Monday, April 30, 2007

Why aren’t Democrats taking any blame for Iraq?

Senator “The War is Lost” Harry Reid


It occurred to me as I watched the Democrats debate, for the nomination for their party to be President of the United States of America, that these candidates think that they can get away with not taking responsibility for the war in Iraq.

I give you that some of them did not vote for the war because they were not in the Senate at the time by the fact is their party did in remarkable numbers and Democrats can not just abdicate their responsibility in this chapter of American history.

Think about it, if all of the Democrats who blame the Bush administration for the war in Iraq would not have voted to give the President authority to invade Iraq we would not be in Iraq today. However Democrats did vote for the war and subsequently they have voted to fund the war so why is this in Democrat’s mind, “Bush’s war”

Simple answer is Democrats say this is Bush’s war because Democrats seized on the growing dissatisfaction with the war (part of which they manufactured for political purposes) they did this to engineer a winning political strategy against the Bush administration and Conservatives, which makes for good anti-Bush politics. As you know for eight years Democrats have obsessed on defeating George Bush and Conservatives.

The Red state Blue state divide that became so prominent in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections marked the beginning of the Civil war that is presently raging in this country, liberals against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans.

But what is unconscionable, I think, is that Democrat Presidential candidate hopefuls are allowed by the media and their constituents to disassociate themselves from their own personal choices to invade Iraq. Have we forgotten the –Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq— and the House and the Senate votes that authorized the war?

Yet Democrats continue to disingenuously claim that his or her vote for invading Iraq was Bush’s fault for whatever reason that Democrats make that claim, intelligent voters should rebuke it’s Bush’s fault arguments, why? Because not all Democrats voted for the war only those who chose too, so such claims should count as one more politician that does not take responsibility for his or her decisions. If some Democrats were not fooled by Bush then why were some?

Rather, any honest Politician would say, I voted for the war based on what we all thought was evidence to support such a vote. We now know that everyone based his or her decision to go to war on faulty intelligence information. Base on that we are all equally at fault.

The fact is there were plenty of Democrats who voted against the war. Out of nine Democrats who sat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence deciding whether to recommend to the full body to go to war 5 voted for war and 4 did not.

For instance Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat is now making the claim that he he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the intelligence committee. Durbin was not the only Democrat on that committee.

However, what Senator Durbin statement does is unwillingly support the Bush administration’s assertion that the Senate had the same information regarding the war as the administration did with which to base their decisions.

Mr. Durbin, said he and half the Democrats on the intelligence committee voted against the war over concerns of the White House's case for war. But what Mr. Durbin doesn’t tell you is that there were nine Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and five of them voted for the measure as did all eight Republicans to send recommendation to the entire body to vote for use of armed force against Iraq.

If as Senator Durbin contends, the White House’s case for war was not good then why did five Democrats vote to recommend to the Senate for war?

Think about it, if nine Democrats vote as Durbin did they out number eight Republicans and the authority for war in Iraq never gets out of committee. The fact is Democrats had the power to prevent this war all along. This is just as much the Democrats war as it is anyone elses.

Any Democrat that claim that he or she was deceived by the President about the war and that is why he or she voted for the war is merely a political opportunist and not worthy of voter support.

Congress authorized the 2003 use of armed force against Iraq by votes of 296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate in a Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq. This is every bit the Congress’s war, the Democrats war and the people’s war.

So why aren’t the Democrats sharing in the blame?