March 7, 2003. Democratic "quandary" over how to oppose Bush's war.

[madfloridian]

Quandaries happen when there is a wishy washy, waffling attitude toward what is generally considered to be a wrong choice.

Quandaries happen when people fail to stand up for what is right, and become concerned too late to matter.

Quandary:

State of uncertainty or perplexity especially as requiring a choice between equally unfavorable options

The vote was taken in October 2002. There really was not much they could do by March of the next year. It was too late to oppose, and their base was becoming very outspoken by then....waiting for the bombs to fall as the shock and awe started.

McClatchy Washington Bureau, March 7 2003:

Democrats in quandary over how to show opposition to Bush's war plans

WASHINGTON—Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle asked for floor time this week for the Senate to debate President Bush's policy on Iraq. When the time came Friday, only two Democrats showed up.

It was, after all, an exercise in futility. No legislation about war, no resolution on Iraq was at stake.

The nation may be divided over whether to take military action against Saddam Hussein without the backing of the United Nations. In Congress, however, the time for action is long past, leaving the opposition to vent in hallway declamations and in the occasional floor speech to an empty House or Senate chamber.

"This chamber is for the most part ominously, dreadfully silent," Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W-Va., an opponent of war without U.N. support, said recently.

Ominously, dreadfully silent. Afraid to speak out, afraid not to do so. George Bush was a master at putting our party in positions like that. Damned and ridiculed if they do, cursed if they don't.

Daschle, who voted for the resolution, has turned down requests from Byrd and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to bring up new resolutions that would place restrictions on war. Now that war is imminent, Democrats are in a quandary over how to give voice and leadership to the many voters looking to them to restrain the rush to war.

Senator Bob Graham was generally considered hawkish, but he warned them on Iraq. Before the vote in 2002 he told them that the blood was going to be on their hands.

."On Oct. 9, 2002, Graham — the guy everyone thought of as quiet, mild-mannered, deliberate, conflict-averse — let loose on his Senate colleagues for going along with President Bush's war against Iraq.

"We are locking down on the principle that we have one evil, Saddam Hussein. He is an enormous, gargantuan force, and that's who we're going to go after," Graham said on the floor. "That, frankly, is an erroneous reading of the world. There are many evils out there, a number of which are substantially more competent, particularly in their ability to attack Americans here at home, than Iraq is likely to be in the foreseeable future."

He told his fellow senators that if they didn't recognize that going to war with Iraq without first taking out the actual terrorists would endanger Americans, "then, frankly, my friends — to use a blunt term — the blood's going to be on your hands."

It was a watershed moment. Gone was the meticulous thinker who would talk completely around and through a problem before answering a question about it......

Instead they listened to the even more hawkish who felt that Democrats had to show their toughness on national security....and they listened to those who put winning above all else. They listened to those to whom tactics were everything and issues nothing.

And they still were listening to them in 2006. The candidates who were running as Democrats, many of them hand-picked...were not to discuss Iraq during their campaigns.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) made a round of calls yesterday to freshman Democrats, some of whom recently returned from trips to Iraq and made news with their positive comments on military progress. "I'm not finding any wobbliness on the war -- at all," Emanuel said.

The candidates learned quickly and well. Those the progressives supported who were outspoken on Iraq during their campaign...changed their tunes quickly once elected. This one stuck in my mind as we donated to him several times with enthusiasm.

Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.), who made waves when he returned from Iraq by saying he was willing to be more flexible on troop withdrawal timelines, issued a statement to constituents "setting the record straight."

"I am firmly in favor of withdrawing troops on a timeline that includes both a definite start date and a definite end date," he wrote on his Web site.

But in an interview yesterday, McNerney made clear his views have shifted since returning from Iraq. He said Democrats should be willing to negotiate with the generals in Iraq over just how much more time they might need. And, he said, Democrats should move beyond their confrontational approach, away from tough-minded, partisan withdrawal resolutions, to be more conciliatory with Republicans who might also be looking for a way out of the war.

"We should sit down with Republicans, see what would be acceptable to them to end the war and present it to the president, start negotiating from the beginning," he said, adding, "I don't know what the leadership is thinking. Sometimes they've done things that are beyond me."

There are going to be more quandaries the minute President Elect Obama takes office. The people who wavered, who like McNerney, urged doing away with confrontation....they are the ones in power in this administration.

There will be quandaries on Iran, on Afghanistan. There will be positions to be taken on human rights, women's choice, the rights of the GLBT community.

I just saw a post at Open Left entitled How about strident action on behalf of Democrats.

So, Senate Democrats have threatened to block Roland Burris from being seated in the Senate. As I, and several others, have noted recently, this level of aggressive action is in direct contradiction with past timidity. It is also quite a contrast to their public statements on Al Franken.

"The top Senate Republican said his caucus would block any attempt to seat Democrat Al Franken until an anticipated court case over Minnesota's close election is finished and an official election certificate is conferred.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn said Friday that Republicans would object to seating the race leader Franken sooner. A filibuster would require 60 votes to break - a few more than Democrats currently hold in Washington. (...)

Senate Democrats have not indicated what they would do if Franken's lead over Coleman holds up after the recount ends."

So, Senate Democrats will take aggressive action to deny a Democrat from being seated, but not take aggressive action to seat a Democrat. To paraphrase Lisa Simpson, their paper-thin commitment to legally appointed and legally elected Democrats--especially when considered in contrast to their commitment to Lieberman--sends a shiver down my spine.

Different topic than mine, yet very much the same thing.

There is a time when a party stands up strongly or doesn't. This is a time when apparently we are going to be "post partisan" (past partisanship..one party)....meaning the right wing ideology will easily hold sway.

So we are to stop being confrontational. The GOP will of course continue. It just can't happen that way.

[madfloridian]

1. Guardian UK right after the 2002 vote: "Only the American people can stop Bush now."

But we didn't, and no one ever did stop him. The article realizes there are many here who spoke out.

Only his people can stop Bush now - and many are speaking out against war in Iraq

Who can stop Bush on Iraq? Not the UN security council, it seems, where US diplomatic kneecapping and punishment beatings proceed apace. Not an intimidated US Congress where, with honourable exceptions, the call to arms trumpets irresistibly over November's hustings. And not any number of international lawyers, vainly brandishing the UN charter and pre-emptively disregarded by high counsel to the White House hyperpower. In Whitehall, worried marchers scare pigeons but not the Pentagon. As the drum beats and the rhetoric rises, respected analysts opine that nothing now can prevent the war. Bush will have his way because, whatever bishops and imams vicariously preach, no power on earth can stop him.

This is not entirely true; in truth, not true at all. Americans can stop America's next war as they have stopped similar planned or actual idiocies in the past. That the Bush clique pays scant heed to Arab and Muslim concerns, has no time for "euro-wimps" and other appeasers is brutally clear. But domestic public opinion is a different story - and that story is changing. Slowly, inconsistently but palpably, ordinary Americans are making their voices heard. This is no anti-war movement to compare with Vietnam. Their motivations are often practical, even mundane. But a strange phenomenon is now apparent in which Karl Rove, Bush's top electoral strategist and poll-watcher, may yet emerge as a more potent force than the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis and all the other full-spectrum dominators combined.

Tisdale quotes from comments by Americans at the Guardian website:

That the anti-Bush, silenced majority feels it is being ignored by politicians and the mainstream media is abundantly clear from unsolicited American responses to a critique of this week's Cincinnati national address by Bush published on the Guardian's website* and on US links. This random sample also indicates rapidly rising anxiety, frustration and anger about Iraq, and Bush himself. Here, perhaps, the authentic voice of America may be heard.

"I have never seen so much bullshit thrown at the American public in my lifetime, with too many people thinking it may be true if the president says it," emails a 77-year-old from Manchester, New Hampshire. "We are being rail roaded into war over here. I am astounded by our president and his tactics utilising fear," says one writer. "When I voted for Bush I had no idea what he would unleash," says another. An Arizonan believes that Bush is "a complete and pathetic idiot ... I think enough Americans are beginning to see that the real regime change needs to take place at the White House". "The Bush presidency should have been nipped in the bud by the supreme court," writes an Illinois resident. "We've been bamboozled and Congress doesn't seem to know what to do." From Maryland comes the cry: "As an American I am totally speechless at whatever emanates from Bush's mouth - I mean, my 12-year-old son would make a better president." In New York, some feel the same way. "To attack with so little proof is ghastly ... As someone who smelled the World Trade Center and its human occupants burn every day for three months, I do not wish that fate on the long-suffering Iraqi people."

An emailer from Bush's Texas believes "all he is trying to do is divert attention from his failure as a leader ... under Bush we are giving up all our civil rights in the name of fighting the war on terror. If we do not agree with him, we are anti-American."

We definitely did not stop him, and I fear they are still not listening to us.

[madfloridian]

2. Tisdall in June 2003. Yes, Iraq was a defining moment - so let's define it

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/jun/09/iraq.ira...

"Examined from an opposing perspective, Blair's "defining moment" acquires a less rosy hue. Iraq marked the maiden outing of George Bush's new go-anywhere doctrine of pre-emptive war-making. Plainly put, post-9/11 America has assumed a right to attack, not merely to defend itself, whenever it feels threatened. Iraq was an assault by a powerful country on a much weaker but nevertheless independent sovereign state, a symbolic act with very real, destabilising implications.

Iraq was a "defining moment" because the US and Britain were ultimately prepared to bypass the UN security council, ignore their obligations to uphold the UN charter and cock a snook at international law. Iraq was truly remarkable, too, in that both countries showed themselves ready to break with long-standing friends, risk wrecking strategic alliances such as Nato that were previously considered sacrosanct and defy the great mass of global opinion. Iraq may have been fought in the name of democracy. But democracy was one of its great victims."

[JeffR]

3. 5th rec. You are so right. This is the best & maybe last chance to

stop the RW ruin of America and the world.

[Dr.Phool]

4. Too late.

I just have too much faith in Harry, Nancy, Rahm, and Stinky.

They can stand up against fellow Democrats, but don't even think about pissing off crying Boehner, or Mitch McConnell. They'll fight back.

[JeffR]

5. Yes.

I think you're right.

[madfloridian]

6. But will we?

A question looking for an answer.

[JeffR]

8. I'm thinking not.

I wish I could believe otherwise, but I really don't.

[madfloridian]

9. Those shuttled aside already...

tell a big story of the future. Choices of those who do not include grassroots and netroots indicate the direction we are going.

It was all so sudden.

[iconicgnom]

11. Obama's choices are very right wing. A kinda "Repub light".

IMO the US is in effect a one-party state.

Both parties promote the identical militaristic imperialism. That's the one steady constant.

I expect most if not all of Bush's gains, his movements toward a more overt fascism, will be sustained under Obama. FISA is the first proof of that. There's no sign of anything different coming down the pipe.

There might be some changes to e.g. the US healthcare system, but no essential change is envisioned. Just cosmetics.

The Dems are frightened at the very thought of "principles" that might challenge the Republican ideology, the ever rightward Republican status quo. It's worse than a joke. Tho' Cheney did take time to publicly laugh at Pelosi and Reid, admitting to having instituted torture, at the same time he thumbed his nose at the world by including the info that Pelosi and Reid were active collaborators, so therefore the Dem caucus, despite so many protestations of innocence. Nobody challenged Cheney on this. The Dem caucus, as a unified whole, remains silent - tacitly admitting that Cheney spoke truth.

I feel a bit "fooled" by the recent US election, tho' in one way the result can't help but be good. Good for the cause of racial equality. And neither the Dems nor the Repubs fielded anyone better. Still, I feel "fooled" by the "change" and "hope" mantra, that was so quickly dropped as the election was clinched.

As I said, IMO the US is in effect a one-party state, and I don't think the change the US and the world needs will come from either party. Obama might give the world a bit of a breather, tho', from the full-speed-ahead rampant militarism of Repub rule.

[many a good man]

7. There is only one force on this planet more powerful than the US military:

American public opinion. The People.

Despite our best efforts, too many remained silent. Too many believed the false hype. We let the world down and we especially let the innocent Iraqi people down. We are shamed.

We must continue the endless battle for the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens. War-mongers, bigots, and greedy corrupt politicians and businessmen must not be allowed to dictate American policy any longer.

[earcandle]

10. Our performance in defiance has been overlooked by the media

we have no standing in the world if our media betrays the common principles which give access to freedom for the common man. Our media has been infiltrated and diluted. We don't have real investigative reporting anymore.

when will we have that back?

That will be a leadership decision.

When our protests, our law suits, our complaints, our media starts to reflect a reality that functions well, we will be quiet for a bit, and then we will create!

[madfloridian]

13. Yes, you are right. Media has ignored any real dissension on Iraq

Actually they also basically ignored the million who marched for womens' rights. It was covered by C-Span, yes, but the feed cut in and out.

And the huge protests....ignored.

[Cetacea]

12. One Media, one Party

Pretty hopeless.

[LiberalLovinLug]

14. Democrats are the Alan Colmes of Washington

Hey Alans out of work. Maybe Harry has a place for him, he'd fit right in.

[madfloridian]

15. Heh heh

Wonder what's next for Colmes. Interesting description.

[madfloridian]

16. The Democratic hawks...

This is a quote from the now disgraced Tim Mahoney in FL 16...who was put in the race while the Democrat David Lutrin was shoved out by Rahm and Thurman. I remember his words. David Lutrin posted here and said he might run again in the future. I hope so.

This is how they do it. They even used the teachers' union to get the Democrat out of the race and the Republican turned Democrat in it. And then they brag about how only conservatives can win.

Tim Mahoney, FL 16...we Blue Dogs are "hawks on national defense"

"As U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi contemplates getting President Bush to back out of the war in Iraq, she has the views of an emerging conservative political force known as the Blue Dog Coalition with which to contend.

..."Mahoney said Thursday he and a group of Blue Dogs met with Pelosi to discuss a $100 billion supplemental spending bill. The bill includes funds sought by Bush for the war in Iraq. Mahoney said the Blue Dogs advised the speaker of their goal: to refocus the nation's military on terrorism.

"We're now in a police action in Iraq," he said. "It's weakened our ability to wage the war on terror."

The president should be free to maintain troops in Iraq, if the purpose is to thwart terrorism. Meanwhile, the U.S. military needs to beef up its capability to fight terrorists elsewhere, including Afghanistan, he said."

And so we go on in an endless cycle that is not so much about terrorism as about oil and empire.

[L0oniX]

17. Yes ..spend more on the military that didn't protect us on 911.

Since when do we pay more to an organization that failed to defend us? Why do we accept that more money will help protect us? If that is so then I guess they just didn't say anything about needing more money to protect and defend us before 911. Most people won't pay more money to get the service that they originally paid for to actually do their job. They usually fire the service and move on to another company. "Gee I know you paid me $2500 to fix your transmission and I know it broke again but if would have paid me more in the first place I could have fixed it properly". DOH!