How to be cowardly without really trying
The Wall Street Journal reports that Congress may take up a resolution condemning the President’s escalation of troops in Iraq (that has already begun and is already paid for) as early as this week;
The two-part strategy is on display this week as top Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expect to announce agreement on a resolution challenging President Bush’s decision to increase U.S. troop levels. As those talks proceed, the House Appropriations Committee will also begin hearings this morning to lay the groundwork for tougher fights over war-related spending requests this spring and summer.
Since the Democrat’s majority in Congress is razor-thin, they’ll depend on cross-over (or crossdressing) Republicans;
“For those of us from the Northeast, it’s pretty evident that people are losing patience and want to get out,” said Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R., N.J.), a member of the defense appropriations panel. “A lot of people are peeling off from supporting the president.”
So? What’s the big damn deal? Sometimes the American people are the most fickle creatures on earth. When they had a chance to impeach the worst criminal to have ever served in the White House, they supported him. Most sat on the sidelines and watched us dragged kicking and fighting from Vietnam while we were winning the war. Americans lose patience pretty easily.
I remember the Panama invasion when the man-on-the-street interviews were full of idiot questions like “When are the troops coming home?” the day after the invasion began. I remember the people decrying that we torturing poor Manuel Noriega by forcing him to listen to Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” – not to mention the poor representatives of the Holy See who were trapped in there with him.
Americans don’t have the stomach for war, generally speaking, which is why we have a volunteer military. That compounds the problem because Americans don’t generally understand why men go to war for this country and they don’t understand that the members of our military are willing to die for the less committed members of our society.
They don’t want to die for nothing, which why they’re over there giving their all – despite American public opinion. From the moment the first US troop died, it became a war that we couldn’t lose, in their eyes.
The Washington Post tells us that politically ambiguous Chuck Hagel is in cahoots with Biden and Levin against the President;
Senate leaders will introduce a bipartisan resolution of opposition to President Bush’s new Iraq policy as early as today, taking the lead from House Democrats who are increasingly divided on how far to go to thwart additional troop deployments to Iraq.
The resolution — crafted by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) — will not come to a vote before Bush’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. But by sending it to Biden’s committee this week, Democratic leaders will give senators from both parties multiple opportunities to voice concerns about the president’s policy.
Ain’t that sweet of them to wait until after the State of the Union address (which by the way will be rebutted by terminal asshole and political turncoat Jim Webb). So the party we could always couont on for our National Security is turning into the party of namby-pamby political hackery.
Bill Krystal calls Congress “Boneless Wonders“, borrowing from a Churchill quote. Krystal describes the thought processes of these spineless cowards;
Say you’re an average congressman. How do you react to President Bush’s Iraq speech? You suspect, deep down, that he’s probably doing more or less what he needs to do. We can’t just click our heels and get out of Iraq–the consequences would be disastrous. And the current strategy isn’t working. You have said so yourself. Last fall you called for replacing Rumsfeld. You’ve complained that there weren’t enough troops. What’s more, you’ve heard good things about General David Petraeus from colleagues with military expertise. So now Bush has fired Rumsfeld, put Petraeus in command, and sent in more troops. Maybe this new approach deserves a chance to work?
But, hey . . . look at those polls! And those op-ed pages! You didn’t come to Washington to support an unpopular president conducting an unpopular war. And the Bush administration is doing a crummy job of explaining this change in strategy. The path ahead in any case is going to be tough, and the new strategy might fail. Besides which, being for “escalation” sure doesn’t sound good. Wasn’t that a problem in Vietnam?
So you work on your talking points: You understand the president has a tough set of choices. You’ve got doubts about the path he’s chosen. You’ve got lots of questions. But perhaps we should give it a chance . . .
But wait–that doesn’t sound like leadership. That doesn’t look decisive. And, if you’re a Democrat–you didn’t put in all that effort getting elected just so you could get a lot of grief from your own activists. If you’re a Republican from a Democratic-leaning state–you didn’t put in all those hours getting elected just so you could alienate the swing voters you need. So why not take the next step? Condemn the president’s approach! There. That’s a position.
So Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, will make a purely political and pointless effort to undermine the President by voting to condemn exactly what they called for a year ago – escalation in troop numbers. So not only do the Democrats want the troops and the country to be cowardly, they take a cowardly approach to condemning the war – just like their cowardly approach to banning smoking. A sideways, through-the-backdoor kind of politically expeditious cowardice.
Category: Politics
