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Looking to the 2008 Election: Confusion, Anger, Hope
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)
But because such invasions and occupations have been going on for millenia doesn't make them any more acceptable when we Americans do them, especially so in the Iraq case since that war clearly was one of choice, based on lies and deceptions. And it was carried out with the U.S. having no "Plan B" for nation-building amidst an anti-occupation insurgency and a concurrent civil war as the various sectarian and religious groups jockeyed for power and control.
Bush, in his televised address last week, made it clear that there will be no major change of course in Iraq; he'll withdraw the "surge" brigades that were scheduled to be rotated out anyway, and leave 130,000-plus troops still in occupation for a good, long while, at least five and maybe 10 or 20 more years, a la South Korea. (Incidentally, this Korea analogy is total B.S., since there was no countrywide occupation there, no guerrillas who wanted us out.) Bush seems to be suggesting that the administrations that follow him, despite any professed intentions to pull back from Iraq, will find that he has so FUBAR-ed the situation in Iraq that they will be hogtied to the original Bush policy, with little chance for escape.
THE MORPHING OF THE PARTIES
The election of 2008 could lead to an historic re-alignment of the two major political parties, from the inside.
The activist Democratic base, thoroughly angered by how they are disrespected and taken for granted while the leadership directs the party down traditional paths of centrist and center-right policies, is starting to loudly grumble about that leadership and the party's presidential contenders.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, after refusing to put impeachment back "on the table" and being overly timid in her anti-war moves, will have to face off with activist Cindy Sheehan in her home San Francisco district next November. Other wishy-washy or Blue Dog Democrats will face primary challengers from the progressive wing of the party.
And here, as noted above, we have progressive Congresswoman Woolsey more or less urging the base to purify the party by knocking off less-than-satisfactory Democrats.
That's pretty strong stuff, suggesting that the Democrats won't move off their centrist dime until they are smacked upside the head by the base deciding to abandon the party, which could result in the Democrats losing their majority in the House.
WHAT THE DEMS COULD DO
Woolsey's heated rhetoric may be ill-advised and self-destructive, but Democratic Party leaders would be foolish to ignore its genesis. Based on conversations this writer has had with numerous progressive Democrats around the country, backed up by recent national polls and letters to the editors and on the call-in radio shows, Woolsey is by no means alone in her thinking.
The basis for this point of view lies in the results of the November 2006 election, when the voters overwhelming put the Democrats in charge in the House and Senate to make major changes, especially in the conduct and longevity of the occupation in Iraq. It's now nearly a year later, and the Democrats are doing virtually nothing in the way of stopping the coming attack on Iran, and have done little or nothing except pass non-binding resolutions on the Iraq occupation.
If the Democrats were to act like a true party of opposition, they could pass a bill explicity forbidding an attack on Iran, absent an imminent threat to America. They could pass a House bill authorizing funds only to protect the troops as they leave Iraq. They could, by mustering 41 votes in the Senate, cut off funding for the war except to protect the troops as they exit Iraq. But, under Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, they don't; their major aim seems to be to water down bills aimed at Bush's war in order to attract enough wavering Republicans to join them. It's conceivable such bills might pass, but they would be ineffective in doing anything other than telling Bush how tenuous his support is in the Congress, something he already knows.
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY COULD CHANGE
There is a huge chunk of the GOP that is, and has been for some time, appalled by the hijacking of their party by far-right ideologues who are eager for military adventures abroad, repressive measures at home, and spending the treasury into humongous deficits. For lack of a better term, let's refer to these alienated Republicans as comprising the "realist" wing of the GOP.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California ( http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/08/BAD1S1N1J.DTL ) recently told his fellow Republicans that unless the GOP moves back toward the center, it risks becoming a permanent minority party in state and national elections. Alan Greenspan, ( click here ) the former head of the Federal Reserve, a true conservative Republican, finally has expressed another part of that "realist" frustration:
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