Believing the Hype

Yes, Glenn Greenwald gets this exactly right.

What does seem clear is that one of the principal factors accounting for the reluctance of Democrats to advocate de-funding is that the standard corruption that infects our political discourse has rendered the de-funding option truly radioactive. Republicans and the media have propagated -- and Democrats have frequently affirmed -- the proposition that to de-fund a war is to endanger the "troops in the field."

This unbelievably irrational, even stupid, concept has arisen and has now taken root -- that to cut off funds for the war means that, one day, our troops are going to be in the middle of a vicious fire-fight and suddenly they will run out of bullets -- or run out of gas or armor -- because Nancy Pelosi refused to pay for the things they need to protect themselves, and so they are going to find themselves in the middle of the Iraq war with no supplies and no money to pay for what they need. That is just one of those grossly distorting, idiotic myths the media allows to become immovably lodged in our political discourse and which infects our political analysis and prevents any sort of rational examination of our options.

That is why virtually all political figures run away as fast and desperately as possible from the idea of de-funding a war -- it's as though they have to strongly repudiate de-funding options because de-funding has become tantamount to "endangering our troops" (notwithstanding the fact that Congress has de-funded wars in the past and it is obviously done in coordination with the military and over a scheduled time frame so as to avoid "endangering the troops").

This is exactly correct. And if the Democrats weren't going to fight back on this frame (indeed, Pelosi reinforced it day after day right from the beginning), then they shouldn't have even tried to stop the occupation in the manner that they did in the first place. They unnecessarily constrained themselves by playing into the entire idea. Feingold held an entire hearing on the concept of de-funding and what it actually means historically. Nobody paid any attention. So we had Pelosi and Reid rushing headlong into a futile plan because they weren't willing to do what Congress is sanctioned by the Constitution to do to end the occupation.

The lack of proper civics instruction, incidentally, is BY DESIGN. There's nothing on the NCLB tests schools must now teach to about this kind of stuff.