Few things in this world are all that hard. Here is a perfect example. If you don’t want your nation to continue criminal acts of aggression then this latest vote tells you who in congress shares your views. Now that they’ve told us, we’ll want to impeach them – if they won’t resign voluntarily.
No matter what, it’s time for the people of the United States to stop blaming the government for things. If a member of government tells us flat out, “I don’t care about what you want…”, we need to remove them. Then we need to replace them with someone we know. Not whoever shows up at election time – we’ve tried that.
This responsibility applies to everything effecting our living conditions – including healthcare. We are responsible for our health – no one else. We are responsible for the economy, judicial rulings, corporate policies and so on. This country is the way it is because we haven’t removed people when they tell us – “You should get rid of me…”.
I guess a good first step in the right direction is to get the idea of political parties out of our collective mind. If we think about government as a business we’ll intuitively know how to respond to it. If people aren’t doing the job – we fire them. Here is an article with the list of people asking us to remove them from elected office.
Congress Votes for Afghan War
by Tom Hayden
A plain reading of yesterday’s vote on the Kucinich war powers resolution is that an overwhelming majority of the House has authorized the Afghanistan war, including a majority of Democrats. The war now has greater legitimacy. The vote was 356-65-9.
(If Rep. John Conyers had been present, the dissenting bloc would have been 66, including just five Republicans. Few members took the option of abstaining.)
Strong Kucinich supporters will feel vindicated that their hero took a lonely stand and forced the House to a moment of choice. Critics will note that a dubious war has been legitimized, and that it will be more complicated for those who voted “aye” to reverse course in the months ahead.
The outcome will make the anti-war forces appear weaker for now than they are, and appearances do matter.
By contrast in Germany, 100-plus members of the Left Party demonstrated inside the Bundestag last week against expanding the German troop commitment, and were thrown out of the parliament for hours. They too lost the vote, but they made their point to the German people and parliament, drawing a sharp line in German politics.
As things stand now, most of the same bloc of 65 Congressional dissenters are likely to vote against $33 billion in funding for the recent troop escalation, a measure introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee. That means a two-thirds House majority soon will be voting to fund the escalation. Soon after will come the vote on funding the war for the next year. The fact is that peace forces inside and outside of Congress lack sufficient support to terminate war funding.
Tom Hayden, a former California state senator, is the author, most recently, of The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama – tomhayden.com