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Our elected leaders have made a lot of noise about how this war is illegal, and how we need to bring the troops home. That sentiment, of course, mirrors the exact feelings of the majority of the populace. Most of us think that this war is illegal, and that we need to bring our soldiers back home to American soil. In fact, the 2006 elections was widely viewed as a referendum on the Iraq war and the Democrats took control of Congress as a result.
Back then, I was as ecstatic as anyone else. I was ecstatic because I had thought that our troops were coming home now, because I thought we were going to start seeing some real oversight, because we were going to be watching impeachment proceedings on C-SPAN.
But no.
Perhaps I am jaded, but our current batch of elected leadership has done nothing that we put them there to do. Impeachment is off the table. We can't stop the war. Our troops are still dying. Instead, we have gotten capitulation. We've seen the people that we have put in office assent to the whims of Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Gonzalez. There has been resistance, but not the fortitude to see it through. Instead, our leaders have decided to sit down quietly at the back of the bus.
Then, when liberals decided to take matters into their own hands by placing the General Betray Us ad in the New York Times, what did we get? We got indignation and condemnation. When Mr. Stark asserted the other day that our friends and family are dying in Iraq for the President's amusement, he too was met with indignation and condemnation as, apparently, statements like that might hurt the feelings of the powers that be.
Well, guess what? I don't care about hurting people's feelings anymore, and I'm starting to not care about polite discourse. Enough is enough, and this war was gone on for far too long and far too many of our fellow Americans have died at the pleasure of our President.
So I wonder why our leadership is so reticent to simply defund this criminal venture, forcing our troops to come home. Perhaps they are afraid of being called names, in which case they are cowards. Perhaps they see virtue in staying in Iraq, in which case they are liars. Perhaps they want to have the issue to run on for 2008, in which case they are ultimately more cynical than the Republican warmongers who got us into this mess in the first place.
Maybe I am mistaken about all of those things, and I sincerely hope that I am. I like to tell myself that I am simply jaded, and that my views do not reflect the reality of the situation. That people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid really are working towards the goals that we put them there to accomplish.
But when our leadership condemns us for speaking our minds, when they condemn one another for speaking truth to power, I start to think that maybe I am not so jaded, that maybe I am not so cynical. I start to think that we have been betrayed.
End the war. End it now.
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