Posted on 06/16/2006 4:00:35 PM PDT by bitt
I, voted for the resolution before I (now that I'm thinking of running in 08) voted against it.
Can I git me a huntin license here"?
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=4079
Overseeing Iraq
Posted by: Dale Franks on Friday, June 16, 2006
The editors of USA Today have written an editorial about withdrawing from Iraq,that is right on point.
(USA Today)'U.S. troops should not stay in Iraq, as in Vietnam, purely for pride in a hopeless battle. They should remain, however, as long as there is a reasonable chance that they can bring some stability, reinforce the fledgling democratic government and prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for terrorists. Announcing a timetable for withdrawal, as Sen. John Kerry proposes (Kerry's resolution in the Senate was rejected 93-6 on Thursday), would just invite the insurgents to wait out the American presence.'
Progress in Iraq has certainly been slow, and, as has been said, "mistakes were made". But despite the slowness of the progress there has been progress. To simply leave now would be to threaten all of that progress, and set back any sort of liberalization in the Mideast back years, if not decades.
Whatever the arguments for going into Iraq in the first place, they are utterly irrelevant now. The situation is what it is, and we have to weigh very carefully the possible results on pulling up stakes and leaving. Whatever the merits of our withdrawal and abandonment of Vietnam may have been, it is folly to forget that the consequences of that withdrawal, for which we paid all through the latter half of the 1970s and the first few years of the 1980s, were bitter indeed.
(USA Today)'Thursday's fireworks on the House floor did serve to illuminate how Congress has been egregiously missing in action on sustained discussion and oversight of the Iraq war. A two-day debate hardly begins to address the many critical issues: What would success look like? Is the $320 billion allocated to the war effort being well spent? Can more be done to protect the troops from lethal roadside bombings? What is being done to engage surrounding countries? What about the training of Iraqi forces?'
This point brings up something that is, if anything, even more irksome. Congress has, except from the predicatble defeatist yelping on the Left, been little more than a lap dog to the Bush Administration. On practically every issue, from Guantanamo, to prisoner torture, to domestic spying, Congress has done practically nothing to exercise their oversight on the Bush Administration. For all the criticism and grumbling directed at whatever TV cameras were handy, Congress has not actually done anything practical to ensure that oversight was being conducted to ensure that the administration was behaving properly and prudently.
Even in WWII, Congress carefully watched the procurement process, despite quite heavy, escalating, and urgent demands for more war materials. Indeed, it's more or less what put Harry Truman in the position to become president. Our current Congress, for all the kvetching they sometimes do, seems to pretty much take the Bush Administration's word as gospel, at the end of the day.
Sure, it's not helpful for Democrats to constantly keep up with the "Retreat, Withdraw, Surrender" refrain, but it isn't noticeably more helpful for the Republican majority to roll over like weasels and expose their softest parts to the president, either.
It is unreasonable to ask a dishonerable politician to be honorable. These men are toys. We should play with them. There is nothing remotely serious about them. They are silly and trivial and not worth any consideration.
here's a good tidbit from another lefty site
The Trouble with Trendspotting
By Ruth Conniff
June 6, 2006
http://progressive.org/mag_rcb060606
snip...
"In the current issue of The New Yorker, Jeffrey Goldberg--who has done courageous and fascinating reporting from Islamic fundamentalist schools and terrorist training centers--goes to Washington to take up the question, "What is the Democrats' Best Way to Win?" The answer, disappointingly, is more of the same "third way," focus-group-driven politics that sent voters fleeing from John Kerry and, to a lesser degree, Al Gore.
Goldberg stacks the deck with this tediously inside-the-Party-leadership piece of analysis. He writes about a disastrous meeting between Missouri farmers and Teresa Heinz Kerry, and the would-be-first-lady's out-of-touch insistence on telling the farmers they should consider going organic. It's a telling anecdote, but the lesson Goldberg draws—that the whole package of left-to-liberal politics is an impossible sell for white, rural voters—is simply wrong. These hog farmers are already Democrats. An economic populist like Tom Harkin--who was to the left of Kerry--had no trouble connecting with them. Of course a rich Northeastern candidate is a fool to come in and tell them to consider producing organic yogurt. But the more leftwing Democrats--Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold, to name just a couple--would have no trouble. As we all found out, Kerry putting on a NASCAR jacket was not the answer.
Goldberg goes on to describe Howard Dean as a madman, delivering a speech with his face turning purple and the veins sticking out on his neck (will that hackneyed caricature ever die?). He writes, dismissively, of Dean's plan to funnel money to state party leaders instead of focusing all of the DNC's funds on the next round of Congressional races as if it were corrupt. State party leaders were big supporters of Dean in the past, Goldberg writes, implying that the money to rebuild the party's infrastructure is personal payback.
Wherever you come down on the wisdom of spending all the party's resources on winning the next election versus taking a more long-term view, it is simply dishonest to ignore the fact that there is a legitimate debate going on. Dean and Rahm Emanuel are not the only people arguing about how the Democrats are going to build a farm team and— as the Republicans have managed to do so effectively— plan for a political comeback.
But the worst part of the Goldberg piece is its insistence that the Democrats abandon principle and shape their politics around vague notions of what NASCAR dads, soccer moms, and other fictional composite swing voters think. “For God's sake don't lead!” is the message to the Democrats: Listen to what the pollsters tell you and let the fuzzy, noncommittal opinions of swing voters lead you.
This is exactly the strategy that has produced the recent crop of bland, uninspiring, and ultimately losing candidates the Democrats have put up. Voters found the all-things-to-all-people style of politics off-putting and untrustworthy. And yet there is a whole political-consulting industry in Washington dedicated to pushing this same losing proposition. It worked for Clinton, after all. So, Goldberg says, we need another Southern governor who tacks right and triangulates to help the Democrats win again.
But times have changed. Bill Clinton is gone--and with him the particular charismatic charm that helped him pull off that sunny, centrist political strategy. We are living now at a time when many voters--even Republicans--have a deep distrust of the current government, are aware that their political leaders have been lying to them, and are looking for leadership through an era of terrorism and war. Someone with his finger in the wind is exactly the wrong candidate for times like these.
You don't have to be a futurist to see that the "third way" leads nowhere."
Great post.
Cute one SmartA!!
Thanks for the ping!
BTTT
if only he had enough honor to even contemplate such a thing..
Make up what? He's been making up stuff all along.
In my book he is a distant turd.
Kerry is a blithering idiot, unfit for just about anything of any importance.
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