Room for a View > Special Report
The Resolution to Invade Iraq:
How Local Reprentatives Voted
by Jack A. Smith; edited by Lorna Tychostup

The US House of Representatives and Senate voted in mid-
October to provide the Bush administration with authority to launch a war against Iraq, even though the White House has produced no proof the Baghdad government was implicated in last year’s terror attacks or possesses weapons of mass destruction.

The legislative action, which makes it probable that President Bush will invade Iraq within several months, contains one positive element from the perspective of those who oppose a new war: a larger proportion than anticipated of congressional Democrats voted against arming the president with war powers. Both New York Senators, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, however, voted in favor of the Bush resolution, as did all Mid-Hudson House members except for Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-Hurley).

The Democratic Party has supported virtually every “war on terrorism” demand from the Bush administration since September 11—from invading Afghanistan, to huge increases in the military and homeland security budgets, to passage of the USA Patriot Act, which many Americans consider to be a serious abrogation of civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

Where some Democratic politicians finally drew the line was on the unilateral nature of White House plans to attack Iraq. The resolution authorizes Bush “to use the armed forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to (1) defend the national security of the US against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant UN Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.” The measure allows Washington to go to war virtually at Bush’s whim and without a United Nations Security Council mandate.

Most of the leading Democrats who spoke out in opposition in the days preceding the vote focused their objections on (1) the lack of UN Security Council support for a war; (2) the paucity of allies prepared to join in an invasion; (3) the possibility that an attack on Iraq would weaken the war on terrorism. Only a relative few emphasized the illegal, immoral, and aggressive nature of a preemptive war against a small country threatening neither the US nor its neighbors.

The Senate vote was 77 to 23, with the opposition consisting of 21 Democrats, one Republican (Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island) and one independent (Vermont’s James Jeffords). Reflecting the Democratic Party’s gravitation to the political center-right in recent years, compare this year’s 21 opponents to the 45 Senate Democrats who voted against the 1991 attack on Iraq—particularly since at that time Iraq had invaded Kuwait.

Had the 29 Democratic Senators who voted to support a new war cast their ballots in opposition, the resolution would have been defeated 52-48—sufficient to scuttle the GOP’s war plans. Liberals such as Clinton, Dianne Feinstein (CA), and John Kerry (MA), supported the Bush administration’s go-it-alone war plan, despite a deluge of pleas from constituents to vote otherwise. Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!” program revealed in late September that of 26 Senators responding to a query, 22 “reported an overwhelming majority of constituents—in some cases up to 99 percent—opposed war in Iraq. Three said the response was split and just one office reported a pro-war majority.” In Wisconsin, for example, aides to Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl “say they are receiving1,000 to 2,000 calls per week, with the overwhelming number opposed to an attack on Iraq.”

Senate Democratic majority leader Tom Daschle (SD) voted in favor of the Bush proposal—a decision consistent with his allegiance to the White House for over a year in matters pertaining to war, military expenditures, homeland defense, and foreign policy.

The House supported the president’s measure 296-133. Voting against the resolution were 126 Democrats, six Republicans and one independent (Vermont’s Bernard Sanders). Had the 81 Democratic representatives who supported the war bill voted with the opposition, the measure still would have passed, but only by one vote, 215-214, a majority so small it may have imposed restraints on a wildly adventurous White House. House minority leader Dick Gephardt (MO), another liberal, was a strong supporter of a new war. In 1991, 179 Democrats voted against war.

House Republicans from the Mid-Hudson Valley lining up behind Bush were Reps. Sue Kelly (R-Katonah), Benjamin Gilman (R-Middletown), John E. Sweeney (R-Halfmoon), and Sherwood Boehlert (R-Utica). Democrat Hinchey, who supported the invasion of Afghanistan, believes a war against Iraq will contradict US interests in the war against terrorism.

The House Democrats who opposed the war mandate were far more numerous than thought possible just a month earlier. Some undoubtedly will close ranks behind Bush when the bombs start falling. But some, such as Reps. Dennis Kucinich (OH), Barbara Lee (CA), and Jim McDermott (WA), are expected to continue taking the lead in galvanizing congressional antiwar dissent.

In the Senate as well, it would have been impossible to predict just weeks before that 21 Democrats would vote against the resolution. Most of them, like their House counterparts, have kept relatively silent during the last year as Congress passed one Bush administration measure after another to expand the military and prepare for future wars, ostensibly wars “against terrorism.” Vocal Senate Democrats in opposition to last week’s war resolution include Robert Byrd (WV), Edward Kennedy (MA), Carl Levin (MI), and Patrick Leahy (VT).

At this stage, the most important obstacle to a new war is to be found in two quarters, quite independent of Congress. First is the US antiwar movement, which is developing in numbers and political sophistication much faster than the extremely effective anti-Vietnam war movement. The second factor is the reluctance of nearly all key US allies—and the UN as well—to condone a preemptive war against a weak and wounded small country that has not committed aggression against the United States. While the Bush administration has indicated it was prepared to act without allies or support from the world body, the extent of criticism from other nations, including such close allies as France and Germany, cannot but remain a factor in White House calculations.

If congressional dissidents remain firm, they will help the antiwar forces. But the overwhelming congressional support for Bush’s desired invasion leaves the main responsibility for opposing a war with Iraq to the peace movement and the Left, which is taking to the streets and meeting halls in ever-increasing numbers. It was the widespread nature of antiwar sentiment during the Vietnam era—stimulated in large part by the oppositional movements—that caused the politicians to turn against the war, not the other way around. Experienced antiwar activists and organizers are working once again to go over the heads of Congress and the mainstream political structure to generate a thunderclap of antiwar sentiment among the masses of people. “We did it before,” they say in effect with Vietnam in mind, “and we can do it again.”

Jack A. Smith is a long-time journalist and former editor of the Guardian newsweekly, a prominent left-wing paper that ceased publication a decade ago. He currently is the editor of the Mid-Hudson Activist Newsletter/Calendar, which is available free from jacdon@earthlink.net.