I call Senator Feinstein's office all the time, and I have been assured every time that my comments will be passed along to the senator. Whether or not they are, she has never taken any of my advice. I'm going to make some comments to Senator Feinstein, right here in this huge public forum, and maybe they will get some attention.
On August 27 this article by Senator Feinstein appeared in the San Jose Mercury News. Here is the money quote:
I, for one, would not have voted to authorize the president to use force if I had known then what I know now.
My response below the fold.
The article makes three points, first that it turns out to have been a bad idea to invade Iraq, and she wishes she had the most important vote of her senatorial career back for a do-over.
No question, Saddam Hussein was an evil man. But it is now clear that the administration's strategy was ``regime change'' sold to the Congress as a threat of weapons of mass destruction.
I, for one, would not have voted to authorize the president to use force if I had known then what I know now.
Who could have known?
The second point of the article is that the administration actually, well, HYPED this thing more than they should have.
Second, the administration consistently made inflammatory statements that proved to be false and sought to spin the war in an excessively positive light -- ``We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud''; ``Mission Accomplished''; ``We'll be greeted as liberators.'' If only its plans were as good as its slogans.
It turns out that the operational logistics of this bad idea that had been sold to Congress with hysterical public relations didn't work either.
Third, there were major tactical failures after the ``shock and awe'' of the initial campaign:
I suppose that I might also wish to reverse the single worst decision I had made in my entire career. Of course I might have done things things differently had I known better, but so far the worst decisions I have ever made have cost me a lot of money but have never cost other people billions of dollars, and my worst decision never got anyone killed.
You are going to have to live with this one, Senator Feinstein. You asked for the responsibility, you asked for our trust in your judgment, and we gave you a security clearance and a seat on the Intel Committee and access to hundreds of times the resources that the average citizen gets. We then asked you to make the most important decision of our generation, and you said yes when you should have said no, game over.
Senator Feinstein, hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, marched in the streets to protest this war. If you had asked any of them how you should have voted, they could have told you. They knew then what you say you wish you had known, and they do not have one hundredth the resources for gathering information that you do. Now that you confess that they DID know more than you did, there are no words to describe the magnitude of your failure. You had so many more resources, paid for by the taxpayers so you can gather the best information possible, and you used it to arrive at the wrong option when there were only two choices. Somehow, millions of ordinary people with far fewer resources had a better grasp of foreign policy than you, a lifetime professional politician paid very well to study and understand these very issues.
Certainly a good number of those people, myself included, called your office to tell you that invading Iraq was lunacy of the highest order, and I was assured that my comments would be passed along to you.
Are you saying you never got them? The millions of people who understood foreign policy better than you did, and who marched in the streets, trying to get your attention, did everything they could to get the information to you that you wish you had then, and I would like you to tell us what more we could have done in order to get the vital datum to you that you say you lacked.
When you tell us that the was was oversold, are you apologizing for the sky being blue? Your constituents do not get that vote, you do, so it is your duty to the voters to see through lies and hype, to verify claims and demand evidence, because after all, you are a professional and there are plenty of us who are not and we didn't have any trouble seeing through these snake-oil salesmen.
Your third point, that this war has been conducted badly, is ironic. The reason it has been conducted badly, is because there was no possible good way to conduct it. Once you have made the decision to invade Iraq, it was going to be a disaster, so anything you are complaining about now stems from your own failure then.
The purpose of your article is to stake out a public position and signal to your constituents that you believe it is now time for a change in direction with regard to Iraq.
It is clear we need a new direction. ``Staying the course'' is not the answer.
Gee, ya think?
Senator Feinstein, you are late to the party, three years and change late now. You were given an awesome responsibility, awesome resources with which to conduct that responsibility, and you turned out to know less about the world than so many of your fellow citizens who had none of your advantages. Now you wish you knew then what you know now.
Shame on you.
You owe everyone in the United States who protested the war a public, abject, and tear-filled apology. You owe us an explanation for why you didn't know what so many of us knew. You need to tell us what means we should use to get a message to you, if marching in the streets by the millions is not enough.