Amid disingenuous half-truths, an obvious penchant to submit to Bush’s resolve to indefinitely stay in Iraq, and now cobbled together excuses instead of results, Nancy Pelosi has shown little true grit to exercise Congress’ ability to end the bloodbath in Iraq.
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Yesterday, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, condemned Bush’s failed occupation in Iraq as “a path to 10 more years of war in Iraq.” Claiming, “The American people long ago rejected the President’s plan to stay in Iraq,” Pelosi additionally called General Petraeus’ report “endless war” and a “status quo” sales pitch for a permanent footprint in Iraq.
The newly dubbed “Bush-Petraeus plan” is neither innovative or a new strategy to wind down an unfounded and once wholly avoidable war of aggression. This continued shell game to run out the clock on Bush’s tragic presidency only brings troop levels in Iraq back down to the pre-surge level of 130,000 troops by April of next year. The proverbial goal post has once again been moved another six months down the battlefield.
After 54 months of hostilities, No WMD’s, nine shifting rationales to stay in Iraq, and a tragic story of hubris and obstinacy, Bush has escorted our country in a vicious, and now complete, deadly circle. We have arrived empty-handed at where we began, with an ill-advised pre-emptive war, based on flimsy and manipulated intelligence, minus nearly 3,800 American soldiers and half a trillion dollars futilely spent.
Sobering facts in hand, Americans in near unanimity, voted for Democrats in 2006 to take the reigns of power in Congress and end Bush’s misbegotten adventure in the Middle East. Since then, using only paper tiger arguments and toothless legislation, the Democratically-led Congress has accomplished little more than symbolic gestures in an attempt to please a vastly emergent anti-war base that handed them an historic election victory just ten months ago.
Equally content to merely watch the sand in Bush’s hourglass run out, Pelosi has turned to a dangerous political game of “blame Bush” and hollow rhetoric. The Speaker’s website, The Gavel, crafts spurious allegations that it is Bush’s veto pen, and a lack of a super-majority in the Senate, that is the reason Congress is unable to fulfill their election promise to America. This is the penultimate, intolerable excuse for being unable to deliver a mandate to President Bush to cease hostilities in Iraq.
However, the definitive, insufferable failure on Speaker Pelosi’s part is her statement that the Bush-Petraeus plan is “an insult to the intelligence of the American people.” To the contrary, Bush has bullied, lied, and been outright indifferent to the demands of the American people. It is Pelosi’s dissembling, amid a tempest of empty vitriol indicting Bush for Congress’ failures, which is the damning insult to our intelligence.
Nancy Pelosi’s invective to America’s wisdom began when she took impeachment “off the table” and ended when she commenced funding Bush’s illegitimate war. America is no longer only insulted by Pelosi’s inactions and cowardice, but increasingly angry and restive.
In truth, it is not Bush’s veto pen or the lack of votes in Congress causing a deadly, failed foreign policy to drag on into its fifth year. It is Speaker Pelosi’s acquiescence and incompetence that is the centerpiece of culpability and the reason why we are still expending blood and dollars in Iraq.
As Speaker of the House, Pelosi ultimately determines what legislation is, or is not, brought to the floor in the House. As such, she has no constitutional directive that demands she allocate any further funding for Iraq. No legislation is requisite. No vote is necessary. All that is bluntly needed is for Pelosi to say “no” to Bush, and “You have the money to bring the troops home.”
Sadly, Nancy Pelosi, America’s first female Speaker of the House, has chosen the path of least resistance. She has failed to heed the clarion call of America to put a stop to virtually five years of circular madness. In the end, it is Pelosi’s continual capitulation to political pressure and propaganda from a deeply unpopular President, which will render the gravest consequences of all to America for years to come.
