Mainstream Democrats in Congress are terrified of Republican mud slinging accusing them of not supporting the troops. So they are afraid to use the one power they have: the power of the purse. Why can’t they stand up and reframe the debate—joining Progressive Democrats such as Russ Feingold, Maxine Waters, Dennis Kucinich, and Lynn Woolsey—to say cutting off funding for the war will not take one penny away from our troops? The money already in the pipeline is more than enough to bring them home. Any more appropriations will simply extend the occupation—and our troops won’t have any more or less body armor or underwear than they already have or any better or worse care at the crumbling VA Hospitals when they are maimed and wounded.
As far as I can see, our job is to keep pressuring Hillary and other mainstream Democrats on Iraq. We can’t let up now or we could end up with another Lyndon Johnson, who promised an end to the Vietnam War but instead escalated it. We can’t accept empty rhetoric in the place of action. We need to make the inability and unwillingness of the Democrats in Congress to use their budgetary power to put an end to the war into a political liability.
If Congress continues paying for it Bush’s war it becomes their war. If the Democrats don’t have the guts to reframe the debate about troop support by showing that bringing them home is the best thing we can do for our troops, then we have to shout it from the rooftops ourselves. If Hillary won’t stand up and use her power as the current presidential front runner and one of the most powerful people in the Democratic Party to help end this war, then we need to stand up wherever she is and say, “Hillary Stop Funding the War!”
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