Frustrated by the inability of Democrats in the US Congress to pass a resolution opposing US President George W. Bush's policies in Iraq, state legislators across the country, led by Democrats and under pressure from liberal advocacy groups, are pushing forward with their own resolutions.
Antiwar resolutions have been passed in chambers of three legislatures, in California, Iowa and Vermont. The Maryland General Assembly sent a letter to its congressional delegation, signed by a majority of the state Senate and close to a majority of the House, urging opposition to the increase in troops in Iraq.
Letters or resolutions are being drafted in at least 19 other states. The goal is to embarrass Congress into passing its own resolution and to provide cover for Democrats and Republicans looking for concrete evidence back home that anti-Iraq resolutions enjoy popular support.
Stopping the war
"The end of this war has to start sometime and somewhere," the president of the Iowa Senate, John Kibbie, a Democrat, said on Thursday. "And stopping the expansion of these troops needs to happen now."
The activity was spurred in a conference call last month that included state legislators, Democrat US Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and advocacy groups like the Progressive States Network and MoveOn.org.
Kennedy said pressure by the states would push Washington to oppose the Iraq plans of the Bush administration.
"Your voices, your calls, your e-mails and your resolutions have an impact on the debate," Kennedy said.
Many Republicans in state legislatures have remained silent on the resolutions, seeing no advantage in signing or voting for them. Others have called the actions essentially votes of no confidence in the troops on the ground.
`Waste of time'
"These resolutions are a colossal waste of time," said Kris Kobach, chairman of the Republican Party in Kansas, where the Republican-controlled legislature killed a resolution in committee.
Many resolutions use language from the Progressive States Network that apes language in a proposed resolution in Congress that says Bush should obtain explicit congressional approval before adding troops in Iraq.
Other resolutions go further, calling for a deadline for departure, immediate troop withdrawal or stopping the financing of the war. The votes have largely fallen along party lines -- Democrats for and Republicans against -- although there have been exceptions.
In North Dakota, a Democrat and a Republican are sponsoring a resolution urging Congress and Bush to "disengage American combat forces in Iraq."
In a vote on Thursday in the Iowa Senate, Republicans insisted on a voice vote rather than a roll call on a resolution to condemn the increase in troops. The measure, which passed, is headed to the House, where its fate is uncertain.
The resolutions, much like the ones that Congress is considering, are nonbinding and have little effect beyond politics.
But the states' debates function as an echo chamber for the debate over withdrawing troops from Iraq and help demonstrate growing concerns on the war.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees