Oh, jeez. I never thought I'd hear myself say it.
But I gotta give credit where it's due. He said this:
Our Constitution does not give us the authority to run another country as we have in reality been doing in Iraq. With a national debt of almost $9 trillion, we can't afford it.
To me, our misadventure in Iraq is both unconstitutional and unaffordable. Some have said it was a mistake to start this war but that now that we are there we have to, quote, finish the job and we cannot cut and run. Well, if you find out you're going the wrong way down the interstate, you do not keep going, you get off at the next exit.
Wrong way down the interstate? Ok, maybe he's not the most gifted writer, but for a Republican, it was a pretty good speech. More over the flip.
I was inspired by the debate this week. I went to the wonderful CSPAN web page where they've posted videos of all of the speeches on the Iraq resolution. I was ready to write a scorching LTE to the local paper on what an idiot my Republican Rep was to support the idiot surge, and I wanted a few of his own quotes to hang him with.
I clicked on the link, notepad in hand. But he started with this:
Mr. Speaker, Dick Armey, our former majority leader, said in an interview with a major newspaper chain last week that he deeply regretted voting for the war in Iraq. Mr. Armey said, "Had I been more true to myself and the principles I believed in at the time, I would have openly opposed the adventure vocally and aggressively."
Huh? Why would a Republican bring this to our our attention? A former Republican majority leader regrets his vote on the Iraq war? I had to look it up. Sure enough, Armey said it. He also said this:
Q: Is George W. Bush a failed president?
A: I've said over the years that every president either ends up a pleasant surprise or a bitter disappointment. And we haven't had a pleasant surprise since Ronald Reagan. I don't see how anybody can look at the Bush presidency and say this was a success in public policy terms.
What's going on here? Are there, like, a whole bunch of conservatives jumping ship? My Congressman said, um, yeah ...
William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in 2004 that if he had known in 2002 what he knew then, he would have opposed the war. And in 2005 he wrote that to continue there beyond another year would indicate "not steadfastness of purpose but, rather, misapplication of pride."
What about this surge? The conservative columnist George Will wrote in opposition to it and said it would take a miracle for it to succeed.
Very few people, Mr. Speaker, pushed harder for us to go to Iraq than the columnist, Charles Krauthammer. A few weeks ago he wrote that the Maliki government we have installed there cares only about making sure the Shiites dominate the Sunnis.
I'm glad he reads Buckley, Will, and Krauthammer, because I can't stand them. I'm also glad to know he reads. Apparently he also listens:
Specialist Don Roberts, 22, of Paonia, Colorado, now in his second tour in Iraq, told the Associated Press: "What could more guys do? We cannot pick sides. It is like we have to watch them kill each other, then ask questions."
Sergeant Josh Keim of Canton, Ohio, also on his second tour said, "Nothing is going to help. It is a religious war and we are caught in the middle of it."
PFC Zack Clauser, 19, of York, Pennsylvania, told the McClatchy News Service: "This isn't our war. We're just in the middle."
Sergeant Clarence Dawalt, 22, of Tulsa, Oklahoma said, "They can keep sending more and more troops over here, but until the people here start working with us, it's not going to change."
And Sergeant First Class Herbert Gill, 29, of Pulaski, Tennessee, said: "Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting for thousands of years" and he said that after our raids melt insurgents away, "2 or 3 months later when we leave and say it was a success, they'll come back."
And apparently he also thinks. A Republican? Who knew ...
There is no way, Mr. Speaker, we can keep all of our promises to our own people on Social Security, veterans' benefits, and many other things in the years ahead if we keep trying to run the whole world ...
... we need to tell all these defense contractors that the time for this Iraqi gravy train with their obscene profits is over.
It is certainly no criticism of our troops to say that this was a very unnecessary war. It has always been more about money and power and prestige than any real threat to us or to our people. And this war went against every traditional conservative position I have ever known. It is time, Mr. Speaker, to bring our troops home.
Ok, I said it. Ban me now, but in this case I stand with my Republican Congressman. And yes, he voted in favor of the Resolution.
So who is this paragon of virtue, this one righteous man in a pit of vipers? None other than Jimmy Duncan, backbencher extraordinaire, 10 term veteran of no great distinction, and possessor of the safest Republican seat in the House, TN-02. We haven't elected a Democrat to Congress since 1856, and that's not a typo. It's been one hundred and fifty years, egads.
So maybe it didn't require a truckload of political courage to stand there and speak the truth, but by God, he did it, and I gotta hand it to him.
The full text of Duncan's speech is here.