- The White House may think that 2500 is
"just a number," but it does have terrible significance.
-
- If 2500 American soldiers had died defending
America from mortal danger, we might mourn the loss, but we would surely
consider ourselves fortunate that the figure was so low. However, these
2500 men and women, most of them just entering adulthood, died not defending
America, but in a war designed to bolster the political prospects and political
power of the president.
-
- That's a staggeringly high price to
pay for what amounts to a campaign tactic.
-
- American politics has always been dirty,
but sending hundreds of thousands of mostly poor Americans off to war,
getting 2500 of them killed and ten times that many grievously wounded,
and maybe a hundred times that many mentally damaged, so that you can
run for re-election as a "war president," and so that you can
threaten your political critics with charges of "treason" and
of being "soft on defense" or "soft on terror," is
hitting a new low.
-
- Sadly, this political tactic has been
working, because most of what passes for an opposition party, particularly
its leadership, has been so successfully intimidated that its representatives
in Congress have barely dared to utter a peep of criticism.
-
- Look at the two embarrassing "debates"
this week over companion resolutions in House and Senate about supporting
the war in Iraq. In the House, 42 gutless Democrats--roughly one in five--joined
Republicans and voted 256-153 to "stay the course" in Iraq.
In the Senate, a few days earlier, the vote was 93-6, meaning that nearly
all Democrats joined in supporting the Republican motion.
-
- That cowardly behavior by the Democrats
in Congress is an insult to the 2500 young people who died thinking they
were defending democracy. How can we call this country a democracy when
the opposition party is so spineless and lacking in principle that even
when it is clear beyond any question that the war was a criminal enterprise
based upon lies and manipulation by the administration, its elected representatives
cannot bring themselves to stand up and challenge it.
-
- The blood of the next 2500 who die in
this madness will be on the hands of those Democrats who voted for continued
war.
-
- This, by the way, is the same Democratic
Party whose leaders are suggesting that if Democratic warhawk Joseph Lieberman,
the Connecticut senator and 2000 vice presidential candidate, is defeated
in this August's Connecticut Democratic primary, he may end up getting
the support of the national Democratic Party running as an independent
candidate for re-election. Since the primary reason Lieberman is in danger
of being ousted by an insurgent Democrat is Lieberman's unconscionable
backing for Bush's Iraq War and for his so-called war on terror, a decision
by party leaders to back him as an independent in the general election
in November would be a direct repudiation of Connecticut Democrats' anti-war
views.
-
- This is clearly a party bent on self-destruction.
-
- If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd
conclude that people like House Democratic Campaign Committee Chairman
Rep. Rahm Emanuel and Senate Democratic Campaign Committee Chairman Charles
Schumer were Karl Rove plants in the party leadership, secretly working
to destroy the party. I'm not a conspiracy theorist though. I think they
are simply politicians without a scintilla of principle. They are also
profoundly stupid and out of touch with the base of their own party.
-
- The American people as a whole, and
the vast majority of those who still call themselves Democrats, want two
things: to have the War in Iraq ended, and to have President Bush removed
from office as soon as possible.
-
- A Democratic Party leadership that doesn't
recognize this obvious reality--that has its representatives voting for
smarmy resolutions calling for the U.S. to "stay the course"
and that uses behind-the-scenes threats and arm-twisting to prevent its
more progressive elected officials from calling for impeachment--is committing
political suicide.
-
- These cowards worry that if they vote
against the war, they'll be called "soft on terror." They worry
that if they call for impeachment, they might stir up the passions of the
Republican base. What they really seem to be afraid to do is to stir up
the passions of their own Democratic base, which is what would happen if
they'd start taking principled stands on issues of substance.
-
- The Democratic insurgents in Connecticut
(where I'm proud to say I grew up and where I got my start in journalism)
have the answer: throw these cowards and weasels out.
-
-
- http://thiscantbehappening.net
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