Rep. Capps and Democrats Won't End this War!

“AN OPEN LETTER TO U.S. Rep. Mrs. Lois CAPPS, 23rd Congressional District, Democrat California
I have voted for you in every Congressional election, and for your late husband, Walter Capps, before that. I’ve supported your good work and generally effective representation in the House. However, because of your honest Sept. 7 email reply to my August 31st email, quoted below, I will now vote against you in November 2008, and I’ll try to convince fellow citizens that you and the Democrats now endorse Bush’s futile Iraq occupation policy. The Democratic Party will not lead us out of this conflict.
My email was basically a copy of my Letter to the Editor printed in the Santa Barbara News-Press on August 30, as I indicated to you, and it had the tiny subheading, “That [Iraq] war is lost DOES parallel Vietnam.”
I asked you straight out to support the twin impeachments of VP Cheney and Mr. Bush. You responded in a thoughtful but cautiously guarded way, mentioning how you “completely share that frustration” most of us have with the continued senseless occupation of a foreign country which never attacked the USA. But you remain opposed to beginning the impeachment process, which must originate in your House of Representatives.
You defend your pro-occupation position by cowering behind Speaker Pelosi’s reiterated commitment not to go after the President or the true warmonger, Mr. Cheney. You wrote to me that, “I believe Speaker Pelosi is acting in what she believes is the best long term interests of our country… I have decided to respect the Speaker's decision on this issue and not cosponsor any impeachment legislation at this time.”
My beef with you, and with most of the Democrats including all the contenders for the presidential nomination, is this anti-war/anti-occupation sham. You, and the new Democratic majority, were clearly elected to get us out of our odious Middle Eastern morass. I’m also very disappointed that you allow Mrs. Pelosi to make moral choices for you. Currently, Mrs. Clinton and most Democratic Party leaders openly admit we will have our men fighting and dying for nothing until at least 2009, and this means we should assume 2011 at best.
In my Aug. 30 letter, I pointed out to you that after the 1968 election, in which Nixon, like you Democrats, also had promised to end a war paralleling our current imbroglio, Kissinger and Nixon drew it out for several extra years to 1974: “thus killing off even more of our soldiers as well as Vietnamese citizens.” You do not address this point at all.
Just like Vietnam, there is now tacit but complete admission that we’ve lost this war. The administration no longer speaks of installing a friendly democratic regime in Mesopotamia. Mrs. Capps, does Mr. Bush realize this isn’t a football game, we’re not “kicking ass” as Bush recently claimed in Australia, rather, we’re losing Britain’s help, the vaunted “surge” isn’t really working, and we admit we’ve LOST when the president cautiously speaks of “drawing down” our troops to about 130,000 in mid-2008. Uh, that’d be just in time to help Republican pro-war candidates in the November ’08 election, and would actually just be a return to the original occupation number of 130,000 before the surge. PM Howard of Australia will keep just 500 fighting soldiers in Iraq, but the administration spin machine plays this up as a victory while PM Brown of the UK wants out very badly. The UK just pulled out of Basra Palace; Brits will be out of Iraq by mid-2008.
Like most Americans, I don’t care about the “200 hearings” you Demos have held about the “quagmire” of Iraq. Bill Moyers and others have shown that “impeachment” is not revenge or anger, it’s a Constitutionally-approved means for the Legislative Branch (that’s you) to check the power of our Executive Branch, i.e. this imperial presidency. American constitutional democracy requires a separation of powers, right now the bellicose executive branch is unconstrained and runs amok across the planet. Even without conviction, a serious impeachment process will harness Cheney-Bush belligerence and restrain them from attacking Iran, which they’re certainly dying to do. Without impeachment, the useless killings will go on, our soldiers will continue to die for political considerations at home, our constitutional democracy fails, and the moral stain on America’s soul continues to grow.