Friday, October 11, 2002

The Sound of One Voice Screaming   Well, it’s official. The United States Senate formally abdicated its role and responsibility in the promotion of a responsible foreign policy, voting 77-23 to authorize the use of force against Iraq at the President’s discretion. The Administration predictably praised the action with the familiar canard that “America now speaks with one voice.” Same as Iraq, I guess. The problem is that in this case, America is deeply ambivalent. Polling questions that describe likely scenarios for the invasion (high cost, loss of life, chaos afterward) meet with little support. The world needs to know that while there is little that the American people can do to deter the President at this point, there are deep and serious divisions in the way we view the issue. I think the international community can tolerate a little bit of complexity and nuance in our stance. Unfortunately, with the collapse of the gelatinous opposition in Congress, we are now indeed speaking in one voice: the swaggering drawl of a spoiled rich kid trying to sound tough. I hope for all of our sakes that the war goes as smoothly for the President as the vote did. 2:07:38 PM    Emphasize This! []

Winning Ugly in Big Sky Country Mike Taylor, the Republican candidate for Senate in Montana has apparently dropped out of the race following the utter destruction of his campaign with this vicious attack ad by state Democrats. A cause for celebration, perhaps, except for the ugly anti-gay subtext of the ad, which points to Taylor's disco-era stint as head of a beauty school that bilked its students. No word yet whether the GOP will try to pull a Torricelli and put another candidate on the ballot. 11:43:37 AM    Emphasize This! []

Boiling Over I try not to link to too many articles in Salon because I figure most of my readers see them anyway. Lately, however, Salon's coverage and commentary of the Iraq situation have been so excellent with respect to tone and detail that I can't help myself. The problem is that reading these articles is like scratching a mosquito bite: it's incredibly satisfying for as long as you do it, but it hurts later. After reading the transcript of Rep. Peter Stark's cut-to-the-bone speech during the so-called debate in the House of Representatives before I went to bed, I actually woke up in the middle of the night in a rage. Why are these words of truth left in the mouths of a few quirky back-benchers (including my own glorious representative, "Baghdad" Jim McDermott)? Where are Daschle and Gephardt and Hillary Clinton or that cringing toad Lieberman or Terry McAuliffe, the supposed "leaders" of the Democratic party? Where's the principled opposition to this war-crazed, unelected, smug and barely-competent administration? Why have they left Gore and the few people willing to give voice to the millions and millions of Americans who are, to say the least, uneasy about this course of action, twisting in the wind? All my life, I've been a Democrat. It's caused me to cast some ugly votes in my time, but I swallowed my concerns and pulled the lever. Lately, I've been giving money to both the local and national party (though all it seems to be buying me is a lot of unwanted mail asking for more money). Yes, the D's are better, in theory, on practically every issue, from the economy to the environment to the courts, though it rarely works out right in practice. But here we have the defining issue of our generation -  perhaps one of the most important decisions in American history - about whether our democracy should wage a single-handed, unprovoked attack against another sovereign state based on an unproved case because our idiot President feels like doing it. If there’s any time to stand on principle, this is it. Unfortunately, principle seems to be missing from the Democratic party. Maybe it was burgled out of the DNC offices in the Watergate in 1972, because it hasn’t been seen since. The silence of the Democratic leadership is more than a failure of will. It’s a betrayal. And it’s threatening to become a habit. This is worse than confirming Clarence Thomas, worse than voting for the tax cut, worse than the few odious D’s who carried torches with the Republican lynch mob that tried to sack Clinton. By failing to offer opposition, they are making all their supporters complicit in a potential disaster, international crime, and human tragedy. History won’t be kind to their cowardice and neither, I suspect, will their membership. I have no stomach for the prissy, humorless PC orthodoxy of the Greens. I’m certainly not about to join the Rush Limbaugh set. But as far as the formal apparatus of the Democratic party goes, they can count me out. I will continue to vote for and support candidates who happen to be Democrats, and give to issue organizations that can advocate on my behalf across party lines if necessary. The DNC, however, need not apply. God help the next phone solicitor who calls asking for my support. 9:19:11 AM    Emphasize This! []

Blogroll Note of the Day Readers who like this page should not miss Secular Blasphemy. Among other things, there's a terrific cost-benefit analysis of the Iraq situation and a nice piece about Jimmy Carter's shiny new Nobel Peace Prize. 9:18:46 AM    Emphasize This! []