If the people lead
Folks in Washington aren't yet getting the message. Time to turn up
the volume.
Thursday's newspaper headline said it all: "House
Dems Line Up With Bush." The geometry lesson, of
course, was on the question of the desirability of a
"preemptive" (a polite word for "unprovoked")
invasion of Iraq, and a resolution endorsing same.
Not surprisingly, Senate Democrats are proving
their moral flexibility as well.
The news isn't surprising because this is something
the White House wants very, very badly, and in a
city where political policies are often traded among
lawmakers like so many marbles -- "I'll give you
three of my green low income housing one-eyes for
two of your defense appropriation shooters" -- the
White House clearly has been willing to trade a lot,
and probably has done so. How sad a commentary
on the moral fiber of our great nation is it when a
few hundred thousand (or whatever) Iraqi lives can
be traded for a dam project in your home state?
It gets worse, though -- and I'm not referring to
the lack of spine or significant opposition by
Democratic leadership, since I wrote about that
yesterday, before this even happened. No, what's
truly discouraging about this charade is that it
comes while every congressional office on Capitol
Hill is being flooded -- I mean INUNDATED -- with
calls, letters, e-mails, and faxes from people
literally pleading that their elected officials not
start or endorse a war for which no compelling case
has been made.
The objections come across the board and for a
variety of reasons, all of them good. All of them
can be boiled down to one essential truth: war is
not a game. One doesn't fool around with war for
short-term political gain or the economic benefit of
one's buddies or one's repressed desires to see big
things go boom or avenge Daddy's humiliation.
(On that last score, note that the "humiliation" of
George Bush Sr. wasn't that he only killed a few
hundred thousand people last time, but that
Saddam Hussein wasn't one of them, and, more to
the point, Daddy didn't win re- election after his
war. So what this year's war is actually about, by
this line of reasoning, is that the Gulf War is to be
fought all over again so as to make it so popular
that this time it will overwhelm the signature flaccid
Bush economy in the public opinion polls. Iraqis are
dying because Dubya is making war on 1992 voters
in America. How's that for perverse?)
This time around, just about everyone other than
the four men who count most, and whomever they
can bribe or marble-trade into an endorsement,
seems to think this is a bad idea. The Pentagon
generals. (Remember those war games a few
months ago, where the Army called off the exercise
of invading an unnamed oil-rich Middle Eastern
dictatorship because the invaders were getting
their tail kicked?) The Europeans. (Germany just
re-elected an unpopular incumbant, and gave his
coalition partner Greens a record number of
parliamentary seats, on a campaign centered on
criticizing Bush's war plans.) Leaders of Muslim and
Arab countries (who fear being beheaded for their
association with the Americans) and their citizens
(who are sharpening their scythes). And the
American people, source of the aforementioned
Capitol Hill flood.
Beyond the oil companies and military contractors,
the only other folks likely to be enthusiastic about
this debacle are Al-Qaeda and their ilk; for them, it
gets rid of Saddam, who they also despise (for
different reasons); it also destabilizes all those
disgustingly secular American-friendly dictatorships;
and, best of all, for their own groups this is a
dream recruiting tool.
But hey, who said a War On Terror has to worry
about the terrorists?
A representative democracy can work one of two
ways, both valid and each usually a factor in
American politics. Either a leader is expected to
represent the wishes of his or her constituents, or
he or she is elected and entrusted to use his or her
best judgment on the issues of the day, on the
basis of information not apparent to most members
of the public.
By raw numbers, polls show a fair number of
Americans opposing an Iraq invasion, period, and
most of us opposing it without international support
(which, excepting Tony Blair, is completely absent
-- a unanimity almost unparalleled in world affairs.
And half a million Londoners suggested last
weekend that Blair doesn't speak for all Britons,
either). And if depth of passion is a measure, ask
any Capitol Hill letter-opener this week.
So the only conceivable legitimate reason for
Congressional approval of these resolutions is
because lawmakers know something we don't. With
the seriousness of the issue we face, and the
enormous chasm between apparent public opinion
(moving steadily in the anti-war direction) and that
of Congress (going the other way), we are at the
very least owed an explanation, and at least a hint
of what that missing information might be that
would change the equation.
No such explanation has come forth, and plenty of
lawmakers from allied countries -- who've heard the
Bush Administration's best pitch for war -- say
there is none. What we know is, more or less, what
they know. They just want to whup Saddam’s ass
and take "his" oil. It's not Saddam's ass at stake, of
course, nor his oil, and it's not America's oil, either.
The oil is a resource of the nation of Iraq and of its
people, and its people -- not their extremely
well-guarded dictator -- are the ones who will
necessarily die in this exercise of tyrants. And if
tyrant is too harsh a word for the American side,
what, then, do you call someone who exercises
unilateral authority and military power and
unleashes great violence, against the wishes of his
constituents and almost all of the rest of the world,
simply because he can and wants to? What other
word is there?
Hopefully, we don't have to go there. The public
response has been loud and unequivocal, but it is
also new; none of this was happening a month ago.
And when you've got a bunch in the West Wing
who are still acting as through the Soviet Union is
around, it's a fair assumption that news does not
travel quickly in their circles. Some persistence is
called for. And perhaps, just perhaps, an escalation
in volume.
Major anti-war demonstrations are planned this
weekend in Washington, New York, San Francisco,
and almost every other major U.S. city, in a lot of
cities around the world, and probably also in a
smaller community near you. Go; be counted. The
message from the podium in many ways matters
less than the ability of lawmakers to see massive
numbers of people, especially people that look like
they vote.
And if you can't make it -- or even if you can --
give your elected officials a call; of encouragement
to do the right thing, or thanks if they already
have. If you've already done it, do it again, or get
a friend to do it. Or two. There's an awful lot at
stake in this one. Sometimes, the people just have
to get out there and lead.
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