Senators Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) have said again and again that passage of a non-binding resolution against President Bush’s troop surge would be the first step to withdrawing American forces from Iraq.
How badly could this turn out?
The actions of their predecessors, who de-funded the Vietnam War, give us a big clue.
On June 30, 1970 58 senators voted in favor of Cooper-Church to handcuff President Nixon from sending more troops to Vietnam. The amendment limited the President’s war powers through the budgetary process with a trio of stipulations. First, it ended funding for U.S. troops and advisers in Cambodia and Laos after June 30. Secondly, it banned combat operations over Cambodian airspace to support Cambodian forces without prior congressional approval. Lastly, it cut funding to support Southern Vietnamese forces stationed outside of Vietnam.
Today, liberals have drawn many comparisons between Vietnam and the War in Iraq, but reliably omit the tragic killing fields of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam that were produced after American forces were forced by Congress to exit the region.
From a July 11, 1970 article
The Cooper-Church proposal does a number of things that can only cause exaltation and hand-clapping in Hanoi and Communist capitals elsewhere….The amendment also tells our Asian allies that they can go hang, for the U.S. Senate, at any rate, has no intention of helping out Asian victims of Red aggression.”
There is nothing really good that can be said of Cooper-Church, for it is aimed at crippling the power of the President at the very time he is successfully extricating us from Viet Nam precisely because he has not had a Cooper-Church amendment to contend with.
*Note: A few senators who voted for Church-Cooper are still in the Senate today. Those voting for it were: Daniel Inoye (D.-Hawaii), Kennedy (D.-Mass.) and Ted Stevens (R.-Ala.).
Read both articles at HumanEvents.com
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. -- Gustave Flaubert
