An Understandable Mistake

The Congress spent the weekend proving, once again, that they have no idea what the safe word is in the sub/dom game they’ve been playing with the executive branch since early 2001. And, despite the title of this article, Hillary Clinton Votes for War — Again by David Bromwich (Common Dreams), it’s not just Hillary grinning madly around the ball gag, either: she’s joined by 75 close friends in the Senate who also saw fit to approve the following language[1]:

“…that it should be the policy of the United States to stop inside Iraq the violent activities and destabilizing influence of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies.”

Not only does the bill officially include Hezbollah in a denunciation of Iran—presumably to make sure that any response to Israeli attacks on Lebanon can be interpreted as attacks on the American Homeland itself—but it designated, in a secondary clause, “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran as a ‘foreign terrorist organization.’” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard is just a fancy way of saying “Iran’s Army”, so Bush can chatter on at some point that the Congress agrees with him when he says that Iran is a nation of terrorists. Not bad for a weekend’s work.

Hilary voted for it, though Dodd and Hagel did not. Obama and McCain couldn’t be bothered to show up at all. Since no one who’s paid attention for even a microsecond over the last few years can have any doubt that, given this thin slice of legal support, Bush and Co. will storm into Iran, we can only assume that these 76 Senators are complicit war criminals in the upcoming fireworks against Iran. Make a note of it now—this will be the document Bush waves in everyone’s face when he interrupts the Monday night schedule sometime before Thanksgiving with “grave news for our nation”. The usual handful of cool heads voted against it—Feingold, Leahy, Sanders, Webb[2] and others—but they would need a lot more Obamas and McCains to stay home before they could swing a vote their way.

To be fair, it’s not hard to see why so many voted for it; one need look no farther than the name of the bill: Kyl-Lieberman. Most of the Democrats who voted for it can be forgiven for thinking the title a mere clerical error and voting for it in the desperate hope that the promise in it comes to fruition. In fact, it would be great to see Senator Kyl co-sponsor bills with Bush and Cheney as well.