By David Swanson
How would you like to vote for a political party that sacrifices hundreds of thousands of lives to win elections? Yeah, neither would I. So, how can they be so sure they will win elections?
Of course I’m talking about the Democratic Party’s strategy of continuing to fund the bloody occupation of Iraq.
Or how would you like to support an activist or think-tank organization that obeys the Democratic Party in the same strategy?
I just took part in a media conference call with http://www.iraqcampaign.org
Speaking were Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran and Chairman and Co-Founder of VoteVets.org; Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Jim Gerstein, Democracy Corps; and Karen Meredith, who lost her son in Iraq.
I don’t think Karen fully realized that she’d been recruited into a Democratic Party front group that uses the occupation of Iraq as a campaign issue but opposes actually ending it. I asked a question on the call, following lots of talk about the presidential election. “Why,” I asked,”have none of you mentioned any opposition to the next $102 billion Congress must approve or reject?”
Karen said she assumed it had just not come up. However, she had read from prepared written remarks aimed at bashing Senator McCain, whereas the other speakers had spoken off-the-cuff. There’s a reason it didn’t come up. The other speakers went on to explain that Congress is helpless because bills get vetoed. I didn’t bother to point out to them that a refusal to pass a bill cannot be vetoed. I have to assume they know that. Presumably they watched as Congress refused to pass telecom immunity. Presumably they know that that refusal can’t be vetoed.
What a charade!
And what a disgrace to drag a Gold Star mother into it!
One of the larger charades taking this same strategy, by the way, is http://standupcongress.org – a coalition effort with exactly none of its coalition members taking part in it.
Brilliant.
But disgusting.
Here’s an alternative:
http://iraqtownhalls.com