Democratic House leadership has basically joined Republican House leadership in back Obama's plans for "limited" military involvement in Iraq's religious civil war-- which started on October 10, 680, not 1680, 680 at the Battle of Karbala, when the Sunnis and the Shia began exterminating each other. Obama can't possible think he's going to heal that breach-- even if silly-dillies like Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte and John McCain do. How sad it is to see Democratic House leaders-- many of whom would be flying into fits of rage if Obama's plans were the plans of a Republican-- backing military intervention just for naked partisan reasons. Most sickening of all, of course, is to watch Pelosi-- who rose to the top of leadership by breaking with warmonger Dick Gephardt when he backed Bush's illegal war against Iraq-- going along with the usual suspects and zombies like Hoyer and Clyburn. Yesterday, after a meeting at the White House, Pelosi parroted the Administration line: “I do not believe the President needs any further legislative authority to pursue the particular options for increased security assistance discussed today. I am pleased by the president’s efforts to secure strong Congressional support, and I look forward to additional consultation.” Clyburn backed her up: “I’m a great believer in drones, and I think that this situation cries out for it." That's exactly what Maliki was asking for yesterday-- and for the last month.Progressives are on another page altogether. Barbara Lee is one of the Members who speaks for the Democrats who oppose war. A few days ago she let her supporters know she plans to offer legislation to repeal the Iraq era authorization to go to war that it still in effect. "The latest spate of violence in Iraq has the President and many members of Congress again contemplating military action. We've been through this before and the American people have spoken-- to stop endless war, at some point we must stand down. To this end, I’m offering amendments to the defense spending bill this week to repeal the authorization for military action in Iraq and the 2001 blank check for war. We’re going to get our vote!
The support from top Democrats provides Obama with cover and flexibility as he weighs his approach to the escalating violence in Iraq, but it also sets the leaders apart from many rank-and-file members who are vehemently against the use of military force less than three years after the last U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq.Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) warned Wednesday that even a limited military engagement could lead to a much greater commitment down the road.“I worry about us getting sucked into another endless war,” he said.“There has to be something between doing nothing and dropping bombs,” added McGovern, a leading voice against the original Iraq War. “Everybody seems to be rushing toward the military solution. We ought to be thinking long and hard about ... other ways to do this that would actually have a lasting impact.”Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, echoed that message Wednesday.“If money or military might would change that part of the world ... we would have done it by now,” he told CNN. “Enough is enough.”Many Democrats say they’re not opposed to a military response, per se, but they also don’t want to prop up a government under al-Maliki “that’s just rotten,” in the words of McGovern.Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued Obama should withhold any military help “until such time as either Maliki’s gone or Maliki’s policies change dramatically.”“Just because ISIS is bad doesn’t mean that Maliki is good,” Sherman said.Rep. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, warned that any U.S. intervention would be fruitless without diplomatic concessions from the warring Iraqi factions.“I don’t know if there’s any utility in involving ourselves in what is quickly descending into civil war, unless the leaders in Iraq are willing to say that they want to be a [unified] country,” Becerra said. “I’m not sure where the White House is preparing to go. ... [But] you have to prove to me that the Iraqis are willing to step up and say that Shia will protect Sunni, Sunni will protect Shia, and the Kurds will do the same.”
Marianne Williamson's congressional campaign may be over, but for her, civic engagement goes way beyond running for office. Writing for Iowa yesterday, she sent me a guest post written from a very different perspective from the debate we're hearing Inside the Beltway. It might make you think of the missed opportunity stay-at-home voters in CA-33 missed out on 2 weeks ago.
WAR, IRAQ, ENLIGHTENMENTBy Marianne WilliamsonSometimes, it’s when all hope is seemingly lost that the greatest breakthroughs occur in life. Whatever forces us to recognize the limit to what we can do by ourselves, opens the mind to consider the possibility that there might be another way. When everything is all messed up, we’ve played all our cards, and we don’t have a clue what to do now-- that often becomes a magic moment. Commonly called “bottoming out,” it’s the point when we realize that our way isn’t working-- and then miraculously, things start working.'Nations can bottom out, just like individuals. And the situation in Iraq is just such a moment. You know the government is running out of cards to play when they’re thinking that maybe Iran can help. Or when the media’s idea of great coverage is to call and ask the people who got us into Iraq for any great ideas they might have now that it’s all exploded in our faces. To say we’re grasping for straws is an understatement. Looking at the power of ISIL leads to horrifying possibilities that make the most varied sets of people, from the most disparate places and viewpoints, all ultimately come to the same conclusion: “We really, really have a problem here.”So what now?From a spiritual perspective, the first thing we all do is to admit that the situation is not solvable by the mortal mind alone. That admission is both death to the ego and birth of the wiser self. It puts us into a different place of consciousness, a more humble attitude that doesn’t make us dumber-- it makes us smarter. It moves us beyond that small number of brain cells that we’re currently using, taking the evolutionary leap that is the challenge of humanity at this moment-- to realize that the human species will not survive unless we evolve beyond our material, mechanistic, Newtonian notion of how the universe operates. Our task is to embrace the primacy of consciousness as both the reality and the power that it is. There is more to the mind than the intellect, and the intellect alone can’t solve every problem. This is not bad news, by the way; it's good.Next, we move, en masse, into the level of consciousness that is the deeper Reality underlying all things, a self-organizing and self-correcting matrix of energy (some call it God, some do not) that is the natural intelligence of the universe. It is the mysterious guidance by which embryos turn into babies, acorns turn into oak trees and buds turn into blossoms. Our self-will only interferes with this intelligence; our lack of love obstructs it; prayer and meditation release it to work on our behalf.As we can see from simply looking at a flower, nature knows how to organize itself. And this same force would organize human affairs if we would allow it to. This allowance occurs whenever we place our minds in correct alignment with the laws of the universe-- through prayer, meditation, forgiveness and compassion. Until we do this, we will continue to manifest a world that destroys rather than heals itself. Iraq is a perfect example.Participating in the creation of collective field of prayer and meditation is something that each of us can do to help end the cycle of violence in the Middle East. Taking the mind to its natural state of alignment with the Truth at the center of things, these activities of the mind act like a magnet to attract the healing potential inherent in the universe. In the words of Martin Luther King, internal changes in the direction of non-violence are “materially passive but spiritually active.” There are, in that field of collective meditative/prayerful consciousness, infinite possibilities that the conscious mind can simply not formulate.What is the conceit that this time in history is calling us to surrender? It is the notion that the conscious, mortal, intellectual mind can be trusted to rule and organize all things. Given the state of affairs on the planet today, it is preposterous to think it can. As they would say in Alcoholics Anonymous, “Our best thinking got us here.”A study published in the Yale Journal of Conflict Resolution in l985 reported on a group of advanced meditators from the Transcendental Meditation Movement who meditated in Jerusalem in l983 during the height of the Lebanese Civil War. During the summer of 1983, on each day in which there were large numbers of meditators, violence dropped and stayed low for an additional day or so and then went back to its previous levels. The final data revealed that whenever the group of meditators assembled, there was an average of a 76% reduction in war deaths.Why is this so?Because on a level of subtle energy, often referred to as the Unified Field Theory, all minds are joined as one. In the words of Candace Badgett, founder of the Women’s Institute at Maharishi University, “War is the result of the build up of stress and negativity in collective consciousness… And it’s consequences are the suffering and resentment that in turn perpetuate retaliation in the form of terrorism, conflict …..and more war.” Breaking this cycle of violence is now within the reach, and the power, of each of us. The more we all do our part to prepare the field, the more creative solutions will be available to world leaders seeking to effectuate external change.Often in life, collectively and well as individually, we find ourselves confronted by more than problematic events; we find ourselves confronted by a resistant energetic force field that external change of itself does not fundamentally altar. And so it is with the scourge of war. War is not just an external event; it is a field of fear-based consciousness that needs to be addressed on internal as well as external levels. And that will take all of our efforts.Here are five principles for spiritual activism:l) Atone in your heart for your own warlike nature-- any thoughts or behavior of judgment or attack-- and seek to change your life where necessary.2) Spend at least five minutes a day in prayer or meditation, knowing you are part of a global field of consciousness at work on the inner planes to bring about world peace.3) Seek to organize your own community of like-minded individuals to join you in prayer or meditation groups for world peace.4) If it applies, atone with others for the behavior of your country if it has in the past, or is now, participating in unjust military activity.5) Practice mercy and compassion towards yourself and others, particularly resisting any temptation to monitor someone else’s journey rather than your own.Just as science is seen not as a separate category of life, but rather the material alphabet that explains all external phenomena, so is consciousness the science of the inner life. The field of consciousness today is what the scientific revolution was for to late 19th and early 20th century, representing a similar advent of a new frontier. The question today is not how to convince others that these things are true. Enough of us now know they are. The issue now is how to harness the energy and power of this new understanding, so we can get on with the urgent task of saving our world from the clutches of war and delivering it to fields of unending peace. Visiting these fields within ourselves, we automatically become the source providers of their emergence in the outer world.In the words of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "In order to save the world, we must have a plan. But no plan will work unless we meditate."It is time. It is possible. It is simply ours to do.
If that's too tough to wrap the brain around, DFA made it a lot simpler: "Once again," they wrote this week, "the headlines are full of awful stories coming out of Iraq-- and Republican hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham are warning that we must bomb Iraq to avoid 'the next 9/11.' Of course, these are the same people who recklessly led us into a decade-long quagmire in Iraq. This current catastrophe would not be unraveling if President George W. Bush had not chosen to invade this divided country in 2003 on trumped-up intelligence.
Right now, President Obama is considering the possibility of launching airstrikes, in addition to other options. Democracy for America released the following statement to the press on Monday. Will you sign on in support?"President Obama was right to end the Iraq War in 2011, and it would be a tremendous mistake to restart it now. Democracy for America members support President Obama's decision not to put American boots on the ground and we urge the President and Congress to reject any increased U.S. military involvement, including airstrikes, in this growing, sectarian civil war."At Democracy for America, we knew that invading and destabilizing Iraq was a huge mistake, and DFA members worked for years to end the war. We fought to elect President Obama because he promised to end the occupation of Iraq and bring our troops home. Once President Obama was in office, we made sure he kept his word. As we've argued for years, this complex conflict cannot be fixed with the blunt object of more American military involvement. No bomb can create peace between these opposing sects-- only the Iraqi people themselves can do that. That's why Democracy for America is urging President Obama to reject any proposal to use our military to intervene in Iraq right now.
Right after President Obama's speech today, which sounded too much like an invitation to a slippery slope for me, MoveOn issued this statement:
"Ending the war in Iraq was one of the best decisions President Obama has made. The decision to send in even a limited number of Special Operations forces is a dangerous and troubling development that threatens to lead to broader military engagement."Our nation has sacrificed enough in Iraq. We should not put our troops in the middle of an Iraqi civil war that can only be solved by Iraqis themselves."Americans elected President Obama in 2008 on a promise to end the war in Iraq. We are counting on him to remain true to that promise-- and we are counting on Congress to repeal the decade-old Authorization for Use of Military Force and hold a new vote on any new use of force in Iraq."
Sounds about right to me.UPDATE: A Vote On Iraq Funding Tomorrow?Grayson says there's going to actually be a vote: "I have some big news," he just wrote. "The U.S. House of Representatives is going to vote on whether to send combat forces to Iraq. Yes, I've checked the date, and yes, it's 2014. My colleague, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, will offer two amendments on the defense spending bill today or tomorrow. Both of these amendments will prevent funding for war in Iraq… Although Rep. Lee was the only member to vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in 2001, she won't be alone this time. I will also stand up to say 'No!' … Maybe Congress will get it right this time, after getting it so, so wrong last time. At the very least, since I'm in Congress this time, you can count on me to support peace. We also have a President not named Bush, and he actually listens to reason."
