Stupak On Af-Pak

My fellow progressives have been mercilessly dumping on Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) lately, due to the way he's been using his opposition to abortion to hold up health care reform bills in the House. His name first came to prominence last fall as co-author of the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the House version of the health care bill, which appeared to go beyond merely prohibiting federal funds from being used for abortions to actually preventing any private health insurance plan which paid for abortion from participating in federally-sponsored health insurance exchanges. He's back in the news now as the badly-watered-down health care bill (aka the "No Health Insurance Company Left Behind" Act) is nearing final passage, warning again that it had better not permit any federal funding for abortions (which, apparently, it already doesn't, a fact that has so far escaped him).

But a little-noticed vote in the House on March 10 reveals another side of Rep. Stupak.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced House Concurrent Resolution 248, which would have invoked the War Powers Act to direct President Obama to withdraw all U.S. Armed Forces from Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, the bill was rejected 356-65. The roll call vote shows that the 65 "Yea" votes include the usual suspects of progressive Democrats (e.g., Barbara Lee, Keith Ellison, John Lewis, Lynne Woolsey, Peter Welch, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Chellie Pingree) and libertarian/isolationist Republicans (e.g., Ron Paul, Walter Jones). But there's another name in that honorable list of 65 members of the House who went on the record in favor of ending our country's disastrous military intervention in that "graveyard of empires" - Bart Stupak.

In fact, Rep. Stupak has a fairly consistent voting record in favor of avoiding these quagmires. In addition to yesterday's vote to get our troops out of Afghanistan and its border region with Pakistan ("Af-Pak"), he also voted against our pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.

So while many progressives are getting excited about a possible challenger to Bart in the primary election, hoping to rid the House of this pro-life Democrat who dares to hold up health care reform, I'm thinking the world might actually be better off if we had more representatives like this pro-peace Democrat who dares to try and stop our military adventures around the world so we can keep our troops safe and sound here at home.

In other words, a single issue does not completely define any candidate.

Update: Nothing in the above post should be interpreted as minimizing the importance of protecting a woman's right to choose a safe, legal abortion. While I agree with Rep. Stupak's vote to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, I deplore his attacks on abortion services. And while I'd like to see more members of Congress vote the way Stupak did on Afghanistan, better yet would be more members of Congress who are progressive on a wide spectrum of issues, not just that one. For example, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) voted "Yea" on Resolution 248 to withdraw from Afghanistan, but has opposed Stupak's efforts to restrict health insurance policies' coverage of abortion; she's also a co-sponsor of the single-payer H.R. 676. We definitely need more people like her in Congress!