War spending bill promises to ignite more battles

In the most contentious debate to open among progressives since Democrats took control of Congress this year, Rep. Nancy Pelosi successfully navigated a $124 billion package to finance war in Afghanistan and Iraq, while also requiring that combat operations cease by September 2008.

The House passed the measure 218-212, largely along party lines. Five of the 14 Democrats voting "nay" came from the South; the list appears to be evenly split among progressives who opposed it because they wanted the U.S. out faster, and conservatives who thought the bill should include no timetable with withdrawal:

John Barrow, Georgia
Dan Boren, Oklahoma
Lincoln Davis, Tennessee
Dennis Kucinich, Ohio
Barbara Lee, California
John Lewis, Georgia
Jim Marshall, Georgia
Jim Matheson, Utah
Mike McNulty, New York
Mike Michaud, Maine
Gene Taylor, Mississippi
Maxine Waters, California
Diane Watson, California
Lynn Woolsey, California

North Carolina had two other notables: (1) one of only two Republicans who opposed the bill -- Rep. Walter Jones -- a long-time critic of the war) and (2) one of only three reps to miss the vote entirely -- Rep. Mel Watt (D) -- who came late and said he was one of the progressives who was persuaded to vote "yes."

The Democratic leadership prevailed, but the real fight is just beginning. As expected, Bush has promised to veto the bill. Since Pelosi and the Democrats don't have the votes to override a veto, the victory will be short-lived -- and another round of battle commenced.

Democrats also have to confront the vote's fallout among their anti-war base -- many of whom mobilized heavily to defeat the war spending measure (with notable exceptions like MoveOn) -- as well as the world community. As Marcus Raskin, founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, pointed out in a recent editorial, the people of Iraq have little interest in U.S. political maneuvering -- they just want the U.S. out of their country, now:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki doesn't want additional American troops in Baghdad. Indeed, he wants the United States out as quickly as possible. A September 2006 poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes revealed that 7 out of 10 Iraqis want the United States to leave within a year. Iraq's infrastructure is in ruins, the environment, the water and sanitation systems are virtually destroyed, and violence between groups and within groups rage, exacerbated by the lingering U.S. presence.

Even worse, the bill passed by the Democrats today endorses the Bush administration's position on one of the biggest issues facing Iraq: who will profit from the country's oil wealth. As Ken Silverstein of Harper's points out:

[A]bout halfway through the 80-page supplemental bill is a section that demands that the Iraqi government enact "a broadly accepted hydro-carbon law that equitably shares oil revenues among all Iraqis" by this fall. That sounds perfectly fine, but the law in question turns out to be one that the Bush Administration and American energy firms have been pushing for years and that, as Antonia Juhasz of Oil Change International explained last week in a New York Times op-ed, would allow international companies to take control of much of Iraq's oil "for a generation or more," with no requirements to reinvest earnings in the country.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) tried in vain to have the language removed, leading Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International to say:

The Democrats say they're determined to not "let the perfect be the enemy of the good" with this bill. But we're unclear as to how giving the Bush Administration and Big Oil exactly what they want most in Iraq, at the expense of Iraq's future, can be seen as good.