Sobering Thoughts
James Taranto at Opinion Journal is looking at the Democrats post election. The question is now where do we go from here? Especially re: Iraq. It looks as if things are changing in a way I had hoped. The Dems now have the football and have to move it. Sitting back and criticizing is not going to work as well as it used to. David Keene was discussing the issue:
Keene concludes: "Iraq is many things, including a tar-baby that congressional Democrats are going to find as difficult to get away from as the Republicans they so gleefully beat up over the last few years." We'd put it a little differently: Iraq is a challenge, as well as an opportunity, for America, and if both major parties at last find it necessary to face that challenge responsibly, that is good for the country.I have often thought that the Dems would not buy into the war unless they had control of some portion of it. They bought it broken and got it at a discount. Let us see if they can fix it.
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1 comment:
To paraphrase Darth Vader, "I find your excess of faith disturbing".
Having finally gotten their feet under table in the war room, after five years of increasingly strident squawking from outside the door, the Democrats are now going to take this conflict for a spin to see if they like it. After all, GWB managed to turn it into an electoral asset they have been beaten over the head with for several years, who knows what it might be made to yield for them, so they are not going to just junk it without trying it out to see what it might do for them.
Never forget though that they retain the option to do what they did with Vietnam - to suddenly declare that, even though they were in it all along up to their elbows, now they are now righteously against it and that it has been a Republican war all along.
If I thought the Democrats have any clue what they are doing in now beginning to toy with for instance increasing troop numbers in Iraq, I might expect something more constructive than this in the future. Instead I think they have no clue. To them the war is a shiny toy they wanted when the other guy had it. Now it's in their hands they are attracted to it for a few minutes, but most of its attraction lay in the fact that Bush had it to himself - now that has gone away they will get bored with it and seek to toss it aside.
I'd rather this switcheroo came quickly, actually. If we were to go through a whole Democratic administration that just threw more money and soldiers at the war before deciding to disavow it then we really would go through another Vietnam.
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