Let's End This Equivocating.
Come on, you tucktails. Prove us wrong.
By Thomas Posted in Congress — Comments (33) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."
"I have absolutely no regret about my vote against this war. The same questions remain. The cost in human lives, the cost to our budget, probably 100 billion. We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less."
"Only by adopting the techniques of the big lie can the vice president make his case that those opposed to the Iraqi war fail to understand the importance of a firm response to terrorists. In fact, given the deleterious effect it has had on our effort in Afghanistan, and the enormous boost it has given to anti-American forces around the world, the big truth is that the Iraq war has damaged our ability to fight terrorism."
In 1974, every American who voted for a Democrat took the blood of millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians on his hands. The Democrats responded by feeding the Reaper, as they'd been elected to do. To this day, they congratulate themselves for their noble sacrifice of millions of Asian lives.
In 2006, every American who voted for a Democrat took the blood of millions of Iraqis on his hands. The Democrats have responded by offering non-binding resolutions.
For thirty years, the Republican Party sliced off core Democratic voting groups who had become convinced that the Democrats were and are weaklings, cowards, and faithless allies willing -- joyful -- at the prospect of sending millions to the abattoir. The Democrats are now responding to the same kind of mandate by adopting a new pose of cowardice.
Read on.
Dhimmicrats. DemocRATS. Surrendercrats. The names come as easily to some lips as Rethuglicans come to others. For every yahoo who elides an argument about foreign policy into a slur, however, there have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of voters convinced that Democrats are, to put this charitably, unwilling to engage in war. From the homebuilding tyrant enabler to the youthful pugilist to Mickey Mouse in a tank, the Democrats had to live down their response to Vietnam (again, even while they praised themselves for it). Even the serial adulterer had to waste time that could have been spent on White House Hotties proving he was willing to high-altitude bomb someone into submission. Tough and Strong went out of their way to repudiate Tough's own traditional stand on foreign policy, so that voters would be fooled into thinking that Democrats would be willing to go to war without a direct attack on the country first.
Obviously, that didn't work so well.
But oh, the worm has turned! Behold! They ran in 2006 on, well, very little; but the Democrats' consistent message, for anyone who was listening, was that the little party we call the Iraq War is over. And the voters gave them their marching orders. Now, for the first time in a generation, the voters want to try letting people get massacred en masse, and that's precisely what the Democrats were running on. Thus should begin a symphony of synchronicity.
So where are you, you cowards? You've made clear from the Spring of 2003 that you believe this is an illegal, unjustified, awful, soul-destroying war; that a Congress that wasn't a mere rubber stamp for the President would have pulled the cord a long time ago; and that, by a God you don't believe in, if you came to power, there would be no more Iraq War. You've salivated for the chance to truly make this another Vietnam. Your most prominent loons ran on little else. Now's your chance to exercise the only power Congress has in the exercise of war -- the ultimate power, in every sense of the word -- and end the whole thing. Come on, you fevered, yellow-bellied tucktails. Let's all climb to the top of a building and watch the last helicopter leave. Let's have another commission named after that brave milquetoast Frank Church. Let's remind the international community that Americans will fall in line when they demand it. Let's give your neo-McGovernites -- and the voters who agreed with them -- the blood they want.
Come on, you wastes of political skin. Defund the war. Do it. Cut all allocation for the war from the budget. Allow no supplementals. Consummate your promises. Prove those of us who think you spineless cowards that you have the right kind of spine to roll over and pee yourself when the world demands it.
Do it.
Cowards.
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Let's End This Equivocating. 33 Comments (0 topical, 33 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
What is your policy alternative? Is the surge of 20,000 troops to Baghdad sufficient? Will the surge actually serve to reduce sectarian violence? If more troops are needed, why didn't we begin a massive expansion of the Army five years ago, with the goal of restoring the size of the force to cold war levels? If we need more troops now, why not call for a draft? Are we being too pansy-arse in our approach? What tactics should our troops be engaging in? How would you amend the rules of engagement? Should we explicitly call for Sadr's head? Threaten Maliki? Bribe Sistani? Is Iran really the root problem? Shall we attack Iran? In what timeframe? With what specific objective? What targets?
I mean, it's all well and good as the opposition to oppose, but the GOP had 5 years to make its case and prosecute the war the way it saw fit. The voters made a choice to try fresh blood. If you're going to fault them for that, the least you can do is be specific about what the choices really are.
If you want victory in Iraq, and equate withdrawal with failure, then you must define the parameters of that victory. Do your parameters ignore the monotonically increasing sectarian violence as a valid metric for evaluation?
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Dean Nation is now Nation-Building: Purple politics, muscular liberalism, principled pragmatism
Your call.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
My wife will be overjoyed. We get to visit family in DC more often now.
I mean, it's all well and good as the opposition to oppose, but the GOP had 5 years to make its case and prosecute the war the way it saw fit. The voters made a choice to try fresh blood. If you're going to fault them for that, the least you can do is be specific about what the choices really are.
I fault them for not doing what they've sworn they'd do. The people have spoken. The Democrats now have an obligation to take up their oaths for their masters, as the Republicans would were the situation reversed.
The rest of your comment is therefore pointless. Until the Democrats actually do what they got sent to do, I'll call them the gutless cowards they are.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
I'm not a registered Democrat, nor do I support withdrawal at this point in time, so how about we discuss the issue substantively?
I think the questions are reasonable ones. Especially since the issue of Iraq affects all of us, not just one side or the other.
I understand you are in full-on rage mode at present but to be honest, you have no moral cover for simply washing your hands of the issue just because there's a different 51% bare majority in congress. No one party monopolizes good policy.
In fact another question comes up, which is fundamentally unrelated to withdrawal. What about Kirkuk?
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Dean Nation is now Nation-Building: Purple politics, muscular liberalism, principled pragmatism
I appreciate a determined attempt at threadjack as much as the next fellow, and I can appreciate good sophistry as much as any other lawyer. But if you want to discuss Iraq Policy with a remaining U.S. commitment there, the place to do that is in a diary, not in a story calling out the Evil Party for shivving its supporters, and the voters who sent it to power, to avoid having to relive the Eighties and Nineties.
I could sit here and lay out policy proposals that will never see the light of day; I could send them up to Congress; I could scratch my belly and burp. All of these things are equally effective, because I'm not an elected representative of the people of the United States. I ran on no platform, and only madmen would elect me anyway.
The Democrats, including Howard Dean, have had a single, definable message for four years. They won't shut up about it. They won't stop. They either mean it, or are cowards and poseurs of the worst kind.
They ran on that message, and won. They gloried in it. They cried it from the rooftops. And they now have the power of the purse.
So why aren't they acting on it?
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
I withdraw all my comments and question.s You can even delet them if you feel they are out of line. I apologize for the semblance of a threadjack.
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Dean Nation is now Nation-Building: Purple politics, muscular liberalism, principled pragmatism
I don't see any reason to have a "substantive discussion". The Dems in the Senate won't allow any debate they can't control. They have majorities in both houses, they ran agaist the war. They need to do something.
Congress has asserted the right to force the President to wthdraw before. At any rate I don't see why - if I were in favor of withdrawal, which I am not - it should neccessarily be done by defunding. I would want a systematic redeployment of troops with a sizable force left in the theater for rapid reaction should the need arise.
at any rate I don't think I'm really contributing much of substantive commentary to this thread so I'll just back off and apologizing for having stuck my nose in, in the first place.
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Dean Nation is now Nation-Building: Purple politics, muscular liberalism, principled pragmatism
from the far-right Center for American Progress is a list of Congressional limitations on US military deployments.
100% of them are the result of defunding or capping funds for mission.
Greenwald is just totally wrong on his assertion about Somalia
November 1993. P.L. 103-139. The Congress limited the use of funding in Somalia for operations of U.S. military personnel only until March 31, 1994, permitting expenditure of funds for the mission thereafter only if the president sought and Congress provided specific authorization.
I don't mind discussing the subject but I won't discuss it based on false premises.
reading your analysis. Especially the logic against the arguent that McCain and Feingold made in 1993. I wont pretend to have more than a superficial knowledge of the issue so your insight would be appreciated.
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Dean Nation is now Nation-Building: Purple politics, muscular liberalism, principled pragmatism
the question.
McCain wanted the US out of Somalia. I don't have a problem with that as Somalia's fate did not mean a whit to the US. I am against wars that do not serve our interests. Somalia was brought on by media coverage. I still don't know why we thought it important to intervene in the Balkans and, in Kosovo, on the wrong side.
But in the context of this discussion, the Senate did not give instructions on how to manage the Somalia situation, it simply restricted the use of funds. And this is Thomas's point.
I'm just curious about this so-called Rapid Reaction Force that people such as Wes Clark trot out to pretend they aren't turning tail.
Its reaction always seems to hinge on some kind of "need" arising.
Pray tell, what kind of "need" could be bigger than what we got now?
Either Iraq is the bloody, grinding Verdun-style mess that the Dems (and their MSM lap poodles) claim it is - and the troops should stay to clean it up by the definition of the Rapid Reaction Force - or it's not. If it isn't that hideous theater of murder and mayhem then why should we bug out?
If we won, it's our problem.
If you won, it's still our problem.
Bzzzzzt. Doesn't work that way, aziz. Your side is in charge now. That means your side actually has to do something.
And they got to be in charge basically on a STOP THE WAR!!™ platform.
Don't you think it's time they actually, you know, did something?
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So libs, how's that Congressional Resolution to end The War™ coming along?
With all due respect, that is a rather revisionist view of why the Democrats won and what their platform was. The election that I remember had the Democrats without a coherent message on the war - they were all over the place on it - the sacking of Rumsfeld had not yet happened and an 'augmentation' of the force level had not been announced. In the election I remember, everyone was waiting for the Iraq Study Group to issue their report, which gave politicians on both sides cover to take a pass on Iraq as an issue. The election I remember had the Republicans losing because the Republican brand had been so damaged by a multitude of factors that the Democrats won by simply not being Republicans.
At the time of the election, the Democrats had not coalesced on any coherent position regarding Iraq. They were too busy hiding out and letting the Republicans self-destruct. They were following the axiom to never interrupt your opponent while they're hurting themselves.
I think their current position is a product of their narrow victory, the president's decision about how to proceed, and general dissatisfaction in the public over the war. They may be coalescing now around a Stop The War position, but they certainly did not get elected on that basis.
The Democrats™ may not have had "a coherent message on the war" - but a whole bunch of newly-minted elected members of that party (COUGHjimwebbCOUGH), as well as more than a few old hats (COUGHfatteddykennedyCOUGH) sure as heck had a platform that they shouted into every camera they could find, and it was, precisely, STOP THE WAR!!
It does say something though, does it not, that in 3+ years as the opposition party the Democrats were not able to come to "a coherent message on the war" - and that they got elected to congressional majorities anyway.
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So libs, how's that binding Congressional Resolution to end The War™ coming along?
Now see there is the problem. “We” have wanted victory all along, despite the Democrat’s nostalgic pining for a 21st century anti war crusade.
Democrat’s are now at the controls and all they can do is make bombastic statements, give lip service to our soldiers and tear down the Executive branch. They have no idea’s, just a prevailing need to keep confusing the issue and laying blame until 2008.
By the way, you premise is faulty. It presupposes that nothing has happened in Iraq over five years; a point which is contra factual and as usual does not recognize the historical line of achievements.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"
Contributor to The Minority Report
What is your policy alternative? Is the surge of 20,000 troops to Baghdad sufficient? Will the surge actually serve to reduce sectarian violence? If more troops are needed, why didn't we begin a massive expansion of the Army five years ago, with the goal of restoring the size of the force to cold war levels? If we need more troops now, why not call for a draft? Are we being too pansy-arse in our approach? What tactics should our troops be engaging in? How would you amend the rules of engagement? Should we explicitly call for Sadr's head? Threaten Maliki? Bribe Sistani? Is Iran really the root problem? Shall we attack Iran? In what timeframe? With what specific objective? What targets?
My answer is: all of that is Bush's job. For starters, he's already worked out changes in the RoE with Maliki.
It's your fellow Democrats that want to try to usurp the authority of the Commander-in-Chief. Since that's what they're trying to do, all those questions should be redirected to them.
But while I'm at it, I'll slap down a couple of your questions:
If more troops are needed, why didn't we begin a massive expansion of the Army five years ago, with the goal of restoring the size of the force to cold war levels?
Let's see. February 2002 is five years ago. At that time the invasion of Iraq was more than a year off, and we'd helped the Northern Alliance kick out the Taliban gov't 3 months earlier. You would have to have been a psychic to know then that we would really be needing more troops 5 years in the future. Heck, back then Democrats were still saying that Saddam had WMDs.
If we need more troops now, why not call for a draft?
Because we'd rather have a few good men than a whole bunch that don't really want to be there.
Do your parameters ignore the monotonically increasing sectarian violence as a valid metric for evaluation?
I disagree that the sectarian violence is monotonically increasing, therefore I disagree with the premise of your question. We're already seen the 1st derivative of the sectarian violence curve go negative over the last month.
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Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community
while they were in power" meme.
Yes, I am totally 100% in agreement that the GOP did a pretty crappy job at sticking to its conservative ideals, and they didn't live up to what I had hoped. They definitely deserve some criticism.
But at what point do the democrats actually have to start acting like the people in charge? How long are you going to hand them that excuse? If the dems are still in power 2 years, 5 years, 10 years from now, will we still be hearing the "but the republicans didn't do it when they were in power" for their excuse to do nothing?
Sometimes wars are more than bombing campaigns followed by ticket tape parades.
It is very common in war for someone to screw up and get a bunch of your men killed while losing a stategic battle. You don't respond by turning tail and quiting- you muster your forces and continue to fight until you win.
I am sick of all this defeatism from sunshine patriots.
It's as if Americans will only support a war as long as it remians sweet and short.
Perhaps they only wanted to win back the legislative power to which they feel oh so richly entitled and were willing to slander out soldiers, provide news-copy for al-Jazzera, etc. etc. simply as a means to that end.
It's all just politics, after all. Can't you take a joke?
So what if they needed to act like traitorous frigtards in the process. They won, right? They got back that to which they feel is their birthrite, didn't they?
Maybe this non-binding-resolution parade is just their way of saying "Bye-gons."
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So libs, how's that binding Congressional Resolution to end The War™ coming along?
Remember the "peace dividend". This one will be even better.
If they defund the war, cut and run from Iraq, there is really no point in having a functional military. We will be able only to deploy military in defense of an armed military attack from a UN member within our borders. That would be Canada and Mexico. I'm guessing the equivalent of two Marine Expeditionary Units should be able to handle that without the currently required naval force.
Bottom line, don't just defund the war in Iraq, defund the military. It's obvious that the American people don't have the courage to fight a war. Any country would be abjectly foolish to count on our word by way of a defense treaty. We don't need those well paid, well cared for mercenaries any more.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
Senior Writer
when you state: "In 2006, every American who voted for a Democrat took the blood of millions of Iraqis on his hands."
No, I'm not the biggest fan of the Dem party, and yes, I want us to win in Iraq if only because I don't want to leave it a bloody vacuum.
But what you state ignores the fact that, yes, Republicans do indeed share responsibility for the simple fact that is was a Rep administration that planned the invasion and occupation, and it is a Rep administration that is still running this war. I am willing to grant the Commander-in-Chief extremely wide war-making powers, probably a lot more than most Dems in the new Congress, but with those powers come responsibility and accountability. To shove this off the Dems is, frankly, a cheap attempt at "stab-in-the-back."
I will not address the endless Vietnam comparison because, hey, Iraq ain't Vietnam, right? (But I do hold Dems mostly responsible for that disaster, if it matters.)
To shove this off the Dems is, frankly, a cheap attempt at "stab-in-the-back."
I shove nothing on them. They sought and accepted the final decision-making authority on the war, on the promise they'd end it. They're now continuing it. I'm totally down with this war. They're not. They have the final say over whether or not this war continues. If it's so awful, so soul-bending, they need to end it. If not, they just need to man up and admit that they lied to get where they are.
One more thing: Don't imply I'm a Nazi again, please. I grant wide latitude with folks calling me names, but that thing kinda tends to metastasize.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
and I am not implying, suggesting, hinting or saying you are a Nazi. "Stab-in-the back" has been around longer than the Nazis, and, in post WWI Germany, was used by many groups/segments of German society, not only the Nazi Party, especially during the 1920s. Believe me, if I wanted to label someone or start name-calling games--and I don't--I would not beat around the bush in doing so.
But it has a specific association. With that said, I appreciate the clarification. I've had to give three Nazi warnings in the last two weeks, so I may be touchy.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
I understand your frustration. Perhaps in the future I should write with more clarity when throwing out such a term, and I take responsibility for that.
Morally, the lack of action by the Dems is cowardice. Politically, it's brilliant. Until a sufficient number of their supporters demand action, there is no downside to playing Whack-a-Mole with the Bush administration on the Iraq War. They control the terms of the debate(s) now, and they will attempt to use that to their political advantage. Historically, that has also proven to work well, as they remained in power for 20+ years after turning Vietnam into an unwinnable war, while in the process blaming the Republican President at the time for the failure...
While the Dems continue to show their true colors to those willing to see, until it becomes apparent to them that there is a price to pay POLITICALLY for their actions (or lack thereof) expect to see no change from the status quo.
"The day you think you know it all is the day your trouble starts."
They control the terms of the debate(s) now, and they will attempt to use that to their political advantage. Historically, that has also proven to work well, as they remained in power for 20+ years after turning Vietnam into an unwinnable war, while in the process blaming the Republican President at the time for the failure...
There are two failures in this analysis. First, who controlled Congress before those elections? Second, how much success did they have with the Presidency thereafter?
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
they know they can't get away with on this one. This one, this war, has legs, it travels, it doesn't sleep, it seeks and glorifies death. Last minute helicopters atop buildings are a thing of the past. Spaceships maybe, otherwise there's nowhere to run to.
If you're a liberal[?] what's incommensurably worse is that you no longer have a total stranglehold on the flow of information and opinion. Forget the dead and the suffering, what counts is the facade, the image, the pose. But there will be no "Let us have no recriminations" evasions in the 21st century, nothing that will work.
Somewhere in their black hearts the Dems sense this, the vague dread of what happens if we pull out and fail. Which is why we are already hearing, a little earlier then I thought, the "this is your war", "you had five years" malicious buffoonery.
After all the spew, the play acting, the insults, the gross distortions, what it comes down to is that the Democrats are paralyzed, except for their jaws. But the natives, and not just on the Right, are getting restless. The attempts to cover and excuse are already fraying, the mighty NY Times is showing impatience, equivication and confusion are prevalent.
The Democrats ran a campaign that ten minutes of sober reflection would have altered, but it was too much fun. The ball's in their court, but fear prevents them from actually doing something. If the media backs off some in their support, they're dead.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
Unlike Vietnam, we won't be able to sit back and relax while a country or two burns half-a-world away.
On some level I'd want to see the faces of the Leftists when the terrorists strike on our own soil again, should they actually get what they want and basically paralyze our self-defense with all this political correctness garbage and such. Unfortunately, the Left seems to have us by the (you-know-whats) now and we have no other recourse but to take it as it comes. I'm afraid that, as we repeat history and allow the politicians to bleed us to death (as they did with Vietnam), we're going to get the worst kind of awakening someday, and the Left is just going to be sitting there grinning like the mad chimpanzees that they are, oblivious to the doom that they've brought upon us all.
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"Straight Talk Express"? My bum feet! -- Me, on Senator McCain and other "moderates"
are going to STOP THE WAR and let them Iraqis get on with killing each other. That's what they ran on, do it!
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
They lack even the courage of their own lack of conviction.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill