Frank Rich has a good column in the NYT today, in which he makes many of the same points about the moral and political cowardice of the Democratic Party Leadership that I made here last week.
He gives due praise to both Sen. Chuck Hagel and Sen. Russ Feingold for standing out against the crowd and starting to speak abut the need for a (relatively) speedy exit from Iraq.
Rich also notes this:
- As another politician from the Vietnam era, Gary Hart, observed last week, the Democrats are too cowardly to admit they made a mistake three years ago, when fear of midterm elections drove them to surrender to the administration’s rushed and manipulative Iraq-war sales pitch. So now they are compounding the original error as the same hucksters frantically try to repackage the old damaged goods.
I agreed with that diagnosis from Hart when I first read it. I well recalled the extreme weeniness of the Dems in the lead-up to the 2002 midterm elections, when they were easily stampeded by the Bushies into signing off on a carte-blanche resolution that empowered the Prez to invade Iraq whenever he wanted to.
But why should these same Democratic leaders seem so afraid, now, to step forward quite frankly and say “I was misled back in October 2002”?
Surely, the fact that they were all, actively and intentionally misled at the time into believeing various things about Iraq that turned out not to be true– and that were known at the time by many in the administration to be a lot less true than they were being portrayed as being– should be part of the indictment against this extremely deceptive and hypocritical administration?
It need not reflect (too) badly on a person who’s only a Senator or a member of the House of Representatives if she or he did not know all the truth at the time about, oh, Saddam Hussein’s relationship with Osama Bin Laden, or the state of Iraq’sWMD programs… Especially given that all those people in Congress– like all the rest of us– were being actively lied to about those issues by the administration, and had relatively little access to any “independent” sources of information.
So someone, please tell me. What’s wrong with Senators Joe Biden, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton; Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of them that they can’t stand up and say: “We were misled; and you people in the Bush administration were leading the network of people who misled us!”
Why can’t they say that? … Anyone?
The current Democratic party leaders in congress have failed because they have no convictions, no courage and dont have confidence in their own abilities. They will become increasingly irrelevant as it is quite obvious they are in complete disarray on political tactics, message and leadership.
As the situation becomes more and more dire, a new set of leaders will hopefully emerge that will channel the frustrations of the American people. This will not happen until the current Republican party extremists assault all dissent. Then there will be some who feel they have nothing to lose and start to really provide a forum for opposition.
unter, I agree in part. “Nothing to lose” is the key. All of the people mentioned in Helena’s post are heavily vested in the current system of privilege and rewards for conformity. They are trying to portray the Bush Republicans as outside the mainstream, and themselves as true middle-of-the-road conformists – they are actually proud of that!
I don’t think a “new set of leaders” will emerge to guide the people in a new direction, but vice versa. The people will eventually refuse to keep going in the old direction, so the rewards for “leading” that way will disappear, and the leaders (both new and old) will perceive that there is nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain by following the people in a new direction.
At least I hope that will happen sometime during my lifetime.
Personally, I don’t believe any of them were ‘deceived’ in the sense that most of the American public was. How can a Senator or a Rep. claim to not know information that was out there, freely available to anyone who wanted to find it? How can ANY public official not know the ‘descrepencies’ in the official story when at that time they were being freely discussed on the construction sites I was on, amongst the carpenter crews?
At the time of the votes it was common knowledge Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11.
The seems to me that the Washington political ‘in’ crowd wanted this war, for all the obvious reasons (removing an Isreal enemy, various oil related reasons). It’s all about the money they recieve from various sources.
Oh yes, they ‘knew’ about the deceptions. Either that or they are the stupidest people on the face of the earth. In which case the don’t deserve to be in office anyway.
It is beyond my comprehension how any informed person could believe the democrats have any major differences than the republicans when it comes to international issues (or domestic issues to any great degree). Both parties FIRMLY believe in ‘Pan-Americana’. Both believe in Isreali claims to the west bank. Both believe France (and to a lesser degree Canada and Germany) don’t have the right to follow their own ‘national interests’ when they oppose ours.
Amazing how people avoid seeing what is right before their face when they don’t want to see it.
.
I agree with Warren about mainstream Democrats. They are either too stupid to believe their lyin’ eyes or they are part of the machine that created this mess.
The only hope we have is to remind them every day that they will be held accountable, right along with the Republicans, if they fail to tell the truth about Iraq. That includes admitting their errors.
Since a divided party is never going to elect anyone, some of our leaders may decide, “what the hell .. I may as well just do the right thing”. THEN maybe he/she will speak out.
What else can one do?
I was going to put down my toughts, but Warren already did, pretty much to the word. Digby has some good stuff on this, too. Basically, anyone with a brain was not deceived. Part of me feels more contempt for the Democrats than for Bush, for going along with him. Is Russ Feingold the only member of the senate with a spine?
There are no “mistakes.” They voted for war because it was in their interest. That makes them war criminals in a very real, and very prosecutable sense. Their crimes are indistinquishable from those of Goebbels and Hitler, Mussolini and Hirihito . These Crimes Against Peace led to the hanging of Japanese and German leaders after WW2. The UN Charter is our Supreme Law of the Land, according to our own Constitution Article 6, section 2. This means that those who violate international law are violating the US constitution. These are “high crimes” in Constitutional parlance. Democrats AND Republicans should stand trial for what has beocme Crimes Against Humanity. If you hope to live in a nation of laws, rather than of men, you all had better stop ceding the language of state crime to the bastards in charge. They made no “mistakes.” They committed capital crimes. If you went next door and hacked up your neighbors to acquire their big screen TV and stereo system, you wouldn’t tell the court you made a “mistake.”
Well, guess what? Hacking up a family next door is a miniscule crime when compared to the hundreds of thousands being massacred in Iraq and Afghanistan, and soon to be in Iran. These monsters must be arrested immediately. Democrat or Republican, they are criminals in the eyes of our own legal system — if you believe we still have one.
The Democrats, the UN Security Council and most of the Left and the Right all believed that Saddam had WMD’s of significance. Not everybody believed he had nukes, but it was generally accepted that Saddam had a significant WMD force. And most of the world believed that Saddam was actively working on nuclear weapons, since we are sure he had been working on them in previous years.
Given that Saddam and/or his sons were going to be in power in Iraq for another half a century, we were looking at nukes in the hands of a psychopath for sure. Sooner or later.
The Democratic political leadership never said they believed that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks. Although it was known Saddam provided some degree of support for a wide variety of terrorists…
The positions of the Democrats are constrained because they do not want to be seen as bringing into power in Iraq a regime of Baathists and Bin-Ladenists. Then it becomes a game of “Who lost Iraq?” And the Republicans can play that very well.
“Given that Saddam and/or his sons were going to be in power in Iraq for another half a century, we were looking at nukes in the hands of a psychopath for sure. Sooner or later.”
looking we hear again and again chewing words and scenarios from some, the reality its all lies and not facts more over what cause the war its over, the real question all of us agree on what happened after the war? the destructions and mass killing Abu Grab and Faulujah, Haditha, Rawa, Samurah, Mossel, humiliating Iraqis, looting their homes by US solders and Looting the country all these and more who is responsibility think about it and give us answers answer. Don
“Saddam and/or his sons were going to be in power in Iraq for another half a century”
Pure speculation, and completely worthless as analysis.
I agree with John C and Warren (not WarrenW) : the Dems, at least those in the parliament commissions concerned (if not all) knew how thin the case for war was and they should have advocated for more inspections before taking such a serious decision as going into an illegitimate war. If they haven’t yet come out, telling they were misled it’s probably because the Rep can easily come out with documents distributed in these commissions and proving the contrary.
I remember when Joschka Fisher the German foreign minister said publicly : how could I ever face the German folk again, if I was trying to sell them a war based on accusations which can’t be backed seriously with the intelligence we have. If a foreign minister came to this conclusion, if most of the opinion in the EU just saw the manipulation, how can we believe that the US deputies were misled, whether Rep or Dems ? And what about the US media who largely contributed to the deception of the US citizen; because those were the ones who were really mislead in this story.
WarrenW — I spent a lot of time leading up to the war combing through various media reports and information freely available on the internet.
It was obvious to anyone who decided to take the time, and who had a healthy scepticism about the gaps in much of the reporting, that Hussein had few or no WMDs. If I as a layperson could figure this out on my own, it’s obvious that anyone could have.
My conclusion is that (1) the Republicans simply lied; (2) the media did not report on the issue critically or with any detailed analysis; (3) the Democrats were afraid to rock the boat and went along with all the other lemmings.
I wrote to Senator John Edwards and told him that Saddam had NO nuclear WMDs, and it was unlikely he had any other WMDs. I wrote and pointed out that only two countries in the region had ANY fear of Saddam: Kuwait and Israel. I wrote to him and told him that even if Saddam had chemical or biological weapons they could never harm the USA. And since the vast majority of people in the world had no fear of Saddam’s supposed “weapons” there was no reason to stop inspections and start a war.
So, Senator John Edwards’ office certainly did know. I told them this war was illegal, immoral and very, very stupid. I was wrong on the last part though: it is not ‘very, very stupid’. It is oh-so-breathtakingly-stupid. It is stupid beyond belief.
As several people noted above: it was easy to figure out, which was why most of the world did figure it out. Which was why most of the world was against it.
Edwards is now saying he’s sorry, but I have not seen any signs of real contrition nor have I seen any sign that has he given any of the money he made off this war to any charity. He made a fair bundle (not as much as Cheney).
The democrats and republicans are, for the most part, two heads of the same beast. They are criminals.
As to the argument that Saddam was bad and he needed to go – again, if you read on the internet, you would know that Saddam didn’t make the top ten in bad and evil leaders on anybody’s list. Yes, he was bad, but he was “contained” as Powell and Rice said back in early 2001. He was only a danger to his own people, and it is clear to see that the present situation is a FAR BIGGER DANGER TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE THAN HAVING SADDAM IN POWER.
I would hope that this Iraq disaster shows the American people that optional war for bogus reasons is a very evil idea, but then I think the lessons of Vietnam are that we didn’t learn a damn thing.
I am sick to death of hearing from democrats like Clinton and Kerry and Edwards that we need “to do war better” than Bush and company. We need to stop doing war altogether! It is evil and insane!
What’s wrong with Senators Joe Biden, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton; Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of them that they can’t stand up and say: “We were misled; and you people in the Bush administration were leading the network of people who misled us!”
Why can’t they say that? … Anyone?
The short answer is they weren’t misled. And they are not stupid. They are part of the “network of people” and we need to get them out of office as soon as possible. They are criminals.
And Iran has no nuclear weapons either.
And I will never believe that they do unless one of the following happens:
1. leadership in Iran says they do
2. they set off a nuclear bomb
3. the current head of the IAEA says they do
Until one of those happens, do not believe any of the nonsense or lies from Bush and the US government and/or the Israeli government.
Why should anyone expect anything from Nancy Pelosi? If it’s about Israel she’s almost worse than Bush himself! This is what she said when she spoke to the Israel lobby (AIPAC) some months ago:
“There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.
“The greatest threat to Israel’s right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran. For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology.
“Proliferation represents a clear threat to Israel and to America. It must be confronted by an international coalition against proliferation, with a commitment and a coalition every bit as strong as our commitment to the war against terror.
source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0527-23.htm
I don’t think the Democrats are reluctant to criticize Bush and the war in Iraq because they are hoping “that it will turn sour” or because they are fearful of admitting they made a mistake. Rather, I believe they endorsed the war wholeheartedly from the beginning because it meshed with their own imperialist ideology and, like Bush, they simply can’t admit that it is another fiasco – like Vietnam, and for essentially the same reasons.
“Proliferation represents a clear threat to Israel and to America. It must be confronted by an international coalition against proliferation,
The creation of Israel in ME supposed to be to protect the west interest in ME
Okay — so the congressional Democrats are corrupt bums. Agreed. But they are also the closest thing to pressure points we have, so a few days ago I wrote a pre-primer on how to move your useless Democratic congresscritter.
Nauseating as it is, if we don’t do this kind of stuff, we’re complicit too. We have known better and do know better.
They cannot say they were misled because they were not misled. They agreed with the venture from the start. By the way, it is not only BushCo that are chickenhawks; I believe Hilary would just as soon have the poor shmucks dying before sending Chelsea into this noble cause.
vivion
If you knew that Saddam had no WMD’s before April of 2003 you should have told somebody! The entire UN Security Council (including Germany, France and Russia) was of the opinion that Saddam had WMD’s at that time. Not necessarily including nukes, depending on who you asked. Even Christiane is still asking for more inspections (to find them?).
The WMD’s in question are the same ones Saddam acknowledged having in 1991. All he had to do was destroy them in front of the inspectors. Instead, he apparently destroyed them in secret (or hid them). Think how much trouble would have been saved had Saddam simply destroyed the WMD’s in front of the inspectors!
Please tell us how you knew what nobody else knew.
WarrenW,
You are completely wrong in that. As I wrote earlier, I’ve heard Joschka Fischer with my own ears telling publicly that he couldn’t try to sell the war in Iraq to his folk because he wasn’t convinced by the so called prooves the Americans showed him. That was right after an official talk with Powell, who was still present in the hall as Fischer spoke.
You are also twisting what I said. I wrote that the US should have let the inspectors finish their work, yes, if they were of good faith. However the reason why the Bushies rushed to the war, without letting the inspectors finish their work, is that they feared the results of the inspections would not be able to justify the invasion of Iraq they had already planned.
Reread what I’ve said : I was never convinced by the accusations of the Bushies : what are a few aluminium tubes ? what are two mobile lab ? nothing in themselves and the US was never able to show any consisting and coherent prooves of the WMD. This was a false pretext and it was evident from the outset, if you need to see it clearly stated.
The US government has waged and illegitimate aggression war against Iraq. She is not better than Saddam who invaded Koweit. She must be held accountable and deserves a trial for war crimes.
WarrenW,
Please don’t reverse the case : the rightwing hawks and the Bushies were the accusators, so you were the ones in charges of bringing the prooves, that Saddam had WMD. You never brought them, so sensed people never bought your arguments, point.
I think part of the problem is craveness. Many Dem politicians voted to go to war out of simple craveness. Even if they had realized they were also being misled, they would still have voted for the war since it would have been too risky not to do so—No one that counted at that time was really prepared to listen to charges that the Bushcos were misleading us.
Thus, as these people who were craven in 2002 contemplate the fact that they were wrong, they are paralyzed by the memory of their craveness. Dominated by that paralysis they mistakenly believe that if they now say they were wrong they would also have to admit now that they were craven. They don’t realize they are off the hook for that since they can claim now that they were misled and who will gainsay them—even if they were actually craven instead?
Jim
All – back online after an eternity. Pleasure to see the familiar faces here.
On the Dems: It was not just collective cravenness that led them to give a thumbs-up for the war. They were encouraged to do so; Dick Gephart, as party leader, rounded their votes up. His purpose was not ideological, but short-term pragmatic. He thought Dems had a shot at regaining control of the house in mid-term elections, so long as they did not appear ‘weak on defense’ or leave themselves vulnerable to republican attacks on national security. The man spent long hours and much political capital to achieve this goal.
You can think what you want about the pragmatic merits of this, but when the issue is war, as opposed to health care, taxes, social security, etc, it is a horrendous calculation. Had Gephart gotten the Dem nod for president, I would have refused to vote for him. This is criminal, and yeah, I would support his inclusion in any war crimes action against members of the US government.
Similarly, I had real reservations about Kerry, who should have known better. Voting for the war was a replay of the 1964 Tonkin Gulf resolution, for anyone who was paying attention at the time. I was, as were others. How do you spend a tour in Viet Nam, become an anti-war activist, and STILL repeat the very mistakes the congress made then, knowing at least in the aftermath what your vote had wrought … ? That said, I supported Kerry, ambivalently, for the simple reason that he was not Bush.
Finally: WarrenW makes a point we should remember (for once), that most intelligence agencies in the West actually did believe that Saddam had WMD. Fine. The problem, which has scarcely been written about, is the nature of threat assessment. Whether or not Saddam had or wanted WMD was not the real issue in whether or not we should have gone to war. Military professionals understand that the bar is much higher than this. Lots of people want WMD and would publicly proclaim their desire to attck the US. You have to quantify the actual threat, as opposed to the mere presence of threatening elements, before committing the nation to a war. On this score, Iraq never measured up, not from the very beginning … and yeah, I wrote about this, spoke publicly about it, and wrote letters to my representatives about it. Patrick Leahy made similar points in public, but it went just about as far as my many letters, op-eds and such did.
wind – great to have you back!! That was an excellent post, which reminds us how often major policy decisions are made on the basis of short term tactics, rather than long-term strategy. Ol’ Dick basing global war and peace decisions on his pathetic (and erroneous) mid-term calculations. Makes you sick to think about it, doesn’t it?
John C. – Thanks for the warm welcome! To answer your question: Sick to the stomach, the bones, the heart and soul. Sicker still to understand just how widespread and even mundane the rot has become. I can’t blame Helena a bit for having Beltway quivers on her current trip.
I think there is a story with a common ‘time horizons’ thread yet to be told about this whole sad catastrophe; short term calculators who should have known better at one end, wide-eyed innocents who had no basis for knowing better at the other, turf warriors who may or may not have had a glimpse in the middle. It’s a small story though, about as notable to most as the water is to fish. And yet, so very decisive in the end.
wind
Your site is realy very interesting!