Boiled Down
There’s been so much on Iraq lately. Nine U.S. helicopters shot down in five weeks. Several blasts using chlorine trucks as dirty bombs as part of a new offensive by the insurgents. Six months of escalated deaths of our soldiers, averaging three of our best killed every day for half a year straight–the longest sustained death rate at that level in the war so far. The “Surge” forcing thousands upon thousands of servicemen and women to return for second and third tours of duty, hardship beyond reason.
And on the political side, Republicans using the filibuster to repeatedly block even the weakest joint non-binding resolution speaking out against Bush’s war, signaling even greater opposition should Democrats attempt to take any action stronger than that–and then Republicans whip around and lash out at Democrats for not having the “will” to do anything. All this while Dick Cheney becomes the Nth Bush ally to say for the Nth time that opposition to the Bush war is tantamount to treason, and how opposing whatever Bush dictates is equal to selling out to al Qaeda, an echo of the 2004 GOP line that a vote for Kerry was a vote for bin Laden.
Essentially, it boils down to the simple fact that Democrats would call the troops home today if they had the ability to do so. This is crystal clear. They do not have that ability; that is just as clear. Any such decision would be filibustered by Republicans in Congress, and even if it got past that, it would carry so few Republican votes that Bush would instantly veto it without the slightest worry over Congress overriding the veto. Just as Democrats are blamed for allowing the war by voting for the war powers resolution–despite the fact that had every Democratic senator voted “Nay,” Republicans still would have passed it, and nothing would have differed in terms of outcome. Democrats have been powerless to stop this since the beginning, and still are now–not for lack of trying, but because they do not have enough votes to carry through anything that would have any real effect. Witness that they cannot even pass a non-binding resolution in the Senate.
I would take bitter satisfaction in knowing that the catastrophic outcome which this will inevitably bring would be seen as Bush’s legacy, except for two things. First, it looks more and more like the Democrats will be blamed, for not stopping Bush even as Bush ironically is given a bye on this whole debacle for having strong convictions and doing it all in the name of the war on terror. And second, even if Bush does get the blame, it will be the worst sort of Pyrrhic victory, won with the blood of thousands of our people, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the breakdown of what little stability there used to be in the Middle East, the decimation of our military, the soiling of our image in the world, the loss of our civil liberties, rights, and freedoms, and the stark division of our country at the hands of “a Uniter, not a Divider.”
It is sometimes hard to remember that things are bound to get better for no other reason than that they can hardly get worse.