Beastie Boys exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland
I’ve been thinking about Adam Yauch, a/k/a MCA from the Beastie Boys, a lot lately. He was 47 when he passed away back in 2012, which at the time was a few years older than I was. Time has gone by since then, and I’m now the same age that he was. Reminders of one’s own mortality are everywhere, if you’re willing to see them.
Back in 2002, in the run-up to the Iraq War, the Congress had an important and Constitutionally-mandated role to play. The Bush Administration had war on their mind, but they couldn’t just launch a war without Congressional approval. And as anyone who reads this blog knows, Senator Hillary Clinton voted for the war, and Congressman Bernie Sanders did not.
Hillary’s vote to give President Bush the authority to launch the war was explained in great detail in a recent article by Fred Kaplan in Slate. Slate has almost lost me with their kowtowing to the NFL over the recent movie Concussion, but on this issue I appreciate the details that Kaplan went into. It appears I had blocked a lot of this out over the past 12 years.
The key reason that Senator Clinton voted for the war--or more accurately the AUMF--is that she was trying to strengthen Bush’s hand in negotiations over weapons inspections. Passing the resolution with only a handful of Democratic votes, in her mind, would expose a rift in the nation over what Bush was doing, ultimately taking the nation to war.
But that calculation—creating the appearance of a national consensus for military action—came at the cost of marginalizing those, like Representative Sanders, who opposed the war on principle. We’ll never know if a “no” vote from Senator Clinton would have derailed the war itself (I don’t think anything could have done that), but her stature as perhaps the most high-profile name in the Senate after Ted Kennedy would have opened up a wider national discussion about the issue. Instead of trying to prevent the war, Hillary decided to keep her powder dry by getting out of the way.
This meant that Bernie Sanders and the others who opposed the war back in 2002 had to work that much harder at stating why the war was a mistake. Sanders’ speech is amazingly prescient, spelling out the risks involved with a unilateral invasion of Iraq. But there’s no doubt that he was speaking to a Congress that was going to give the president what he wanted.
Back to MCA and the Beastie Boys. Their 2004 release, To The 5 Boroughs, came out after the war had been approved and started. The album is filled with anti-Bush rhymes, the likes of which no other musical acts were willing to release. My favorite MCA rhyme is about “impeaching Tex,” in a clear reference to the cowboy president who was in office at the time. Laugh at them if you want to, or even ignore them altogether, but understand that they took on George W. Bush when few others seemed willing to do so. (Pink’s “Dear Mr. President” is a notable exception, but it did not appear until 2006, when Bush was already a lame duck.)
A line from the Beastie Boys’ song Time to Build--delivered not by MCA but by Adam “AdRock” Horovitz--summarizes the difference between Senator Clinton and Representative Sanders perfectly. The line says--as the title of this post suggests-- that it’s easier to sit back (as Hillary did by getting out of Bush’s way) than to stick out your neck (as Bernie did by opposing the AUMF).
It’s now twelve years later, and MCA is no longer with us. The Beastie Boys themselves have disbanded, out of respect for Yauch. But their words back in 2004 put a finger on the difference between the two remaining Democratic candidates for President, all these years later. I’ll take the one who stuck out his neck—and has since been vindicated for his opposition—over the one who sat back and allowed the war to happen.
Call me names if you want to, but the blood of that war is not on Bernie’s hands, as it is on Hillary’s. And she can’t have my vote as a result.
