June 23, 2006
Democratic Ideas, V: Bipartisanship on Iraq
by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
As Sen. John Warner, Republican of Virginia, said during the current Senate “debate” on the President’s Iraq policy (Zernike, K., The New York Times, “Senators Begin Debate on Iraq,” June 22, 2006): “[T]he nation, the world, the men and women of the armed forces would like to see the Senate and the Congress stand behind them with strong bipartisanship.” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Republican, oops I mean Democrat, of Connecticut, added: “The war to remove Saddam Hussein may have been a war of choice, but now it is a war of necessity. We must win it.”
I have given this matter a good deal of consideration and I think that it is indeed time for us Democrats to get bipartisan and get behind the President to achieve the goals that he now states for the American occupation of Iraq. (One must recall that the presently stated goals are rather different from those he put forth in order to persuade the Congress and the American people to support the invasion, but how can we quibble at this point?) At any rate, the presently stated Georgite goals are to: “stay the course,” “fight them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here,” and “defeat Islamofascism around the world.”
In the spirit of bipartisanship and showing that we Democrats know what really will be needed from our country in order to achieve these goals, I think that our party should offer the following multi-part Congressional resolution. (It will be presented here in outline form. A more detailed version will appear in my regular column on the webmagazine The Political Junkies.net in the coming weeks.) All of its elements are designed to insure that the President’s goals will be fully achieved, over time.
1. The “Course” in “Stay the course” is to be defined: no anti-American or internecine Iraqi violence of any kind for a period of six months.
2. “Islamofascism” is defined, among other things, as a state in which there is an official state-sanctioned religion, the leaders of which will ultimately be in control of national policy; any personal behaviors and beliefs, religious or otherwise, contrary to those of the state religion will be criminalized; any opponents of the state religion are to be labeled as “godless” and “traitors,” subject to appropriate penalties. (Any similarities to those openly stated goals of the President’s core supporters is purely coincidental.)
3. The financial support for the occupation needs to be stabilized and the US needs to stop borrowing to support it. Sacrifices have to be made, especially among those who are the President’s principal supporters. Therefore, in the spirit of rallying behind the President there will be a “War Tax” raised primarily by the rescission of all the tax cuts for the wealthy that have been instituted since 2001, for the duration of the war.
4. To make it clear to one and all that the US objectives in Iraq are not, as many have claimed, oil and bases, the US will renounce any interest in Iraqi oil and will immediately turn any and all bases over to the Iraqi military.
5. Again in the spirit of unity and demonstrating the support for the war by all sectors of the American economy and society, henceforth all work in support of the occupation, either in Iraq or elsewhere, done by US corporations will be carried out on a not-for-profit basis.
6. Finally (for now), since the volunteer armed forces obviously cannot support the occupation for the period demanded by the President’s lofty goals, a Presidential Commission will be formed with the charge of developing a plan for the re-institution of the military draft.
And now, let’s hear it for bipartisanship!
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) a weekly Contributing Author for The Political Junkies (www.thepoliticaljunkies.net) and a Columnist for BuzzFlash.