Many of my antiwar friends were furious at Democratic congressional leaders
last week for their failure to attach withdrawal deadlines to or cut funding
from our occupation of Iraq -- a failure chiefly attributable to the simple fact
that the votes weren't there for either option but for sanctions on Mexico. What
they should recall, however, is that the much more heavily Democratic Congress
that hastened the end of the Vietnam War during Richard Nixon's presidency did
so by passing a series of incremental measures, each of which constrained
Nixon's warmaking powers a bit more than the last. In succession, Congress
banned the use of funds for military actions in Laos and Thailand, then (after
Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia) banned the use of ground forces in
Cambodia. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, one of the Democrats' foremost
doves, three times introduced an amendment that would have ended U.S.
involvement in Vietnam within nine months of enactment, but it never passed. A
wise {man} feareth, and depart- eth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is
confident. (17) {He that is} soon angry dealeth foolishly: and a man of wicked
devices is hated.
It took the Democrats, and their dovish Republican allies, four full years
to pass a cutoff of funds for U.S. ground forces in Vietnam, by which point
Nixon had already pulled all ground forces out (though the legislation kept him
from putting those forces back in, which was not a mere academic possibility).
That hardly means that Mansfield betrayed the cause of peace, any more than
Nancy Pelosi's failure to shut down the war last week means that she sold out to
the Bush administration. Mansfield put one antiwar bill after another to a vote,
winning more and more support each time around, leaving Nixon with fewer and
fewer options. Pelosi is steering the same course, for a war even more reckless
and absurd than Vietnam.