Republicans are Dead Wrong on Iraq War Funding Bill

The continual war-cry of the chickenhawk neocons is, "Support our troops." Yet President George W. Bush is almost certain to not support our troops by vetoing the war funding bill, simply because it expresses the will of the American people: to bring our troops home from Iraq.

The justification for this veto is supposedly that withdrawing US combat forces from Iraq will somehow be a form of "defeat" that will "embolden our enemies," to quote common neocon rhetoric.

Yet in fact it will be a victory: a victory for the troops, a victory for American democracy's power over improperly elected officials, a victory for peace, a victory for the nation of Iraq that has been occupied by a foreign army for over four years now.

Why should we believe the Republicans now, when they claim phased withdrawal would destabilize Iraq? Before, they told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that Iraq was trying to buy weapons-grade uranium. Both were lies. They even lied to themselves that the war would not last long.

They mismanaged the war from the beginning, and engaged in boundless war profiteering, doling out billions in no-bid sweetheart contracts to cronies like Halliburton. And now they want us to listen to them when they say that withdrawing our troops in a year or so will lead to the crumbling of Iraq's new government, and that it will lead to Iraq becoming a safe haven for Al Qaeda? Sounds like another perfect neocon bloodlust wet dream.

Let us analyze these arguments. The Republicans claim that if we "do not fight the terrorists in Iraq, then we will have to fight them here" (in the US). However this illogical statement is utterly preposterous. First and foremost, almost every day, Americans (our troops) are being killed in Iraq. These attacks are generally not acts of terrorism but rather are acts of civil war and insurgency by people who rightfully do not want us occupying their country.

Further, our troops being in Iraq is not in any way stopping anyone from attacking us here in America. All it is doing is putting our troops in the middle of a civil war, which those who hate our involvement in the Middle East are glad to see us die in.

The Republicans also claim that if we pull out of Iraq, then it will be taken over by the "Islamic extremist fascist forces of terrorism" that they say are strong within Iran and Syria. If the real threat is from Iran and Syria, then let us go and fight Iran and Syria. Or what happened to Bush's claim that we would take proper action against any country that harbored terrorists?

The real truth, I think, is that there is no legitimate threat from Iran nor Syria, other than the threat of them being used to justify more war profiteering by Bush. If this was about terrorism, we would invade Saudi Arabia, the home country of the 9/11 terrorists. This is not about terrorism.

Also many Republicans claim to be "pro-life" (despite the Bible not mentioning abortion one single time), and refuse to support such things as abortion rights and stem-cell research. Yet these same hypocrites support the deliberate use of killing, torture, and detention without a trial to fight their questionable war. They claim to have the Iraqi people's interest at stake, yet they are responsible for killing tens of thousands of Iraqis -- if not hundreds of thousands. This of course has caused a huge segment of the Iraqi middle class to flee Iraq.

Additionally Republicans, particularly Sean Hannity, claim that Islamic fascism is the new Naziism. However the actions of the Bush administration are far more similar to the early actions of the Nazi party: a preemptive invasion of another country based on a phantom threat (WMDs), obtaining political office without being properly elected, setting up detention camps where people are held without a trial, scaling back the civil rights of the American people, and spying on American citizens without a warrant (among other things).

Now, in reality I do not think that there is any modern equivalent to the Nazi party, I am just making the point that this bad analogy is only being used to justify more evil war profiteering on the part of Republicans.

If putting an end to terrorism was really on the Republican agenda, why is Osama bin Laden still running free 5.5 years after 9/11? Why did we invade Iraq which had no ties to Al Qaeda while leaving Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria untouched? Why do they continue to allow the real terror -- global warming -- to proceed unchecked? The simple answer is this is not about terror, which is people being afraid of something. It's not about terrorism, which is the practice of committing senseless acts of violence in order to make people afraid.

Rather, all current neocon policies (including the Iraq war) are about making money for defense contractors, corporate America, and the Republican good ol' boy network -- at the vast expense of the American people. The longer they can maintain the illusion of fighting terrorism while actually allowing terrorism and corporate control of America to flourish even more (by giving more people more reasons to hate us and using the violence fueled by that hatred to justify war profiteering), the better for them and their pocketbooks.

Further, the Republicans don't want you to know that the real reason Al Qaeda fights us is because of our support for Israel, the sweetheart of the religious right due to it being the "Holy Land" of Christianity and one of the defense industry's main customers. Al Qaeda does not fight us because "they want to take away our freedoms" like so many Republicans say. No, it is because we militarily support a country which was created artificially in their midst, and we set up military bases in Saudi Arabia and now Iraq and continue to conduct our practices of bombing civilians from the air, setting up marine snipers in places like Fallujah to shoot people guitly of (gasp) violating a curfew, allegedly using phosphorous weapons against civilians, and other war crimes which might as well be terrorism.

What would be best would be if we ended this war with Al Qaeda by withdrawing all support for Israel and withdrawing all of our military forces from the Middle East. Maybe then we could afford to pay schoolteachers a decent wage in this country. Maybe then we could afford a proper voting system which does not fail. Maybe then we could fix the damage done by Katrina. Or even secure our southern border! Any rhetoric about how some Islamists want to take over the entire world through terrorism is just that: rhetoric, although of course we should continue efforts to prevent any rogue elements (Al Qaeda, Blood, Crip, KKK, civilian militias, etc.) from obtaining nuclear weapons.

When will anyone put an end to this madness? When will the religious right ever follow the teachings of their own savior, and learn to "love thine enemy," "turn the other cheek," and "put down your sword"? Probably never, because they are neither relgious, nor right; they are hypcorites and murderers who use religion as a sick justification for archaic policies of hate and ignorance. Our troops and their funding are still being held hostage by the neocons via the threat of veto, and it is truly sad.