Democrat Berman Breaks Ranks to Support War : Congress: All other area lawmakers are sticking to party lines in today’s vote.

When Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) casts his vote today to authorize war with Iraq, he will break with his party’s leadership, his closest political ally and what he says is a majority of his east San Fernando Valley constituents.

“It’s a gut-wrenching decision,” Berman said Friday, shortly after arguing his position on the House floor. “I’m not going to be fighting,” he said, reflecting on the consequences of his vote. “I don’t have children in this war.”

But, he maintained, “it is only the combination of sanctions and the imminent threat of the use of force” that can avoid war. “If there is any hope of a diplomatic solution, we have to dispel the notion that Congress is going to keep the President from ever using force.”

Berman, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who had sponsored legislation to impose sanctions against Iraq prior to its Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, is the sole lawmaker representing the San Fernando Valley area who plans to cross party lines in today’s vote.

Republican Reps. Elton Gallegly of Simi Valley, Carlos J. Moorhead of Glendale, William M. Thomas of Bakersfield and Jerry Lewis of Highland have announced that they support President Bush’s request for the authority to use force. Thomas and Lewis each represent portions of the Antelope Valley.

Democratic Los Angeles Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Anthony C. Beilenson, meanwhile, favor a resolution backed by the Democratic leadership that urges Bush to give economic sanctions more time to work. Beilenson, who heads the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Gallegly, who is on the Foreign Affairs Committee, recently visited Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“At this point, there is certainly no excuse to cost American lives or additional billions of American dollars,” Beilenson said. He added that he was “absolutely convinced that continued application of economic sanctions will bring about the withdrawal from Kuwait.”

Waxman, meanwhile, held out hope for a diplomatic solution. He said, however, that war might be inevitable if all other efforts fail to dislodge Iraq or eliminate Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons and his prospects to obtain nuclear ones.

“I just can’t vote for war now,” Waxman said. “I don’t think we should say diplomacy is at a dead end.”

The divisions within the Valley area’s delegation appear to mirror those in the House as a whole, where a coalition composed of most Republicans and some Democrats is expected to approve the resolution sought by Bush.

“Diplomacy and the embargo have not worked,” Gallegly, a co-sponsor of the war resolution, said on the House floor Friday. He, too, called the measure the best hope to force Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait.

“The United States and Iraq are playing a high-stakes game of five-card stud. We hold a full house and Saddam Hussein has only a pair of deuces, but as a master gambler, he’s betting he can bluff his way to victory.”

Moorhead, who acknowledged that his decision was difficult, said that Congress had to support the United Nations resolution calling for Hussein to pull out of Kuwait by Jan. 15. He also said the coalition arrayed against Hussein would not hold together long enough for sanctions to choke the Iraqi economy sufficiently to pressure Hussein to back down.

“Do you stop him now, when it’s much easier, or do you stop him later when it’s much more costly?” Moorhead said. “If he comes out of this on top, you’ll have created a monster.”

He added that he felt that two-thirds of his 22nd District constituents support Bush’s hard-line stance even though most of the small number of callers to his offices were opposed.

Thomas, whose 20th District includes Lancaster, said that the prospect for a new world order hangs in the balance in Operation Desert Shield.

Unless Hussein is repelled, “it would be a horrible lesson for other dictators controlling geopolitical choke points that they can get away with this kind of activity,” Thomas said, alluding to the prospect that Hussein would control a significant percentage of the world’s oil.

“Oil is what makes the world go ‘round,” Thomas added. “To allow Hussein to control . . . 20% to 40% of the world’s oil supply can wreak havoc with democratic economies.”

Waxman and Berman are partners in a liberal Westside political alliance whose members were united against the Vietnam war as youthful Democratic activists but are also prominent supporters of Israel.

Berman, who cut short a congressional trip to Latin America to return for the Persian Gulf vote, said that the challenge posed by Hussein is more like that of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s than the situation in Southeast Asia in the 1960s.

“In five to 10 years, if we don’t deal with him now, we’ll have to deal with him as the primary force in the Middle East,” Berman said.

He vehemently disputed any suggestion that Israel’s security is his primary motivation.

“The notion that I would vote to authorize the use of force, knowing full well that American lives could well be lost as a result of a vote based on Israeli national interest rather than American national interests, is insulting, ugly and wholly incorrect,” he said.

But he added that the hundreds of phone calls coming into his offices this week opposed to military action indicate that a majority of those he represents in the 26th District disagree with him.

“I have to search my conscience, do what I think is right and then bear the political consequences,” he said.

Jo Seidita of Northridge, co-chair of the San Fernando Valley Peace Coalition, vowed Friday that Berman and Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), another liberal ally, would pay a price for backing Bush. The Valley coalition supports sanctions but strongly opposes a military attack.

“They have let down the people of America, and they and their political careers will suffer for it,” Seidita said while picketing Levine’s Los Angeles district office. “If Levine and Berman believe in the war, they’re young enough, they should go over there and get their butts shot off.”

Valley COLLEGE PROTEST: B10