![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Digby does it again:
After all, the rationale for the war in Iraq was absurd on its face: al Qaeda had attacked us so we attacked Iraq. We could have attacked New Zealand for all the sense it made.
Now I realize that they dazzled a lot of people with a lot of bullshit but the fact remains that even if the publicly known information had turned out to be true it still wouldn't have made any sense. The world was full of potential threats. Why Iraq? Why then? Why the rush? Why alienate our allies? Why take our eye off the ball? Why not North Korea or Pakistan, both of which at that very moment presented a more obvious threat? Those are questions that have not to this day been adequately answered. Hell, the questions have barely even been asked by the mainstream press.
This was not a tough call on the merits, regardless of the lame demagogic gobbledygook (drone planes anyone?) about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction." That is unless you supported the ridiculous Bush Doctrine that permits the US to "take out" any country that might someday think of posing a threat. Or you agreed with the puerile notion that we had to prove our manhood in the middle east by kicking somebody's ass --- didn't matter whose. I reserve the right to not support people who thought things like that --- or who believed that it made sense after 9/11 to invade a country in the mid-east that had not attacked us. They were very foolish about something very serious.
I do not, however, think that the Democrats in congress believed any such thing. I'm not so naive that I don't know that the political exigencies of the moment put Democrats in a tough spot. I wish they had had the courage to stand up and say, "wtf?" but the militant zeitgeist demanded that they genuflect to the flag every five minutes or be called terrorist loving traitors. It was not easy, particularly since the memory of the Democratic votes against the first Gulf War seemed fresh to many of those geezers.
Still, 22 Democratic senators and Jim Jeffords voted against the use of force resolution, so it's not like this view was way out there. And I have no doubt that not one of those 23 saw even the remotest justification for war with Iraq. (I seriously doubt the rest of them did either.)
Today, most Democrats who voted for the resolution have found ways to publicly distance themselves from that moment. I think they know that history is going to judge them harshly for their weakness. It will judge America harshly.
After all, the rationale for the war in Iraq was absurd on its face: al Qaeda had attacked us so we attacked Iraq. We could have attacked New Zealand for all the sense it made.
Now I realize that they dazzled a lot of people with a lot of bullshit but the fact remains that even if the publicly known information had turned out to be true it still wouldn't have made any sense. The world was full of potential threats. Why Iraq? Why then? Why the rush? Why alienate our allies? Why take our eye off the ball? Why not North Korea or Pakistan, both of which at that very moment presented a more obvious threat? Those are questions that have not to this day been adequately answered. Hell, the questions have barely even been asked by the mainstream press.
This was not a tough call on the merits, regardless of the lame demagogic gobbledygook (drone planes anyone?) about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction." That is unless you supported the ridiculous Bush Doctrine that permits the US to "take out" any country that might someday think of posing a threat. Or you agreed with the puerile notion that we had to prove our manhood in the middle east by kicking somebody's ass --- didn't matter whose. I reserve the right to not support people who thought things like that --- or who believed that it made sense after 9/11 to invade a country in the mid-east that had not attacked us. They were very foolish about something very serious.
I do not, however, think that the Democrats in congress believed any such thing. I'm not so naive that I don't know that the political exigencies of the moment put Democrats in a tough spot. I wish they had had the courage to stand up and say, "wtf?" but the militant zeitgeist demanded that they genuflect to the flag every five minutes or be called terrorist loving traitors. It was not easy, particularly since the memory of the Democratic votes against the first Gulf War seemed fresh to many of those geezers.
Still, 22 Democratic senators and Jim Jeffords voted against the use of force resolution, so it's not like this view was way out there. And I have no doubt that not one of those 23 saw even the remotest justification for war with Iraq. (I seriously doubt the rest of them did either.)
Today, most Democrats who voted for the resolution have found ways to publicly distance themselves from that moment. I think they know that history is going to judge them harshly for their weakness. It will judge America harshly.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
