Few men or
women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative,
state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more
obvious, nor instructions more clear:
Get us out of
Iraq.
Yet after six
months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the
strands of public support; translating into action, the
collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject
this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:
The Democratic leadership has
surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then
easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily
blackmails his own people, and uses his own military
personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the
Democrats “give the troops their money”;
The Democratic leadership has
agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has
only reduced the security of Americans;
The Democratic leadership has
given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat
being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for
the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism
about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.
The Democratic leadership has, in
sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which
the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the
voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our
brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.
You, the men
and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The
War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the
uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic
beans.
You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap,
inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about
how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte
blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning... is our
collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is
right, what is essential, what you were each elected and
re-elected to do.
Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.
And this
President!
How shameful it would be to watch an adult... hold his breath,
and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.
But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath
and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic
Americans in harm’s way, are bled white.
You lead this country, sir?
You claim to defend it?
And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on
your stubbornness—your stubbornness which has cost 3,431
Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs—you, Mr.
Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t give you the money and
give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will
be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets
at the enemy with their bare hands.
How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.
Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our
history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of
political chicken, declared that no matter what the other
political side did, he would insure personally—first, last and
always—that the troops would not suffer.
A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already,
not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades
into a ‘second surge,’ but to say in unequivocal terms that if
it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it
takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will
make sure the troops are safe—even if the only safety to be
found, is in getting them the hell out of there.
Well, any true President would have done that, Sir.
You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the
Democrats when you did so.
Not that these
Democrats, who had this country’s support and sympathy up until
48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can carry
home.
“We seem to be
very near the bleak choice between war and shame,” Winston
Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British
signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. “My feeling is
that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a
little later…”
That’s what
this is for the Democrats, isn’t it?
Their “Neville
Chamberlain moment” before the Second World War.
All that’s missing is the landing at the airport, with the
blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively
thought would guarantee “peace in our time,” but which his
opponent would ignore with deceit.
The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.
Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with
impugnity.
And where are
the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening?
See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has
blinded itself?
Judging these
candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq
authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is
ancient history now.
The Democratic
nomination is likely to be decided... tomorrow.
The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the
President’s dishonest construction
“fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy,” the promise of
tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but
rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do, and
now perceive your ears as closed to practical politics.
Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own
political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and
importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce
this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority
Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path
of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will
of a monomaniacal president.
For,
ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us.
Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other
Democrats... have failed us.
They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had
only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as
the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies
be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.
Mr. Bush and his government...
have failed us.
They have behaved venomously and without dignity—of course.
That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted.
We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock
here.
With the
exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic
presidential candidates have (so far at least) failed us.
They must now
speak, and make plain how they view what has been given away to
Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in the
thousand tomorrows to come.
Because for
the next fourteen months, the Democratic nominating
process—indeed the whole of our political discourse until
further notice—has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become
about one thing, and one thing alone.
The electorate figured this out, six months ago.
The President and the Republicans have not—doubtless will not.
The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day
recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them
will politely suggest they stay there—and permanently.
Because, on the subject of Iraq...
The people have been ahead of the media....
Ahead of the government...
Ahead of the politicians...
For the last year, or two years, or maybe three.
Our
politics... is now about the answer to one briefly-worded
question.
Mr. Bush has failed.
Mr. Warner has failed.
Mr. Reid has failed.
So.
Who among us will stop this war—this War of Lies?
To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.
To all the others—presidents and majority leaders and candidates
and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there
is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.
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