bills moved through Congress, HCAN, MoveOn, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) launched television advertising campaigns, costing several million dollars, that asked Senate and House members in key states to support bold legislation that included a public option.
But these efforts received little media attention. And although most Democrats in the House and Senate were on board with the Obama plan, activists seemed unable to sway conservative Democrats needed to win sixty votes to thwart a Republican filibuster.
In late August, seeing defeat on the horizon, HCAN and other reform activists regrouped. They decided to act more like a grassroots movement and less like an interest group. That meant mobilizing voters, focusing attention on the insurance industry, humanizing the battle by giving insurance company victims an opportunity to tell their stories and using creative tactics to generate media attention. In the past month the grassroots movement has focused on the insurance industry’s outrageous profits, abuse of consumers and outsized political influence. And they’ve been warning Democrats not to get duped by the industry’s pledges of cooperation.
The decision to target the insurance industry as the major culprit for the nation’s healthcare crisis and as the major lobbying force trying to thwart reform was critical. Most Americans don’t like their insurance companies. But the industry had been virtually invisible since Obama took office. For months the Obama administration and Senate Democrats coddled insurance industry giants, hoping to enlist their support for insurance reform. Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), had orchestrated the industry’s apparent cooperation with the Democrats drafting healthcare legislation, particularly with Baucus. Glowing mainstream media profiles of Ignagni admired her skill at coaxing the big insurance companies to try to co-opt, rather than confront, the Democrats, drawing a contrast to the industry’s combative stance during the early 1990s.
Since HCAN decided to expose the insurance industry, the group has mounted more than 200 increasingly feisty protest events in forty-six states. On September 22 HCAN sponsored about 150 demonstrations at various insurance company offices across the country. The Los Angeles Times did not bother to report about the several hundred demonstrators at WellPoint’s California subsidiary office, a few blocks from the newspaper’s office; nor did the New York Times report on those outside UnitedHealth in midtown Manhattan. HCAN rallies that did attract reporters were treated as isolated local events rather than components of a nationally coordinated protest and a burgeoning grassroots movement.
On October 1 a moving van pulled up in front of a large house in a neighborhood just outside Philadelphia, the home of Edward Hanway, CEO of CIGNA, and eight HCAN demonstrators got out. One was Stacie Ritter, a former CIGNA customer whose twin girls were afflicted with cancer at age 4. Their treatment left permanent damage, and CIGNA refused to pay for the human growth hormones that her doctor prescribed to help her daughters grow properly. When Ritter’s husband was briefly unemployed, they were bankrupted. No one was home at Hanway’s mansion. Ritter left a note: “Can I stay in your carriage house until we get back on our feet financially?”
The same day, in Indianapolis, HCAN organized a house call on Angela Braly, CEO of WellPoint, the nation’s largest health insurance company. And in Wayzata, Minnesota, fifty protesters, holding umbrellas and candles, stood outside the lakeside mansion of UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley, in the rain, and screened a video unkind to the company. (HCAN had tried to buy time to broadcast the video on CNN, but the network refused to air it.)
Two weeks later, on October 5 and 6, HCAN returned to the scenes of the “crime”–insurance company headquarters in more than fifty cities–armed with signs, personal stories, crime-scene tape and chalk to tell the CEOs, “It’s a crime to deny our care.” Protesters in Boston, Minneapolis and Philadelphia engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience and were arrested. In addition to HCAN, a number of independent health reform groups–including advocates for a single-payer system–waged protests of their own in several cities.
In mid-October, on the day campaign contribution filings were due, MoveOn members visited senators’ offices in Washington and on their home turf. In Salt Lake City, activists that stood outside Senator Orrin Hatch’s office holding signs pointed out that Hatch has taken $913,000 in contributions from health insurance companies. The protest led Hatch to tell a national TV audience that MoveOn is “not going to smear me without getting kicked in the teeth by me.”
On October 22 HCAN activists surrounded the Capital Hilton Hotel hosting AHIP’s annual convention at the hotel in Washington, DC, with signs that read, “It’s a crime to deny care.” HCAN brought seven families from across the country to tell their stories of denied care and egregious mistreatment by the private health insurance industry. The families sent a letter to Karen Ignagni challenging her to face them in person and hear what they’ve endured.
Reform advocates have not only highlighted the plight of insurance industry victims but also identified former industry employees, like former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter and former Humana physician Linda Peeno, to blow the whistle on the industry’s abuse of its customers. Documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films has created a series of short videos documenting the outrageous compensation and lavish lifestyles of industry CEOs (UnitedHealth’s Hemsley made $57,000 per day last year) while millions of Americans go without insurance or bankrupt themselves with medical bills.
America’s Healthcare Crisis
The focus on the insurance industry has brought into relief the tragic realities of America’s healthcare crisis. In the past decade, the number of Americans without any health insurance and the number who face bankruptcy due to insurance bills have both increased significantly. And over the past decade, premiums have gone up 138 percent, 3.5 times the growth in family incomes. In addition, insurance deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance have been skyrocketing, to thousands of dollars a year for families, especially for those with the cheaper insurance plans. Despite rising premiums, insurance companies continue to refuse to pay claims or delay payments, both of which result in increased revenues for them. Last year, even in the midst of a recession, UnitedHealth raked in $2.9 billion in profits; WellPoint, $2.5 billion; Aetna, $1.4 billion; Humana, $647 million; and Cigna, $292 million.
Meanwhile, the number of uninsured Americans is up to 46 million. Millions more are underinsured–they pay for plans that leave them vulnerable in the event of unexpected health emergencies. More employers are shifting costs to employees or dropping coverage entirely. Medical bills are now the principle factor in 62 percent of personal bankruptcies. More than half of Americans, the majority of them people with insurance, are skipping needed care due to high out-of-pocket costs.
In its annual survey of the nation’s health insurance industry, released in January, the American Medical Association found that just one or two companies dominate in 94 percent of 314 metropolitan markets. “Without rivals to compete against,” said AMA President-elect James Rohack, “a large health insurance company can take advantage of patients by raising premiums and dictating important aspects of patient care without fear of losing business.”
To prepare for the battle over reform, health industry lobby groups had hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress to lobby for them; two of them are Baucus’s former chiefs of staff. Since 2007 the insurance industry and HMOs have spent $51 million in campaign contributions, targeted disproportionately to key members of the Congressional committees drafting health reform bills. They have also spent at least $191 million on lobbyists, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. During the first half of this year, the insurance and HMO industry increased its lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions to some $700,000 a day.
President Obama hasn’t shied away from criticizing insurance companies, either. In his September 9 speech to Congress about health reform, Obama turned a corner: he gave healthcare reform activists the signal to accelerate their grassroots push for a bold plan that includes a public option and requires insurance companies to act more responsibly. Obama took aim at the right wing, calling its claims “a lie, plain and simple.”
Equally important, Obama finally took off the gloves and came out swinging against the insurance industry as the major obstacle to significant reform. “As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it the most,” Obama declared.
Obama’s speech, and HCAN’s burgeoning protest movement, emboldened Organizing for America (OFA), the group created to organize Obama’s former campaign volunteers. Once in office, Obama moved quickly, announcing one ambitious legislative objective after another. But instead of launching a parallel strategy to mobilize Obama’s campaign supporters, OFA failed to keep up. Some critics argued that Obama had put OFA in a political straightjacket by folding it within the Democratic National Committee, making it difficult to confront conservative Democrats. Many Obama campaign activists grew restless, hoping to participate in organizing efforts to push a progressive policy agenda.
In September a number of OFA staffers and key volunteer leaders threatened to quit if OFA didn’t use its potential influence by encouraging members to challenge Democrats who refused to support Obama’s healthcare plan. In response, OFA directed its members to participate in the protest rallies across the country, and it began targeting conservative and moderate Democrats. On October 20, local OFA groups generated 315,023 calls to Congress pushing healthcare overhaul, tripling the original goal of 100,000.
The Insurance Lobby Miscalculates
In response to escalating criticism, the insurance industry miscalculated. After pretending to cooperate with the Obama administration and Democrats, the industry’s CEOs and lobbyists double-crossed their onetime political allies by publicly attacking a compromise bill crafted by Baucus.
What triggered the industry’s about-face was a Congressional Budget Office report scoring the Senate Finance Committee proposal. The CBO estimated that it would cost $829 billion over the next ten years–less than the $900 billion President Obama had suggested–and would reduce the deficit by $81 billion. The industry wasn’t happy with even the weak provisions in the proposal that would “contain costs”–which the insurance companies translate into “reduce profits.” Nor did it like that the Senate Finance Committee adopted amendments reducing penalties for those who fail to buy private insurance.
So AHIP threw a temper tantrum, releasing a report warning that average family premiums will increase to $21,300 if the Finance Committee bill is adopted. But the AHIP report neglects to take into account the Finance Committee bill’s premium subsidies for families with incomes below $88,000.
The White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress were taken by surprise. Said Scott Mulhauser, a spokesman for Baucus and the other Democrats on the Finance Committee: “This report is untrue, disingenuous and bought and paid for by the same health insurance companies that have been gouging consumers for too long. Now that healthcare reform grows ever closer, these health insurers are breaking out the same tired playbook of deception. It’s a health insurance company hatchet job.”
“I’d spent a couple of hours with insurance industry folks last week, and yes, I did feel blindsided,” Nancy Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, told NBC. “I did feel we were working constructively.”
Obama used his weekly address on October 17 to blast the insurance industry in words even stronger than he used in his speech to Congress in September. “The history is clear: for decades rising healthcare costs have unleashed havoc on families, businesses and the economy,” Obama said. “And for decades, whenever we have tried to reform the system, the insurance companies have done everything in their considerable power to stop us.” He charged the industry with “filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads” and “funding studies designed to mislead the American people.” And he suggested that it was time to reconsider the industry’s exemption from federal anti-trust laws.
Soon the chorus in favor of the public option was getting louder. At a press conference this past Monday, Senator Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said, “We’re leaning towards talking about a public option,” stronger language than he’s used in the past. On October 20 Pelosi said that she intends to push a more liberal version of a public option plan that would link reimbursement rates to Medicare. She explained that she has more than 200 votes for the plan and wants to see “if we can find the remaining votes,” according to Politico.
On October 21 the House Judiciary Committee voted to strip the health insurance industry of its sixty-four-year-old anti-trust exemption, enabling the government to force more competition into the industry. Senators Reid, Patrick Leahy and Charles Schumer announced they would file similar legislation.
Public support for a public option has recovered after taking a tumble over the summer. This week a Washington Post/ABC poll found that 57 percent favor a public insurance option, while 40 percent oppose it. If a public plan were run by the states and available only to those who lack affordable private options, support for it jumps to 76 percent. Under those circumstances, even a majority of Republicans, 56 percent, favor it.
There is still no guarantee that a progressive bill will make it out of conference committee and end up on Obama’s desk. There is still wiggle room on all three major fronts of the escalating battle for health reform: the public option, pre-existing condition reform and financing. As part of its health reform bill, the House has recommended a tax surcharge on the richest 1.3 percent of Americans–families with incomes of more than $350,000. This approach is much more progressive and efficient than the Finance Committee’s plan to tax so-called Cadillac insurance policies. And there is still the question of who will be eligible for the government subsidies to help them buy insurance.
The insurance industry and its allies are still trying to weaken any legislation that threatens its profits and power. But it is on the defensive, and the Democrats seem to have rediscovered their backbone. Genuine healthcare reform–which seemed probable in January and impossible in August–now seems possible. Activists helped turn the tide.
President Obama, who is under pressure from the Pentagon and defense contractors to surge 40,000 additional U.S. troops into occupied Afghanistan, will meet Tuesday with members of Congress to discuss the sorry state of the mission and its uncertain future.
That’s the good news — sort of.
At least the president is talking to the civilian leaders who, according to the U.S. Constitution, are supposed to be making decisions about whether to engage in and escalate wars.
The bad news is that the president and Vice President Joe Biden (who is reportedly skeptical about expanding the occupation force) are not planning to meet with members of Congress who have studied the conflict and determined that it is time to develop a flexible exit strategy.
SENATORS * Harry Reid, Majority Leader, D-NV * Dick Durbin, Majority Whip, D-IL * Mitch McConnell, Republican Leader, R-KY * Jon Kyl, Republican Whip, R-AZ * Carl Levin, Armed Services Chair, D-MI * John McCain, Armed Services Ranking Member, R-AZ * Daniel Inouye, Appropriations Chair and Defense Subcommittee Chair, D-HI * Thad Cochran, Appropriations Ranking Member and Defense Subcommittee Ranking, R-MS * John Kerry, Foreign Affairs Chair, D-MA * Richard Lugar, Foreign Affairs Ranking Member, R-IN * Patrick Leahy, Foreign Operations Appropriations Chair, D-VT * Judd Gregg, Foreign Operations Appropriations Ranking Member, R-NH * Dianne Feinstein, Intelligence Committee Chair, D-CA * Kit Bond, Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, R-MOREPRESENTATIVES * Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA * Steny Hoyer, Majority Leader, D-MD * John Boehner, Republican Leader, R-OH * James Clyburn, Majority Whip, D-SC * Eric Cantor, Republican Whip, R-VA * Ike Skelton, Armed Services Chair, D-MO * Howard McKeon, Armed Services Ranking Member, R-CA * Howard Berman, Foreign Affairs Chair, D-CA * Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Foreign Affairs Ranking Member, R-FL * David Obey, Appropriations Chair, D-WI * Jerry Lewis, Appropriations Ranking Member, R-CA * Nita Lowey, Foreign Operations Appropriations Chair, D-NY * Kay Granger, Foreign Operations Appropriations Ranking Member, R-TX * John Murtha, Appropriations, Defense Subcommittee Chair, D-PA * Bill Young, Appropriations, Defense Subcommittee Ranking Member, R-FL * Silvestre Reyes, Intelligence Committee Chairman, D-TX * Peter Hoekstra, Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, R-MI
Readers will note that there are plenty of Republican hawks — led by McCain — on the list.
And, yes, there are some skeptics — such as Durbin and Kerry.
But where are Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, and Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, who have emerged as outspoken advocates for a rethink of the occupation and, in Feingold’s case, a flexible exit strategy? Feingold, a member of the Intelligence Committee who has spent more time than most members in southern Asia, knows the territory well. And he would bring an alternative point of view to what is, after all, being billed as a frank and open discussions of strategy. (White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says: “The president has discussed wanting to hear from all of those that are involved in this, and certainly Congress plays a big role in this.”)
Where is Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern’s name on the list? McGovern has visited Afghanistan, met with troops and commanders, consulted with international security and development strategists, and come to share their conclusion that an escalation of U.S. forces would be a bad idea. The well-regarded vice chair of the Rules Committee is, as well, the sponsor of legislation demanding the development of an exit strategy. That legislation just attracted its 99th cosponsor in the House, meaning that with McGovern himself it now has 100 signed-on backers — including a number of conservative Republicans.
More than 50 House Democrats and Republicans signed the letter, which argues that “the last thing that our nation needs as it struggles with the pain of a severe economic crisis and a mountain of debt is another military quagmire. We believe that is why recent polls consistently show that a majority of Americans are opposed to a military escalation in Afghanistan.”
The dissenting members are right about the polls.
They are right about the quagmire, a point brilliantly made by Robert Greenwald’s just-released documentary “Rethink Afghanistan”.
The president is right to consult Congress.
But he is wrong — very wrong — to consult only with supporters of the escalation and cautious critics. It reinforces a problem highlighted by Greenwald. “The echo chambers in Washington have long argued that Afghanistan is the war of necessity,” the director explains. “This reasoning excluded any opposing viewpoints and has mired us in what is now perceived as the endless war.”
The president should at least give a hearing to those members of the House and Senate who have had the wherewithal and the courage to challenge the convention wisdom that says the occupation of Afghanistan must continue — and must continue to expand. He would quickly find that there are sound diplomacy-and-development strategies that offer alternatives not just to escalation but to maintaining the occupation.
Instead limiting the discussion to the defenders of a failed status quo, and those who are satisfied to tinker rather than change direction, Obama should consult the “Rethink Afghanistan” caucus.
• If you’re in New York City, Brave New Films has extended their premiere run of their new film, Rethink Afghanistan. I’m part of a forum at the opening tonight, headlined by Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. Rethink Afghanistan is an important film and a clear indictment of escalation and Rep. McGovern has been a courageous leader on this critical issue. I hope you can catch a screening. Here’s the full schedule.
The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan has reached its “sell-by…” date.
A majority of Americans now tell pollsters the mission was a mistake. Ninety-eight members of the House – including liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans – have cosponsored Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern’s resolution asking the Pentagon to develop an exit strategy.
Unfortunately, the generals who run wars, and the defense contractors who profit from them, want to keep U.S. troops on the ground in that distant land. And President Obama is under pressure to surge tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops into “the graveyard of empires.”
The people have wisely turned against an occupation that has cost the United States too many lives and too many hundreds of billions of dollars while only making a bad situation worse for the Afghan people — especially, according to feminists in Kabul, women.
Unfortunately, the people do not have the power to end wars that they know have gone awry.
So it falls to Congress to demand an exit strategy.
We’ll explore the efforts to do that on Friday night in Manhattan, when Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel and I join Congressman McGovern for a forum and film screening with filmmaker Robert Greenwald, director of Rethink Afghanistan.
Ramping up support for McGovern’s resolution is Job 1 in the struggle to bring the troops home and cede responsibility for Afghanistan to the people who live there – perhaps with an assist from an international entity, such as the United Nations, that can offer peacekeeping and development aid.
The conference is a project of Ben Manski and the Liberty Tree Foundation — a think tank that actually thinks about new ways to address fundamental issues — and the “Bring the Guard Home! It’s the Law” campaign. With backing from the National Lawyers Guild at Georgetown Law School, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, Democrats.com, the Institute for Policy Studies, After Downing Street, CODEPINK-Women for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the National Coalition for Nonviolent Resistance, Peace Action USA and Progressive Democrats of America, the “Who Decides About War?” call notes, correctly, that, “The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have revived and deepened longstanding questions about how and by whom war and peace should be decided under our Constitution and in faith with our democratic aspirations.”
Manski and his colleagues are asking core questions:
• How can our democracy set in place consistent and durable criteria for considering when or if to use military force, within a broad range of scenarios that might–or might not–challenge national security or threaten world peace?• Are our political institutions sufficiently robust to maintain and apply “consistent and durable” criteria in the face of the unforeseeable circumstances that typically precede the consideration of using military force?
• What is the proper composition, structure, and role of military forces in a modern democracy? Do the U.S. Armed Forces, as currently organized, best serve democracy? How should we respond to the increased reliance of the United States on Private Military Companies?
• When state National Guard units are called into federal military service, should states have a clear and defined role in evaluating whether that call up is proper and in accordance with the law?
• What is the proper balance of forces between the Guard and rest of the Armed Forces? Does the concept of the all-volunteer army need to be revisited, and if so, what are the options for the future?
• How should the decision about going to war be made, serving national security and honoring the constitutional system of checks and balances?
• Has the War Powers Act served its intended purposes, and how should it be updated or replaced?
• What should be the role of Congress in authorizing the use of military force, within a broad range of scenarios that might–or might not–challenge national security or threaten world peace? If the United States commences the use of military force, is there a role for Congress beyond its initial authorization of force and later appropriations in support of the military action? May an authorization for use of military force be conditional, and if so, should the conditions be enforceable? What mode of enforcement should be available?
• Should the scope of the President’s Article 2 powers as commander-in-chief be more clearly defined, and if so, how can that clarity be achieved, given that every war is unique and the role of the commander-in-chief hard to define in advance?
The most thought-provoking of the questions may well be this one: “What can we learn from the history of the 1930s-era campaign for a War Referendum Amendment, together with the 1970s-era People Power Over War Amendment, both of which would have established a deliberative national referendum process on war?”
The answer, for those of us who take democracy seriously, is: “A lot!”
First off, we should recognize that, in the relatively recent past there was serious debate in the United States about how the people could be brought into the process of what the founders referred to as “chaining the dogs of war.”
The drafters of the Constitution intended to make it impossible for a president to lead the country into war without an explicit declaration from Congress and periodic reviews by the House and Senate to determine whether an international entanglement should continue.
Unfortunately, as America developed what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described to as an “imperial presidency,” and as commanders-in-chief began to use their bully pulpits and the full force of modern media to promote their wars of whim – and the endless occupations that are their byproducts – constitutional checks and balances decayed.
As long ago as 1914, when then Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette were agitating to keep the U.S. out of the European conflict that would become World War I, they began to talk of creating a new check and balance that rested the power to declare most wars in the people.
La Follette’s proposal to amend the Constitution to require “a popular referendum before declaring war” would, by 1924, have platform support from both the senator’s independent progressive movement and the Democratic Party. It would eventually spawn a formal amendment sponsored in the 1930s by Indiana Congressman Louis Ludlow, which read in Part:
“Except in the event of an invasion of the United States or its Territorial possessions and attack upon its citizens residing therein, the authority of Congress to declare war shall not become effective until confirmed by a majority of all votes cast thereon in a Nation-wide referendum. Congress, when it deems a national crisis to exist, may by concurrent resolution refer the question of war or peace to the citizens of the States, the question to be voted on being, Shall the United States declare war on ________?”
Backed by close to 200 House members, the amendment was, according to a Gallup Poll conducted in 1936, supported by 75 percent of all Americans.
A slightly different amendment, backed by a dozen senators, would have given voters authority to declare or reject war except in the case of “attack by armed forces, actual or immediately threatened…”
Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr. told the Senate in 1939 that the amendment was needed to break the cycle where presidents “lay the groundwork for war” and then at an opportune moment asked Congress “to rubber stamp a declaration of war…”
The idea of giving the people power over war-making was renewed in the 1970s by members of Congress who wanted to prevent future Vietnams. The undeclared Iraq War has inspired dozens of local referendum and town hall meeting votes calling for immediate withdrawal.
And, now, Manski and his compatriots have raised the issue anew – along with Liberty Tree’s wise suggestion that states be given greater authority over National Guard deployments to warzones. America has so broken faith with its founding traditions – especially George Washington’s encouragement call on the country to avoid entangling alliances – that proposals to check and balance imperial presidents are dismissed as unrealistic. And the idea of resting the power to declare wars with the people who must fight and pay for them are ridiculed.
But if America is ever going to renew its small “r” republican traditions, let alone realize its small “d” democratic potential, it is hard to imagine a better place to begin than with the question: “Who Decides About War?”
Eight years after the war in Afghanistan began, the issue of how to end it is finally getting some traction in Congress.
No longer is Congressman Jim McGovern’s bill with over 100 cosponsors demanding an exit strategy from the only game in town. Nor are Senators Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders alone among their colleagues in calling for a flexible timetable for withdrawal or a national conversation on Afghanistan strategy.
In these past few weeks–after a rigged election that will likely leave the corrupt Karzai government in power, and polls showing Americans suffering war fatigue during these economic hard times of jobless recovery–more centrist Democrats have started questioning a strategy of escalation in Afghanistan. Among them, Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, came out against an increase in troop levels. Also, Senator Diane Feinstein, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has called on the administration to provide a specific date for withdrawal.
Even Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin–perhaps the President’s closest friend and ally in Congress–said, “I think, at this point, sending additional troops would not be the right thing to do.”
It’s clear that we are seeing the beginning signs of a significant shift in the debate.
With the Obama administration not expected to take a position on sending more troops for weeks–probably not until after a health care bill is hammered out–now is a critical time to lobby legislators and the administration for an exit strategy, no additional troops and a timetable in Afghanistan. There is a particular need to get a bill moving in the Senate that calls for an exit strategy similar to Rep. McGovern’s legislation in the House–ask your Senator to offer one.
Also, check out The Nation and Brave New Films October 2 screening in New York City of Rethink Afghanistan–a documentary which includes interviews with over 100 experts ranging from former CIA officers, NGO officials, Afghan MPs and Afghan women rights activists. Rep. McGovern will participate in a panel discussion following the movie. More details will be available next week at TheNation.com.
This is a critical time to craft and mobilize around an alternative strategy based on regional diplomacy and development, targeted counterterrorism efforts and intelligence sharing. The war in Afghanistan is draining resources that are vital to President Obama’s goals for an economic recovery and social justice at home, while destabilizing Pakistan and distracting us from other critical international initiatives such as the Middle East Peace process and a regional diplomacy in South Asia.
To borrow a phrase from the President: “Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.” It’s time to call your legislators and demand change in Afghanistan–an exit strategy, no additional troops and a date for withdrawal.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has joined Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold is declaring that the United States needs to start thinking about how to extract its military from Afghanistan.
While almost 100 members of the House (including many conservative Republicans) have signed on to Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern’s call for the development of an Afghanistan exit strategy, Feingold has been a relatively lonely Senate advocate for a rethink of the eight-year-old occupation.
At the annual “Fighting Bob Fest” gathering in Baraboo, Wisconsin, however, Sanders drew loud and sustained applause from the crowd of 8,000 when he said, “We need to take a very, very hard look at our war in Afghanistan. We need to be clear in our goals and we need a real discussion about an exit strategy to bring our troops home.”
Sanders made his statement at the largest annual gathering of grassroots activists in the Midwest, where there was no question of the crowd’s enthusiasm for the “Health Care Not Warfare” message that was promoted at the festival by activists with Progressive Democrats of America.
Prior to coming to Wisconsin for the event, Sanders explained his views on the need to rethink Afghanistan in a video produced as part of the Brave New Films “Senator Sanders Unfiltered” project. Responding to a question from British singer Billy Bragg, Sanders said:
My major concern about the war in Afghanistan, and why I voted against the recent defense authorization bill is tat we seem to be getting sucked into a quagmire without the kind of debate, without the kind of discussion that this country desperately needs and that the people of our country are entitled. What we know now is that the number of troops that the general are requesting is going up and up. We know that we… have already poured several hundred billion dollars into Afghanistan; that number is going to go up. But we don’t know what the goals of our efforts in Afghanistan are or what kind of exit strategy we have.I worry that Afghanistan will be another Vietnam. I worry that Afghanistan will be another Iraq. We’ve been there eight years already, and how many more years are we supposed to be there? How many more American troops are supposed to die? How many more American troops are supposed to die? How many more tens and tens of billions of dollars are we supposed to be spending at a time when we have a record-breaking deficit? I find it amusing that some of my more conservative friends are saying, ‘Well, we can’t afford to spend more money on health care in this country. We can’t afford to spend more money on education or environmental protection. But, yes, we can afford to pump tens and tens of billions more into the war in Afghanistan.
Sanders says: “We need a real national discussion of an exit strategy, a real national discussion about what our goals are. We haven’t had that and the American people should be demanding it.”
Sanders is doing his part to open the discussion. And the muscular reaction to his statements made it clear that the American people are making the demand.
It is amusing, if remarkable, that there are still some players in Washington who try to maintain the fantasy that Afghan President Hamid Karzai governs with anything akin to legitimacy.
And the Afghan people have been quite aware of that fact.
It is true that, at different points over the past eight years, Karzai has enjoyed measures of popular support, thanks to alliances with warlords and drug dealers, the inflaming of ethnic rivalries and an awareness that he was the one distributing all those billions of dollars from the United States.
But, aside from a slick sense of dress, Karzai has never had much going for him in the political department.
So he has, out of instinct and by necessity, relied on fraud to “win” the elections that have kept the Afghan president and his minions in power.
That was not much of a problem during the Bush-Cheney years. The men who assumed control of the United States after losing the 2000 popular vote by more than 500,000 and then shutting down the recount of votes in the contested state of Florida were not going to gripe about the mangling of democratic processes in distant Afghanistan.
But the fantasy is getting harder to maintain now that Bush has retired and Cheney has repositioned himself as the planet’s primary defender of torture.
So we get the “news” — not from the satirical Onion but from the nation’s newspaper of record — that US officials are trying to prevent Karzai from declaring “victory” in the exercise in fraud that naive commentators still insist on referring to as an election.
The Times was as delicate as possible in reporting the predicament:
WASHINGTON — On Monday, as the vote-counting in Afghanistan was nearing an end, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was briefed by the American ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry. The same day, the ambassador delivered a blunt message to the front-runner, President Hamid Karzai: “Don’t declare victory.”The slim majority tentatively awarded Mr. Karzai in Afghanistan’s fraud-scarred election has put the Obama administration in an awkward spot: trying to balance its professed determination to investigate mounting allegations of corruption and vote-rigging while not utterly alienating the man who seems likely to remain the country’s leader for another five years.
Another way of putting it might be to say that US officials are finding it increasingly difficult to construct a rationale for allowing the man they put in charge of Afghanistan to remain in charge of Afghanistan.
This is not a new problem.
Colonial powers have faced these challenges throughout history.
It is one of the wages of empire.
And’s that’s the problem with the US presence in Afghanistan.
While it may have been initiated with a practical purpose — to hunt down the plotters of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and to rid the country of its terrorist-friendly Taliban leaders — and while it may have been reimagined as an experiment in the sort of “nation building” that presidential candidate George Bush once decried, this imperial endeavor has ended up as imperial endeavors invariably do.
The United States, a country founded with the purpose of breaking the chains of empire, has gotten into the dirty business of constructing and maintaining them.
The machinations required to maintain Hamid Karzai in a position to enrich himself and his favored warlords — even when it involves making excuses for electoral fraud and worse — are precisely the sort of “entangling alliance” about which George Washington warned in his farewell address to a young nation.
This is what Secretary of State John Quincy Adams pledged to avoid when he told the Congress in 1821 that:
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will (America’s) heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
America has drifting far from the moorings of her establishment.
The continued occupation of Afghanistan provides evidence of how far.
But it also does something else.
It provides a pivot point.
Those who would have America return to the most fundamental, the most essential, of her founding values with regard to foreign policy should see Afghanistan as the starting point for a renewal of those values.
The work of extracting US troops from that distant land — and from the service of Hamid Karzai’s fraudulent presidency — is, of course, about Afghanistan. But it is also about America.
If our senators are not siding with Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, who has called for a flexible timetable to bring the troops home, tell them to join with their colleague to challenge the Obama administration’s wrongheaded surges of more troops into a quagmire.
If our news media fails to tell the full story on the nightmarish turns that the occupation has taken, tune in to the Brave New Foundation’s terrific Rethink Afghanistan project. And read Tom Hayden’s smart analysis, with its unblinking assessment of the administration missteps.
Hayden reminds us that: “August was the cruelest month for American forces in Afghanistan, with at least 49 killed, not including possible last-minute reports. The August numbers exceeded the previous high of 43 in July, as a result of the new escalation of fighting approved by President Obama. The President is expected to approve another troop increase shortly, which will inevitably increase American casualty rates in the 18-24 months of “hard fighting” forecast by the Pentagon. At a rate of 45 American deaths per month, the toll on Obama’s watch would be 1,080 additional American deaths through 2011, as the President heads into a re-election.”
Those are unsettling numbers, as are the numbers of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. They call for a renewal of antiwar activism. To make it happen, link up with Progressive Democrats of America, Peace Action and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, all three of which have taken the lead in arguing that those who really care about Afghanistan and America must work to get the United States out of the business of occupying distant lands and propping up puppet presidents.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an adamant advocate for a real healthcare reform, has been vocal about holding Wall Street accountable for the recent market crash since the very beginning. Now, after a scandal with head of Citigroup’s energy-trading unit Andrew J. Hall, who had allegedly been promised $100 million in bonuses, Sanders is growing even more indignant and impatient with bankers and financiers and yet again calls for more responsibility on their part. “What we need is a new type of Wall Street, a Wall Street that is not interested in bubble economics, in quick speculations but a Wall Street that wants to invest in America, in our rural economy, rebuilding our manufacturing, creating descent paying jobs, and not just enriching a handful of people who are already extremely wealthy,” concludes Sanders.
