Democrats go to War
The rhetoric on the liberal political airwaves lately has been all about whether the Democrats can win back the House or Senate and the likely 2008 presidential candidates jockeying for position. The key Democratic hopefuls are trying to capitalize on diminishing support for the war in Iraq by standing up and taking blame for voting for the war. The problem is that they are wrong.
With identical bills introduced into the Senate and House giving the President permission to use force against a perceived threat, the right move on the part of Congress was to vote yea. A nay vote would have been an empty threat. The issue is that the bill was overly broad and premature - a huge strategic failure on the part of the Bush administration. Having survived the Cold War we are aware that the only thing worse than failing to threaten to go to war is to have to follow through on that threat. No one listened to Sen. Robert Byrd when he said that it was a bad bill, with effectively no checks on the power that it granted. Apparently it has been too long since Vietnam and our congressmen have forgotten their responsibility to keep a check on the executive power, lest the President starts to think that he can do anything.
The Democrats need to stop taking the blame for voting for the war or the country is going to start blaming them for it. A yea vote for the war in Iraq was the right vote, but it was a bad bill to begin with. The Bush administration and the GOP have shown their lack of strategic sophistication and a propensity towards poor planning. Memo to Democrats: it is going to take a lot more than a misguided apology if you have any hope of regaining the public’s trust.