The Washington Post has promoted the war in Iraq from Day One. They still are, despite nervous protestations about "mistakes made" here and there.
Of course CheneyBush are still in favor of the war. They are doctrinaire imperialists, so how could they be otherwise? Their plan was to assemble a staging area within the middle east from which to scourge tinpot regimes throughout the region, exploiting the petroassets of any and all, preparing against that day when "peak oil" was understood to have passed by during 2004. The CheneyBush plan was to "finesse" the civil discord in the region and make as much of a bloodbath of it as the residents could stand. Every dead Arab, in their view, was a dead terrorist or terrorsymp. We can be assured that left to their own
This leaves it to Congress to address the addressable issues. The New York Times believes that Congress can exhibit leadership, although the leadership of the military must reside in the ever-truculent executive. The big question is whether Congress has the will to act above its normal political reflexes, or will it play games with the war on the pretext that it is not their war and therefore they cannot be hurt by it?
The big complicating factor in Democratic politics is that Democrats-surprise! surprise!-are not of one mind on Iraq. Some members of Congress (both houses) are from areas where the idea of losing a war is pure bad mojo among the voters. These are the parents and siblings and friends of Iraq War soldiers and vets, who have been taught since childhood to see something through, come hell or high water. Last night, for instance, in an otherwise anti-war documentary on MSNBC an interview with an Army private in Iraq included the generalization that if you don't support the war, then you are not supporting the troops, BECAUSE you will be undercutting the reason 3,200+ have given their lives and 20,000+ their limbs and sanity.
No one in Congress is really challenging this bit of nonsense and illogic. Yes, I agree, it is pat and goes down easily in barrooms and sporting events, but that does not make it rational. Ultimately, we have to be rational and not emotional about Iraq. Rational people know that Iraq is a synthetic construct of a nation, a British pipe dream, a theatre of the absurd within Islam, constructed of three widely differing groups, each group represented by people who are fully in the 21st century and equally by people still operating as if this were the 12th century. It is a madhouse and we have inveigled the world's thugs and outright terrorists to come there to duke it out with us.
I am sick to my stomach every time a read a convincing blog or news or opinion article that points out that the Democrats in the House of Representatives are playing political games with the war. Maybe it seems to them, given the country's barroom mentality, that there is no win in the situation except that which can be manufactured by pounding like a child on George and Dick and their party. I get sick because this sort of political fecklessness means that hundred and thousands more Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis are going to be killed to prove the point by default. Congress is refusing to give these men and women a chance to live. By playing political games with the war Democrats are buying it and in 2008 it will be their war to explain.
You can see the hand of certain individuals in the Democrat's planning. These are the mugwumps and DLC crowd, the Rahm Emanuels and Joe Liebermans. These two believe they are water carriers for Israel, but just as surely as Sunnis and Shi'ites understand Americans to be Infidels, Israel is weakened every moment of this war. The Hamas War in Lebanon last year is a perfect example of Israel over the top and sliding downward toward her self-destruction.
Nancy Pelosi is a big disappointment in all of this. She has it in her power, if not her own constitution, to stand up to and fight Bush on this nose to nose. She would win. Cheney would erupt in blood clots, if there is any justice left in the world, and self-destruct. Bush would end up in the fetal position on that nice carpet in the Oval Office. But Nancy believes she is victory gardening for the 2008 election. She is probably correct in thinking that the war can be used to promote a Democratic victory, but the point made will be that Democrats used the war.
An immediate redeployment of the troops in Iraq half to Afghanistan and half to Qatar and anyplace else that will have them is the only way to show an earnest desire to fight world terrorism. We have to stop manufacturing new terrorists in the mills of Iraq! Anything else is a convenience to politicians which will turn to ashes in their mouths and graves among their constituents.
