Dems' Iraq surrender wasn't voters' wish
(http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/403765,CST-EDT-edits28a.artic
le)
May 28, 2007
We the American people know full well that the democratic process
doesn't always proceed directly from point A to point B. A mandate
for change, as expressed at the voting booth, is going to go through
many rounds of back and forth among lawmakers -- we'll give you this
if you give us that -- before it is, or isn't, acted on. Though
voters made it overwhelmingly clear last November the prime reason
they elected Democrats and kicked out Republicans was to get U.S.
troops out of Iraq, no one could have expected a president so
stubbornly committed to prosecuting the war to back off that policy.
Changing policy through Congress would be a tough challenge.
Still, no matter how you come down on the wisdom of a troop
withdrawal timetable, it's hard not to conclude that the majority
party became, in effect, the minority party again in caving in to the
White House's $100 billion Iraq spending bill. The Democrats had
insisted they wouldn't approve any money for fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan without a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq. At a
time when more Americans are against the Iraq war than at any time,
Democrats not only reneged on their promise to fight tooth and nail
for that point of view in Congress, they also sent a message that,
electoral gains notwithstanding, they are no more united in their
will to stand up to the Bush administration than ever when the stakes
are as high as this.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to hide her bitter disappointment
over the Democrats' decision, and both Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama voted against the bill, refusing, Obama said, "to give the
president a blank check to continue down this same, disastrous path."
But their compromising colleagues were in high spin mode in passing
off this defeat as victory. For the first time, insisted House
Democratic Caucus chairman Rahm Emanuel, President Bush is
accountable to Congress in conducting the war. There's justification
for that view. A timeline may not have been set, but Bush did agree
to benchmarks to measure progress or the lack of it in Iraq, and
Republicans as well as Democrats will be poised to hold him to them.
Did Democrats fare better than they would have had they insisted on a
timetable and been hit with a second Bush veto? Very likely. But for
a party with such a profound need to redefine itself -- to assert
itself as a cohesive organization with a vision and the decisiveness
to carry it forward -- its failure to follow through on one of its
key platform items shows it's still worried about its national
security credentials. Emanuel, asserting Democrats did succeed in
denying Bush a blank check, said "the beginning of the end of the
war" is in sight. That kind of vague projection wasn't what voters
had in mind when they voted the Democrats into control of Congress.
--
get real. like jesus would ever own a gun or vote republican.
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