After watching the Senate testimony with General Petraeus, I am not sure if it matters whom the Democratic Super Delegates chose, er, I mean the Democratic voters, select as the Democratic Nominee. In conditions that exist now, I believe that no matter who the nominee is, Senator Obama or Senator Clinton, the odds favor either candidate in becoming the next president, though I do believe one has a better shot because I doubt that the Democrats will win Florida.
But, the question remains, what conditions between now and November will change? The answer to that question is Iran, where are the testimony, the argumentative foundation was laid for attacks on Iran, as Iran is the new al-Qaeda and Iran, according to Gen. Petraeus, is sending money and arms to be used against U.S. troops. In addition, according to The Washington Post, the vice-president visited right wing talk-radio to provide additional bricks: the Iranian leadership consists of apocalyptic zealots who yearn for a nuclear conflagration to bring about conditions for the return of the 12th Imam.
Of course, everyone's favorite intellect, William Kristol, met with President Bush yesterday and the president stated that attacks may not be out of the question. According to the same The Washington Post article: "After suggesting that Iran may 'have to pay some price at some point on their own soil,' Kristol said that President Bush authorizing an attack of some kind before he leaves office is not 'out of the question.'" While this means little, it allows the ghost to remain in the room.
According to Seymour Hersh, the US has been preparing for this for some time. You can read his work in The New Yorker about the U.S.'s policy with Iran from April 2006, July 2006, November 2006, March 2007, October 2007, February 2008. While preparing for a conflict is the responsibility of the military, the similarity between arguments in 2003 and 2008 seem to uncanny.
While there may be legitimate reasons for attacking Iran, (depending on the circumstances), the attacks will no doubt alter the elections in the United States. Attacks ensure that the deliberation about the elections concern Iraq and Iran, which plays to the strengths of Republicans. To expand this conversation means that there is no need to discuss the original war in Iraq and its entailments: the definition of victory, the purpose of the war, and the ability to withdraw (now this is the way to employ heresthetics).
The best part, for Republicans, it that there is very little the Democrats can do about this. If they move to impeach the President if strikes were imminent, then the public support for Democrats will drop. If they wait and do not impeach, then may lose their standing for the November elections and make the election about national security instead of the economy.
This is how one wins elections.
4 comments:
Harrogate has tried to avoid thinking about it all, lately.
Bizzaro land.
He's been so angry about the state of the nation for so long, and he was hoping for a viable Democratic resistance to emerge. The signs were there. It could have happened. Instead we remain on infinite loop.
And then even on this blog, at times nobody seems very interested in reading one another's comments anyway. Let alone the national dialogue writ large.
Oh, people give reasons. Sometimes it's as though they themselves believe what they are saying. You couldn't have predicted X, Y, and Z, people like to say.
We wind up being surprised by the sun coming up, metaphorically speaking.
You couldn't have known how the elections would play out in advance.
You couldn't have known, before 9/11, that they would invade Iraq.
You couldn't have known racism and Islamaphobia would cripple Obama's campaign. You couldn't have known Hillary's candidacy would be nullified out the gate by preexistent hatred for her.
You couldn't have known the GOP would start another war.
No. You have to wait until it happens.
Interesting. The Ambassador to Iraq on NPR Friday said we should leave how we got into Iraq to the historians to sort out.
He is thinking about the present, the future. This is what all Americans ought to be doing.
In a few years we will leave how we got into a war with Iran, to the historians to sort out too.
But you know what.
Maybe the point has come where it is fair to say that the American voter is a willing accomplice to murder. One almost forgets the rule. Kill one, you're a murderer. Kill many you're a conquerer.
(Kill em all, you're a God).
If Democrats were to do something about this, they would need numbers- two-thirds in the house and two-thirds in the senate. Or a president, a majority in the house, and 60 members in the senate. But, since Democrats have a reluctance about winning elections, they will not have the numbers to accomplishing anything. Of course, supporting the initial war does not help their credibility. The evidence in Powell's presentation did not call for a war. But the issue was decided long before that. for political reasons. It was the 2002 midterms that settled the war as Democrats lost Congress.
As for the comments, individuals reach different decisions when faced with the evidence. People have differences.
In the larger picture, there is no reason to believe that a democratic president will be able to withdraw from Iraq because of the conditions on the ground. Anytime I hear Clinton or Obama best one another about who will withdraw troops first, I sigh as it is just pandering.
This may be a Nixon to China issue where it will take a Republican President to end the war just as it will take a Democratic President to change Social Security. This removes the explicit "partisan" flavor to the topic.
I would probably agree with you about the moral responsibility of the war, but that will not get us very far. Since it has not direct bearing on our lives, it is easy to turn the channel. Hey look, the Stanley Cup Playoffs are on TV right now.
Us not leaving because of conditions on the ground.
Good money after bad, good money after bad, good money after bad.
We can either leave sooner or later. As soon as we--the heavily armed, technologically supreme occupiers--are gone there will be a violent struggle to decide who or what group of whos run the country. Maybe this will happen in a year. Maybe in fifty.
It is not just that we are accomplices to some past committed mass murder. It is that we continue to be active accomplices in same.
And yay!!! By wallowing in identity politics and allowing Clinton and Obama to hijack the only Party with a scintilla of moral compass, we have thrown our General Election chances out the window.
Those of us invested in the Democratic Party have lost any right to deny culpability.
The either/ or, we can leave sooner or later, followed by the violence may not occur that way. While a civil war may develop, there are possibilities for that not to occur or for it not to occur in a widespread fashion. It depends on the military plan.
And I certainly agree that it is our fault in the first place. Now it depends on to what degree we exacerbate the problem. With 1,000,000 civilians dead, there are legitimate arguments to stay in to prevent further mass casualties. While I think the Bush Administration needs to be accountable for their failures, as well as the death and destruction, I do not think that the answer is the death of more civilians.
You know my position on the Democratic Party.
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