Democrats: Let’s Cut Off Funds For The Troops!
Dennis Kucinich, who apparently thinks he’s Yoda or something:
Congressman Kucinich called Wednesday for cutting off funding of the Iraq war, as the surest way out of Iraq. His statements were made in an interview by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman.
“I want to say that there’s one solution here, and it’s not to engage in a debate with the President, who has taken us down a path of disaster in Iraq, but it’s for Congress to assume the full power that it has under the Constitution to cut off funds. We don’t need to keep indulging in this debate about what to do, because as long as we keep temporizing, the situation gets worse in Iraq.
“We have to determine that the time has come to cut off funds. There’s enough money in the pipeline to achieve the orderly withdrawal that Senator McGovern is talking about. But cut off funds, we must. That’s the ultimate power of the Congress, the power of the purse. That’s how we’ll end this war, and that’s the only way we’re going to end this war.
Oh, it would end the war all right. End it like Vietnam was ended, with soldiers dying in the last stages of a mission that is dwindling because a bunch of revenge-seeking partisans here at home aren’t giving them the funding and supplies they need.
Before anyone says that Kucinich doesn’t represent the mainstream thinking of the Democrat party on Iraq, consider that Rep. Charles Rangel (soon-to-be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus) have also called for de-funding the war in Iraq.
Frankly, choking the war in Iraq to death through a lack of funding would be a terrible mistake. Democrats in Congress need to recognize that even with their majority in Congress the President still calls the shots on the war in Iraq. As long as the authorization for war in Iraq passed by Congress stays in place, and as long as the President orders our troops to remain in Iraq, I think it is the duty of Congress to give those troops what they need. That’s just the way it is.
I know Democrats want us out of Iraq now, but our troops deserve better then to have their support from here at home cut out from under them while they’re still on the battlefield.
