Watching the MSNBC's Dem presidential-hopefuls'"debate" I was impressed by former Senator Mike Gravel's pointed remarks.
They reminded me of the stance taken by Senators Byrd and Kennedy at the time of the AUMF debate in 2003.
A stance that was not followed by the majority of the Dems then in Congress, including some of today's leading contenders for the 2008 Dem nomination, who ran behind our disingenuous (to put it mildly) War Prez yapping and braying and with an obscene, wildly enthusiastic wagging of fluffy tails.
The substance of Gravel's remarks is reported in today's Boston Globe.
He said the early leading Democratic candidates "frightened" him because they had taken nothing off the table, including nuclear weapons, for possible military action against Iran. "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" he asked Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. "I'm not planning on nuking anybody right now, Mike," Obama replied."Good, then we're safe for a while," Gravel said. He accused candidate Joseph Biden Jr., the Delaware senator, of having "a certain arrogance" in dictating to Iraqis how to run their country.
Gravel's history is of interest as well:
A native of Springfield, Mass., Gravel served two terms in the Senate, representing Alaska from 1969 to 1981 . He made his mark as a fierce Vietnam war critic who staged a one-man filibuster that led to the end of the military draft. He drafted legislation to end funding for the war and released the Pentagon Papers, which detailed government deception over Vietnam, at the end of June 1971.
http://www.boston.com/...
As it is, Gravel simply doesn't have the money or the political machinery behind him to make him practically viable as a candidate for 2008.
Yet, maybe he has, nonetheless, something to teach the other, more likely, possible nominees.
I would summarize it this way: cut out the Bushian crap!
Dems are allowing the entire debate over Iraq to be framed far too much by some Bushian axioms that they seem curiously unwilling to question and challenge:
- "The Global War on Terror" - a con notion if there ever was one, escogitated by Bushco to justify its illegitimate, illegal and immoral invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq = the oil-grab, paid for with the blood of our women and men in the military, meant to enable Big Oil to seize Iraqi oil. This is why Bushco has always hyped the purported Al Qaeda presence in Iraq. In fact there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq till we invaded, Al Qaeda has little support among Iraqis and even that only because of our continuing occupation, the presence itself is not particularly significant - remember when we killed Al Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's purported leader in Iraq (a claim yet to be substantiated)? What happened? Nothing, it was entirely inconsequential, because the opposition to our occupation is overwhelmingly Iraqi nationalist resistance (be it Sunni or Shia) and not a largely mythical, phantomatic Al Qaeda largely invoked into existence by Bushian propaganda.
- "The no options off the table" with respect to Iran - are the Dems insistently repeating this Bushian turn of phrase at all serious? Do they envisage the nuking of Iran (with all that would entail for the Middle East and, indeed, the entire world) as a real possibility? Surely, only if they are insane. But I do not believe a single one of them to be insane. So what are they up to? Trying to be "electable" by playing up to special interest groups that continue to represent a purported Iranian nuclear threat as happening within the next ten minutes and requiring the immediate bombing of Iran? More likely, and far less deserving of respect than if they were insane.
- The "support the troops" meme. Yes, we are all for looking after to the uttermost our women and men in uniform, both before and after their term of service. But why allow Bushco's cynical and callous appeal to this phrase, which hypocritically plays on our patriotism, emotions, and concern, so as to, in fact, con the American people into supporting an immoral war? Why not insistently point out that we support the troops by being against the occupation? Why not remain firm in the decision to attach a withdrawl timetable as an indispensable condition for further funding?
Somehow I find some of our older Dems (Byrd, Kennedy, Gravel) far more representative of what (in my honest and humble opinion) Dems ought to be, and ought to be about, than some of our present leading contenders for 2008.