Iraq War: The Long View

arubyan

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday February 23, 2007 · 8:00 AM PST

2007/02/23 · 08:00

Lots in the news today about Democratic tactical maneuvering (translation: "infighting") in Congress, re: the war:

Senate Democrats (translation: "Biden") want to pass a measure that sunsets the 2002 AUMF.

House Blue Dogs have stymied Mutha's plan to restrict funding contingent on meeting readiness benchmarks.
Progressive bloggers are pitted against each other, arguing the best way to proceed.

But most people in this country are not interested in the minutiae; they are not congressional parliamentarians; they are not reading (let alone participating in) the ocean of blogger verbiage that surrounds these debates. In short, "inside baseball" is not for them.

For the majority of people (the "silent majority?") the issue is simple. They are against the war and want it ended.

So let's step back and take the long view.

Let's agree that historians will give this episode a simple paragraph their narrative of the times. It'll go like this:

"Public opinion turned against the war. As a result, they gave control of Congress to the Democrats. However, the president continued to prevail because he was the Commander in Chief and there was not much the Legislative branch could do except shut off the money...or impeach the Chief Executive. On this, Congressional Democrats were not strong enough, united enough, nor resolute enough. Furthermore, none of the Democratic or Republican candidates for president were able to capture the public's imagination about what to do next. So the war droned on for two more years, ruining lives and families at home and weakening the nation's standing around the world." In short, history will not be kind to any of the players in this story: not Bush, not the Republicans not the Democrats.

This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.

Make YOUR voice heard!

Comments are closed on this story.