Very nice
editorial today in the Washington Post written by E. J. Dionne about Rep. David Obey (D-WI) and his battles in congress for religious freedom.
The closing paragraph really struck me:
It's not easy being David Obey, but he doesn't seem to mind. "You can't win fights," he says, "unless you wage them." Maybe when he leaves Congress, no time soon, I hope, Obey can run seminars on courage -- and faithfulness.
My thoughts below.
We can't win fights unless we wage them.
We can't win the battle against the administration regarding torture, if we don't support those (Durbin) who speak out and if we don't roundly condemn those (Daley) who attack our own. We should be calling for Daley's resignation.
We can't win the battle against the administration regarding the destruction of religious freedom, if we don't support those (Dean) who speak out, and if we don't roudly condemn those (Pelosi, Biden) who attack our own. We should ask Pelosi to step down as Minority leader and let Biden know he has no chance in 2008.
We can't win the battle against the administration on Iraq if we don't take it to Karl Rove and the Republicans. When Durbin correctly compared us to oppressive regimes of the past, the Republicans with a single unanimous voice condemned him and kept the pressure on until he apologized (wrongly). Right now, all I hear is crickets chirping because the Democrats are too scared to speak up, except for a Clinton/Schumer press conference that got zippo coverage outside of NYC and DC.
We can't win the battle against the administration trying to repeal the first amendment if we don't fight. If we sit here and let Diane Feinstein and others cosponsor this amendment and just say "oh, it will not pass enough states" then we are handing the keys of our freedom to the fascists.
The "We" in my paragraphs above is a bit confusing, I admit. Most of the time I'm not referring to we Kossacks, it's more the public Democrats. I'm tired of Democrats attacking our own while Republicans also attack us. We need the unified voice on issues that are important. We need to come up with those list of issues that are important enough that we should be unified and not deviate. I would propose issues such as:
A) Freedom. This means freedom of speech (unanimous opposition to the "flag" amendment) and freedom of religion. This means freedom to protest - any time any high-ranking republican refers to an opponent as un-American or a traitor for opposing the president there should be 45 Senators and a couple hundred Representatives on the airwaves talking about how our country was founded on freedom and that includes freedom to disagree with the President. This also means free elections, with a verified paper trail.
B) Privacy. This means keep the government out of our bedrooms. This means let us make our medical decisions (including abortion). This means opposition to the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act may pass again but it should pass on party lines 55-45 in the Senate with Democrats in unison talking about how giving a fascist government such intrusive powers is undermining the very freedom that we claim to be protecting. No equivocating. Everyone from the same talking points. The Republicans are unanimously for it, if we waver at all then we undermine anyone who opposes it.
C) Iraq. It has failed. We need to support our troops by stopping the Bush administration from cutting Veterans funding, and then we need to get our soldiers out of there. We need to talk about Osama bin Laden in the newspapers on a daily basis. Where is he? We need to talk about things like number of houses with running water and power in Iraq. We need to talk about how many funerals Bush hasn't attended and why he has obstructed Freedom of the Press (see "A" above) and denied press access to the troops returning home in body bags. We need to protect our country by focusing on those who actually want to attack us - the terrorists of Al Queda backed by Saudi Arabia - not Iraq. We should set up an exit strategy, pull our troops out of there, then take the funding that we were going to spend on the war and run it through a UN group with lots of international observers to rebuild the mess we made. I bet $80 billion would go a really long way towards rebuilding the country we destroyed. Haliburton should be prohibited from bidding on any contracts.
Maybe my 3 items are wrong, but point is that we can't win if we don't fight, and we can't win if we're busy fighting each other.
We need more people like David Obey.
-Fred