NDAA votes: huge momentum builder

By Matt Southworth on 05/27/2011 @ 06:30 PM

Tags: Afghanistan, Middle East, War Is Not the Answer, Congress

Yesterday, the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorizes nearly $700 billion dollars in military spending for FY 2012. Between Wednesday and Thursday, over 150 amendments were considered; several we were watching proved to deliver huge momentum for a peace community, which has been accused of struggling recently.

By far the largest victory for the peace community in recent memory was the passage of an amendment offered by Rep. John Conyers (MI) which bars any funding from being used to deploy ground troops to Libya. We predicted the amendment was going to do well, but it truly exceeded all expectations with an astonishing vote of 416-5.

Congress sent clear signal to the White House: no more war.

Two other Libya amendments adopted by voice vote—one offered by Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ) and the other by Rep. Bruce Braley (IA)—express that Congress was not consulted about the Libya Operation and require the Obama administration to submit a report to Congress on the long term costs of the war in Libya (also the costs for Iraq and Afghanistan).

On Afghanistan, the McGovern-Jones amendment (based on H.R. 1735) did better than anyone expected. The goal for the amendment was 185-195 votes, as I wrote when the bill was introduced in early May. Thought to be an ambitions goal, the amendment-which shattered expectations--was defeated only narrowly with a vote of 204-215.

(Thank your member if they voted “yes” here.)

While the amendment was not adopted, the vote still represents the growing tide of Congressional opposition to the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In 2009, a similar measure received 138 votes; in 2010 162 votes. Yesterday, the amendment was only 14 votes shy of passing. This kind of momentum clearly demonstrates that Congress, supported by nearly 60% of the public, believe an accelerated departure from Afghanistan is politically acceptable.

The House rejected an amendment offered by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (UT) and Rep. Peter Welch (VT) which would have withdrawn all troops except those conducting for Counterterrorism operations—estimated at 20-30,000 troops—from Afghanistan. The vote on that amendment was 123-294, 25 more affirmative votes than a similar measure offered by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (NY) as an amendment to the Continuing Resolution back in February.

I believe the difference in these two votes show that some members must be nudged to take what they perceive to be a risker political position. That nudging is up to us to do.

The success of these votes cannot be overstated. Their passage and near passage clearly indicates that Congress is war weary for the first time in what has been a 10 year succession of wars. The votes do not mean that the U.S. wars in Libya, Afghanistan or Iraq will end immediately, but they do provide the political space for President Obama to conduct an accelerated transition out of Afghanistan beginning this July and ensure he knows that another U.S. war in Libya is unacceptable. President Obama now has no excuse to continue these failed war policies.