Cornyn Is Unwavering in Support for Bush on Iraq

In a rare Saturday session, the Senate failed once again to advance a nonbinding resolution to the floor for a vote that would have condemned the President's Iraq escalation. The latest proposal floated in the Senate was identical in wording to the House resolution that passed earlier in the week.

The United States Senate met for a rare weekend session Saturday to vote on taking up a House-passed resolution opposing a troop increase in Iraq. And, just as they did last week in a similar vote, Senate Republicans managed to block the resolution from consideration.

The measure picked up several Republican Senators who deferred to pressure from Republican leadership in the last debate - including Snowe, Hagel and Warner. Of course, both Texas Senators voted against advancing the resolution. Senator John Cornyn has been especially strident in his support of the administration, sticking like glue to Bush's failed war policies. Despite falling poll numbers, Cornyn hasn't softened one whit on his stance on the war - whatever George Bush wants, George Bush gets.

He is certain that President Bush's decision to send more troops into battle is the right move. He is certain that Democratic war thinking is wrong. Despite the growing misgivings of so many GOP lawmakers, Cornyn is certain that the United States should stay in Iraq until the job is done.

Stay until the job is done....can someone please define what that means? Because it sure sounds as though he's advocating for an indefinite stay.

He not only supports Bush's troop-increase plan, he describes any alternative in the starkest possible terms. "Are we going to allow Iraq to become another failed state which will then serve as a launching pad for future terrorist attacks, perhaps including against the United States?" Cornyn asked during a recent Senate floor speech.

That might have been a good question to ask a few years ago, when there was still hope of avoiding the hard choices brought on by civil war. But it ignores the reality on the ground, which is that Iraq is already one of the most dangerous places on earth, and it happened on our watch. As stated in a previous post...

".....stay the course" is no longer the Republican mantra, but other than semantics, nothing has changed. The administration still has no plans for a troop drawdown, no idea how to quell the sectarian violence, no definition for victory and no intention of admitting the truth. In the face of the recent meltdown, the Republican candidates' grim determination to keep uttering nonsense about "winning" is supposed to be viewed as being resolute. Actually, such obstinacy only serves to reinforce the reality that they cannot be trusted to manage the mess that they created or to level with the American public about our limited options. This is political posturing at its worst.

And as for the overwhelming public disapproval on the conduct of the war, Cornyn seems not to notice.

The freshman senator is such a throwback to the early days of GOP fealty to Bush that his Senate Web site includes a "compassionate conservatism" link. Choosing survival over solidarity, other Republicans are seeking political cover. Cornyn, 55, is one of 20 GOP senators up for re-election in 2008, but he is trying a different strategy from most of the others: unwavering loyalty......

Cornyn is a favorite at the White House, where he remains a Bush insider and close friend of Karl Rove. But his unalloyed defense of Bush's Iraq policies have some back home wondering whether he has gone too far.

"He's pretty much married himself to the president and to Karl" Rove, Bush's top political adviser, said Harvey Kronberg, editor of the Quorum Report political newsletter. "I'm just speculating, but we like to see a modest amount of independence here in Texas."

Iraq Resolutions

Those of us who are passionately opposed to the continuation of the Iraq war have mixed feelings about the upcoming debate over the Iraq war resolution in the Senate. Yes, it's good to oppose escalation of the troops, but a non-binding resolution containing watered down language which will certainly be ignored by the White House anyway, hardly seems worth the time. Still, one could argue that something is better than nothing, so when Sen. John Warner, R- Virginia, joined with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to announce his opposition to Bush's plan to escalate the war, that seemed to be a positive sign.

But now comes the news that all 49 Republican Senators are prepared to filibuster next week if the Democrats don't agree to debate additional resolutions introduced on the war. Yes, all those "principled" Republicans - Snowe, Hagel ("go sell shoes"), even John Warner, who is prepared to vote against cloture even if it delays a vote on his own resolution.

Our Texas senators are split, taking different tactics in this debate. Sen. Cornyn, as we know, is an unapologetic supporter of Bush's war. Cornyn explains why he thinks blocking a vote on the resolution is a good thing.

Cornyn said the Biden resolution and another resolution prepared by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., also opposing the troop buildup, “are fraught with meaning, and the meaning is all bad.”

There, that was illuminating, wasn't it? But Cornyn wants debate on his own resolution, one that supports the buildup.

Republicans including John McCain of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas have drafted alternative resolutions supporting the president's plan. McConnell didn't say which Republican alternatives should be considered.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, on the other hand, wants to appear moderate while doing nothing to alienate any of the powers that be. Here is her position before the elections last year on whether she regretted her vote to authorize the Iraq war:

The list of those who say they would vote differently is a bipartisan group whose ranks include former and current Republican Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, Bob Smith of New Hampshire, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

Here are her comments from last month regarding the nonbinding resolution opposing troop escalation.

Some Republicans worried that it would undermine Bush's diplomatic efforts on Iraq. "The worst thing we can do as a Congress is to undercut the president internationally," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican, said Wednesday on CNN television.

Sometimes it's hard to decide which stance on the war is more contemptible - Cornyn's pigheaded support for the administration's ruinous policies, or Hutchison's "We can have our cake and eat it, too" political posturing.

Meanwhile, the latest NIE (National Intelligence Report) casts serious doubt on our ability to stabilize Iraq.

In the bleakest terms yet, a new U.S. government intelligence assessment warned Friday that Iraq's sectarian violence is now self-sustaining and that the country's forces will be "hard pressed" to assume responsibility for security before mid-2008, despite accelerated U.S. training.

And yet in the midst of this chaos, Bush is asking for another $245 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which would bring the totals to a staggering three-quarters of a trillion dollars. But the President also promised us a balanced budget in five years, so something's gotta give.

"Controlling spending also requires us to address the unsustainable growth of entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid," Bush said. "Spending for these programs is growing faster than inflation, faster than our economy, and faster than our ability to pay for it."

Funny, the same logic doesn't seem to apply when he's asking for a 10.5 percent increase for the Pentagon budget.

anti-semitism: from seattle to malibu

Yesterday, Academy Award winner Mel Gibson went to rehab after his arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. The police report indicates that during his arrest, Gibson launched into a "profanity-laced tirade" against Jews. He also claimed to own Malibu and shot a sexist remark at a female officer.

As star blogger Arianna Huffington suggests, "the Gibson Affair" was a defining moment for Hollywood. One might expect a tidal wave of press releases condemning Gibson's remarks from the Hollywood elite, but no such thing has happened yet. Huffington encourages other actors and movie execs to ostracize Gibson and separate the extremists like Gibson from the rational thinkers.

This incident comes after Friday's hate crime in Seattle, where one woman was killed and five others were critically injured. All of the victims were Jewish.

Police said the gunman had been arrested without a struggle inside the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, where the shooting took place, and was being questioned by police.

The gunman is a U.S. citizen, and police said initial contacts with him by phone while he was inside the building indicated that he was a Muslim.

Amy Wasser-Simpson, the federation's vice president, told the Seattle Times in a story on its Web site that the man got past security at the building and shouted, "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel," before he began shooting.

Since the attack, authorities are precariously monitoring Jewish organizations and synagogues in Seattle. The Reuters article also indicates that extra precautions are being taken at mosques in case of a retaliatory attack.

As the Israel announces plans to expand the ground war in Lebanon as long as a rocket threat to northern Israel is present, global critics have voiced their concern about the fragile situation in the Middle East. Many have called for a ceasefire, including Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican. The European Union is also expected to order a ceasefire, with the possibility of sending troops to the region to encourage peace. Others, including President Bush, support Israel's right to self-defense but warn that Israel should take care not to harm Lebanon's fledgling democracy.

In a joint statement, key House Democrats Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland condemned Hezbollah and urged the return of the kidnapped soldiers. The statement went on to recommend that the Palestinian Authority take similar action in Gaza.

Those who finance, direct, or otherwise support acts like these need to understand that they have produced an extremely dangerous situation and that they are responsible for the consequences. Israel has an inherent right to defend itself, and the United States supports our ally.

Unfortunately for Israel, the world judges its actions harshly. Vocal critics point to the contrast between the number of Lebanese dead and the number of Israeli dead. "The Bunker Blog," a highly-acclaimed diary of events from an Israeli perspective, informs us that this difference in numbers is because of Hezbollah's determination to use Lebanese civilians first as shields and then as propaganda, and documents these comments by a Shia Muslim from Lebanon:

After Israel left Lebanon, it did not take long for Hezbollah to have its say in other towns. Received as successful resistance fighters and armed to the teeth, they stored rockets in bunkers in our town as well. The social work of the Party of God consisted in building a school and a residence over these bunkers! A local sheikh explained to me laughing that the Jews would lose in any event because the rockets would either be fired at them or if they attacked the rockets depots, they would be condemned by world opinion on account of the dead civilians.

There is no doubt that Muslim extremists in Gaza and Lebanon are anti-Semitic. There is no doubt that Americans citizens that perpetrate hate crimes against Jews, such as the attack in Seattle, are anti-Semitic. Now it seems that even Mel Gibson, once accused of anti-Semitism because of his religious affiliation and his film The Passion of the Christ that purportedly portrayed Jews in a negative light, is indeed anti-Semitic. As the old adage goes: in vino, veritas.

I second Arianna Huffington's call for a separation between rational people and extremists. As shown in Seattle, extremism is also a domestic issue. Even in America, there are people with the despicable worldview of a terrorist in the Middle East. We must work to distance ourselves from extremism, lest we lend credence to anti-Semitic opinion at home and abroad.

Reading the horror stories of the survivors of the Qana bombing, any rational person's instinct is to criticize the tactics Israel is using to take on Hezbollah. Then a thought arises: will this criticism come across as part and parcel of the anti-Semitic worldview of the Gibson crowd?

Which is yet another reason Gibson needs to be ostracized: his lunatic ravings make it all-the-harder for legitimate criticisms of Israel's methods to be expressed and to be heard with uncluttered ears.

Legitimate criticism is healthy and warranted. Unhealthy and unwarranted are comparisons of Israel's self-defense tactics to the oppression of Nazi Germany, as proclaimed recently by protestors in Los Angeles and London. Anti-Semitic tirades by Hollywood stars are inappropriate and revealing of character. Obviously, hate crimes against any particular group are tragic and should not go unpunished. But what do this weekend's events say about the state of things? Anti-Semitism, quickly becoming a real problem again in Europe, is making a repeat performance stateside and the events unfolding currently in the Middle East are only adding fuel to the fire. Where are all of the rational thinkers?