Sad developments in U.S. Congress
posted by Helena Cobban
I realize I didn't blog much last week. I was busy elsewhere. But it was a sad, sad week for the relationship of the US citizenry with the rest of the world. For two main reasons:
(1) We saw Karl Rove, finally let off the hook of fearing a possible indictment over Plamegate, coming back into the party-political arena with all his most divisive guns firing.
(2) We saw the Democrats, who'd previously held together on a sort of lowest-common-denominator course of standing by to watch the Republicans implode politically under the weight of their own contradictions, being completely sandbagged by Rove, and unable to come up with any unified, proactive, and effective political response to Rove's truly vicious attacks.
One big risk Rove took-- and I see him as perhaps the most risk-happy person in the whole Bush entourage-- was to turn the subject of politics inside the Washington Beltway back to Iraq.
So risky for the Prez, you would have thought, wouldn't you?
Previously, the Repubs (also known-- I have no clue why-- as the "Grand Old Party", GOP) had been trying to steer clear of talking much about Iraq. They were trying to keep the conversation on topics like immigration or gay marriage, instead. Immigration turned out to blow up in their face: they looked deeply divided over it, while the Dems could stand aside, looking principled and thoughtful while not having to do much (or take responsibility for much) at all. Gay marriage also turned out not to be a great support-winner for those in the GOP who are passionately opposed to it.
So Rove comes along, and turns the topic to Iraq, with some vicious accusations that the Democrats just want to "cut and run"... And what this has done is send the Democratic Party politicians into a tailspin of internal division and indecisiveness... Revealing that on this, the most important issue facing our country right now, the Democratic Party leadership is still too divided to be able to take any kind of a principled public stand.
Taking most of the heat from Rove has been that great and principled patriot, Congressman John P. Murtha from Pennsylvania... a much-decorated former Marines officer (and generally, a "hawk" on defense issues), who has become one of the most outspoken voices in Congress urging a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
Murtha knows very well whereof he speaks. See this transcript of a TV talk show. (It's from yesterday, June 18, though the heading says "June 11".)
Rove has been going with special venom after Murtha and the other Dems who had voted for the war-enabling resolution back in October 2002 and then later came out against the war. As noted in a transcript of a videotaped portion shown on that same t.v. show, Rove said,
Like too many Democrats, it strikes me they are ready to give the green light to go to war, but when it gets tough and when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party’s old pattern of cutting and running...
Murtha, it has to be said, did not keep his cool when shown that video during his live broadcast there. He said of Rove:
He’s, he’s in New Hampshire. He’s making a political speech. He’s sitting in his air conditioned office with his big, fat backside, saying, “Stay the course.” That’s not a plan. I mean, this guy—I don’t know what his military experience is, but that’s a political statement. This is a policy difference between me and the White House. I disagree completely with what he’s saying...
A near-toxic rightwing attack-dog/commentator called "Ann Coulter" has also been majorly getting her rhetorical teeth into Murtha, saying recently that that he was, "The reason soldiers invented 'fragging.'" (Fragging is US soldiers' slang for trying to kill your officer.)
But what seems saddest to me is not the frenzy of the anti-Murtha rhetoric but the failure of the Democrats as a political leadership group to be able to come out forthrightly and unitedly to say, "This war in Iraq is going disastrously, and was anyway built on a lie perpetrated by the ruling party. We need to get out of Iraq and to re-order our relations with a world that will no longer be simply standing aside to allow the US to wreak such havoc on other nations. Let's all work together to heal our relations with the rest of the world and with each other... based first and foremost on bringing our much-abused troops home from Iraq."
Instead of which, at the end of a disgraceful, politically charged debate in the House of Representatives last week, 42 Dems bucked their leadership and joined a virtually united GOP in the House to pass a resolution stating,
that the United States must complete "the mission to create a sovereign, free, secure and united Iraq" without setting "an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment" of U.S. troops.
The authors of that WaPo report linked to there note that the 42 Democratic "defectors" this time "were about half the 81 [Dems] who voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of force"...
So at this rate, it could take us just as long again to arrive at a Democratic Party that is clear and united in opposition to the Bushist vision of perpetual and unilateral US "preventive" war?
H'mmm, that would take us until, let's see, January 2010?
Not fast enough, guys! Let's get ourselves a real and principled Democratic Party in the country long before then!
(The good news: at the broad level of the US public, few people seem to have been bamboozled by Bush's "Mission Accomplished Part Deux" last week, or by the bullying tactics used by Rove and Coulter, into reducing their opposition to this disastrous war effort. The Democratic Party just needs to catch up with the people...) |
