It now seems inevitable that we will plunge into yet another destructive Middle East war -- one that will have a direct and tangible impact on Americans' homefront lives in a way the Iraq war never quite has. Between the new human carnage in the theater, the increased threats of terrorism at home, the economy-destroying higher costs of energy (noted by Bonddad in his diary), and the inevitable further clamping down on independent thought in our now-fragile democracy (don't ya know there's a war on), America is now headed for an even rougher period than it's been dealing with since BushCo got in.
Could this have been avoided? Perhaps. But it would have required the opposition party to have spent the last few years broadcasting a strong, steady, and consistent message to the public that Bush and his neocon minions are dangerous liars intent on destroying all that is good about America in service of their myopic, dystopian "vision" of what the nation and the world should look like.
Ever since Bush got into office, the national-level Democratic Party has been afraid of attacking the misguided foreign-policy objectives of BushCo for fear of "looking soft on national security". Bush wants his Patriot Act? Aye, sir. We didn't need it against the nuclear-powered Soviets, but Ayrabs with boxcutters are MUCH more lethal. Bush wants his Iraq war? Aye, sir. It's only left-wing nutjobs who hate America who claim Saddam's not a threat to us. Bush wants to gut the Fourth Amendment? Aye, sir. Rule of law only applies to sex scandals. Bush wants to nullify Congress with signing statements? Aye, sir. Whatever, I gotta go, I've got a fundraiser.
With the fiasco that the Iraq war has become (entirely predictable if one had listened to the left-wing nutjobs), the debacle that was the Katrina response, and other visible foreign-policy misadventures, the Democrats had golden opportunities to paint the Republicans and the White House regime as craven, incompetent liars who cannot be trusted with running our foreign policy (or domestic, for that matter). A few Democrats, in fact, DID try to get this message out to the public -- Russ Feingold, Howard Dean, Jack Murtha. But every time a Democrat would stick his neck out to state the obvious, a chorus of "moderate" Dems would immediately distance themselves from the speaker, undermining the development of a meme and reinforcing the idea in the media and in much of the public that the Democrats had no message.
So now we arrive at what will be an absolute disaster of a war, at every imaginable level. A war that will cause incalculable damage to our country militarily, economically, and socially. A war we are financially, militarily, and psychically unprepared for. And a war that a true opposition party might have had the power to keep us from falling into, if it had spent the last five years developing and reinforcing the idea that Bush is a lying sociopath who cannot be trusted with ANY major decisions.
The Democrats can certainly blow the whistle now and eviscerate BushCo for its warmongering, as Joe Biden did last Sunday. But they haven't spent enough time developing the groundwork for such a message to be effective, and when the chips are down, given their history in these matters, they'll dutifully roll over and support the war. And get slaughetered in the elections for their trouble. The Democrats' timidity over the years in the face of BushCo has hampered their ability to craft a saner, alternative narrative to the BushCo version of events -- with disastrous results for country and party.
And what reasons do the "moderate" Democrats offer for their vacillating and timid nonopposition to Bush? "Got to maintain electability." "Can't look soft on terror." "Got to be credible on national security." Given that the Democrats have lost enormous ground in the last two elections proffering these excuses, and given the irony that the Dems' appeasement of the Republicans for fear of having their national-security creds questioned has led this nation to the brink of an extraordinarily INSECURE era, one can now see that when history looks back upon this period, historians will affix an enormous amount of blame on "leaders" who could have stopped the self-immolation of American democracy if they'd bothered to speak up. But they didn't.
So now the world's in flames. But hey, at least some Dems can claim they look "tough". Just like they did in the fall of 2002. And we know how that played with the voting public.
And in their zeal to prove how much they "support" America by signing onto BushCo's empire-building, the "moderate" Democrats have wound up enabling the destruction of our once-great republic. And that's the saddest tragedy of all.