OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: More spending brings little change

Cleaning up the Bush mess will take many years. Bush will not be held accountable, although his successor might. Fortunately for Bush, the consequences of the erosion of regulatory standards came after his time in office. Even if the credit blow-out had hit sooner, it could have done little to hold Bush to account.

The failure to hold the President to account led to further abuses. We likely wouldn't have had the Presidential abuses of power that we did had Congress gotten tough on the fabricated intelligence used to make the case for war, as indicated by the Downing Street Memo.

The failure to hold President accountable led to infringements on civil liberties, alongside damage to our global stature and longstanding precedents set by the rule of international law. By not investigating the false rationale for the Iraq war, Democrats in Congress likely encouraged egregious misconduct including Abu Ghraib, the Plame outing, secret rendition, and numerous Executive orders and signing statement violating the spirit of the law and Constitution.

No, the responsibility to protect us doesn't mean the President can do anything he pleases. Sorry.

I consider the Democrats' failure to confront Bush's failing policies perhaps the greatest proof that the two parties are in fact one. Yes, there are policy differences between the two, but what good is a two-party system if one side doesn't hold the other accountable?

The Democrats believed--rightly as it turned out--that they could sit back and let Bush fail. They believed that antiwar sentiment would turn into anti-Republican sentiment as it did. Had McCain come out against Iraq, the outcome could have been different, although Obama did assume an antiwar mantle (apparently just long enough to get elected as he has since chosen to expand Afghanistan and keep up to 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely.)

Our mismanagement of Iraq did manifest itself into a political force that hurt Bush's party. Now, though, the negative momentum that Obama will field in expanding the US presence in Afghanistan could lead to a similar situation for the Republicans where sitting back and letting the President ruin himself will work wonders for their popularity. Like the Democrats under Bush, they could sit back, and bide their time as antiwar resistance grows and hurts the now-incumbent Democrats, with whom responsibility for executing the faux War on Terror now lies.

These political tactics make a mockery of our military. They reward incompetence by not confronting the administration's (Obama's or Bush's) handling of the war. Instead, incompetence is used to generate a political liability for the incumbents.

If the opposition party fails to hold the President accountable, who will? It's the duty of Congress to confront the President on matters of national security and armed conflict abroad. So effective was the slapping on the the "support-the-troops" label, that virtually no one dared to stand up to the Washington consensus, the creation of the one true party in charge: the War Party, as Justin Raimondo calls it. The War Party needs wars to funnel massive sums to the Military Industrial Complex, a monster grown so huge few dare to resist feeding its hunger.

The lack of effort to hold Bush accountable may be more than a political maneuver; it could be that the two parties are in fact obsessed with the exercise of military force, in accordance with our Mideastern policy, formulated largely in Tel Aviv. There's also the powerful motivation to seize Iraq oil and build the pipeline to the Caspian through Afghanistan. The latter goals could explain why the President, no matter which party he represents, is focused on long-term strategic goal related to the pursuit of foreign energy reserves. This goal could transcend the superficial goal of deposing Saddam, long since accomplished, or even the persistent imposition by the Zionist Lobby to fight Israel's enemies, along the lines of Clean Break.

Obama has made himself vulnerable by broadening the scope US intervention and investing a great deal of his future on making progress there. As a matter of fact, Obama's prospects in the next election could well be determined by how effective the Afghan mujhadeen are in countering his buildup, a factor largely beyond his control, even with a strategy of escalation (typically in guerilla wars, the greater the presence of foreign occupiers, the more resistance.)

If Obama's Afghan gambit fails, the strategic policy goal will translate into a major political liability. With war fatigue from Iraq climbing with every fatality there, the Afghan escalation may well be Obama's biggest mistake.

I don't understand why he's invested so much of his political capital on what's an essentially Bush doctrine, to defeat the Taliban. Far easier would be separating al Qaeda from the Taliban, as the former group has dwindled to disorganized cells here and there. {Warning to the wise: in the ongoing battle for public perception don't let al Qaeda demise fool you--"the base" will be blamed for any terrorist attack in the future just as it was for 9/11.}

Real Resistance

The Republicans seems far better suited in the role of a true opposition party. Judging by Republican resistance to Obama's stimulus package and budget bill, the Republicans plan to do battle. As someone leery of the DC consensus, I really don't mind this function--it is in fact what the Constitution called for with its three branches of government.

The genius of the Founders was not in creating the separate branches, but by balancing the interest of the one with the other, by counter-imposing the self-interest of one branch with that of another, thereby limiting each other's power.

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