Congress is the Decider Event: Feb 22 - 23, 2007 on Mercer Island, WA
On Feb 22, 2007 MoveOn held a "Congress is the Decider" event on
Mercer Island in front of the district office of US Congressman Dave Reichert (Republican, Washington State's 8th Congressional District). The purpose of the event was to deliver several hundred letters from MoveOn members opposed to the Iraq War (in particular, to the surge).
MoveOn staged events like this in hundreds of cities across America. For Congressmen who supported the Democratic resolution opposing the Iraq War surge, the purpose of the event was to say "thank you". For Congressmen like Dave Reichert who opposed the resolution, the purpose was to announce our displeasure with the vote and to express the reasons for our displeasure.
Between 35 and 40 people showed up to the Feb 22 letter delivery; the weather was great; a Reichert staffer listened politely to the powerful speeches by MoveOn members (two of the speakers were veterans); and the energy was good. See the photos below.
The next day, on Feb 23, nine MoveOn members met with Reichert in his Mercer Island office. For the first 20 minutes or so, the congressman listened intently to brief speeches by four MoveOn members. The speeches covered the following topics: the Iraq War, universal health care, the environment (global warming, electric cars), and verified voting (paper trails for ballots). Though many members of the MoveOn delegation worked hard to defeat Reichert in his 2006 campaign against Democrat Darcy Burner, everyone was cordial at this meeting. For example, the environmental speaker thanked Reichert for his opposition to ANWR drilling, and the speaker on Iraq prefaced his remarks by saying that Reichert's floor speech on the topic of the Iraq surge was "better than that of most Republicans". Reichert thanked us MoveOn members for the kind words.
During the final 35 minutes, Reichert responded to points raised in the speeches.
He expressed strong support for electric car technology; he noted
that he recently spent several hours discussing "plug in" electric
car technology with Steve Marshall, Chairman of the Municipal League
of King County. (Mr. Marshall's position on plug-in technology can be found in the following articles:
Discovery Institute article and
Seattle Times article.)
Reichert said his support for the Kyoto Treaty is contingent on being shown that it is workable. He lamented that the Sierra Club gave him only a 30% approval rating; he thought that he deserved a higher rating. He said that liberals typically don't give Republicans like him a fair hearing; even President Bush deserves credit for some of his initiatives, he said. But he then qualified his approval of Bush by saying that he thinks Bush hasn't done enough.
Reichert was supportive of the notion of having paper trails for verified voting; but he said he was unfamiliar with the details of the existing legislative bills on this topic and would need to examine the particulars before committing his support. (He pointed out that at any one time, there are some 6000 pieces of legislation being considered in the House, and it is impossible to be familiar with all of them.)
He offered no specific comments on the concept of universal health
care; however he did agree that a lot of money is wasted under the
current health care system.
Most of Reichert's comments concerned the Iraq War. While acknowledging that there is no guarantee that sending more troops would significantly increase stability in Iraq, Reichert said that simply abandoning Iraq to chaos and to the enemies of America would be irresponsible. Reichert recalled his 31+ (?) years of service as a policeman and insisted that he was well aware of the effects of violence and guns. He has seen death firsthand. He told of being stabbed in the neck with a knife and of having a shotgun thrust in his gut while he tried the talk his assailant out of pulling the trigger. Reichert reported that he recently visited Iraq where he met with the Prime Minister of Iraq (?) and with senior generals in the Iraq Army, who, according to Reichert, are begging the US not to leave. One MoveOn member said, "Of course those people would want America to stay; we put them in power." Reichert mentioned that as a senior member of the House Homeland Security, Transportation, and Science Committees, he is privy to classified information which, he implied, influenced his vote on the Iraq Surge.
Reichert repeated a point he had made in his floor speech about the Iraq surge by reminding us that Abraham Lincoln voted to support funding troops for the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) even though Lincoln was critical of reasons for going to war. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican-American_War.) A MoveOn member retorted by saying that Lincoln later voted to censure President Polk. Reichert said he was unaware of that and would need to do research.
Reichert said that one of the recommendations of the Baker Commission Iraq Study Group Report was, in fact, a surge in troops.
[Here's what the Iraq Study Group Report says on this matter: after recommending against a substantial (100,000 - 200,000) increase in troops (because the needed troop levels are not available and because such an increase could worsen conditions by being perceived as the start of a longterm occupation), the report says,
"We could, however, support a shortterm
redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the
training and equipping mission, if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would
be effective."]
A MoveOn member said that he's seen no evidence that the current troop surge would do any good and asked whether an even larger surge in troops would bring even more stability. Reichert had no response to this.
Without mentioning the word "corruption", Reichert acknowledged that money is being wasted in Iraq and in other government programs. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the suggestion that his vote on the Iraq Surge resolution was a response to pressure from the Republican leadership.
The meeting ended with the delivery of more letters and with a photo opportunity. (See photo further below; Reichert is the man standing in the center with the blue shirt and tie.) Reichert said the letters we had delivered the previous day were on his desk. He invited us back again and expressed interest in bipartisanship, saying that people on the Right and the Left both have valuable things to say. I note that Reichert had appointments with visitors both before and after the MoveOn meeting.
Let's hope Reichert listens to the concerns of the hundreds of constituents whose letters we delivered. Let's also hope that Republicans aren't playing a political blame game with peoples' lives, planning to blame the Democrats for the disaster in Iraq, when we all know that it's mostly the Administration's and the neocons' fault. In any case, Congress now has the responsibility to deal with the disaster. Allowing the President to continue his failed policies is an abdication of responsibility. Likewise, we citizens have the obligation to spread the word about what has happened and to pressure Congress to do the right thing.
(Participants in the meeting are encouraged to amend or extend this summary. Email me at ThinkerFeeler@yahoo.com)
High Resolution Images (Slow download!)
