This post by Liberal repeats a fairly common meme (yes, I know many people hate that word), which is usually expressed by conservatives, or (in this case) smugger-than-thou independents, which is that those democrats and liberals who voted for the initial use-of-force authorization, or who have voted to continue funding for the war, are just as responsible (or close to it) for what has happened in Iraq as Bush and his administration.
I think that is hogwash.
Initiating an action is FAR differen than going along with it. This is particularly true in the world of politics, where the reasons for supporting a measure can include a wide variety of practical or political motivations. To boil this issue down to its essence, if you replace Bush and his administration with a different president and a different administration (perhaps even a Republican one, but one not dominated by the same group of neo-cons), we wouldn’t be at war right now. If you replace Hillary and Nancy with almost any other conceivable group of congresspeople, we still would. Why are we at war? Because Bush and his administration decided we should be, and congress went along with it. There’s blame to go around, (and, for that matter, credit, on the off chance that everything magically works out and the war turns out to be a glowing success), but the amount that belongs to Bush and the neo-cons, who initiated and pushed and lied and pressured and engaged in political maneuvering; is vastly huger than the amount that belongs to the democrats, who GOT pushed and lied to and maneuvered and pressured, who at times were arguably put into no-win situations, and who didn’t have the balls to take a stand.
Thoughts?
The War in Iraq is a Republican War. Republicans dreamed it up. Republicans planned it. Republicans ran the campaign of misinformation that convinced many people to support it. A Republican president ordered it. Republicans supported it and refused to hold him accountable for his failures (and many still do). It’s understandable that many Republicans would want to duck the blame for it, or at least share the blame, given how the war has been a horrible and total failure. But it’s their war, no matter how much they try to disown it.
I agree with you, to a point. While the Dems did cave in, and continue to do so, you are correct in stating that the Iraq war would not have happened without Bush and his conspirators.
Still, the Dems do not get a free pass on this. It’s a major reason why I would not support Hillary for President in '08. When the most important decision of their career came around, they chose what was simple rather than what was right.
Your mini-analysis totally removes Iraq from the equation. That’s unwise, IMHO - we had severe problems with them from 1990 onward, and the Clinton Administration engaged in military strikes against Iraq in the mid-1990s.
I do not think these issues would have magically resolved - they certainly didn’t under Clinton. And the stresses of the early Bush administration regarding the Oil-for-Food scandal and the international pressure to end sanctions (related issues, to be sure) would have been a problem for any administration.
Furthermore, we know for a fact that the Hussein regime was awaiting the end of these sanctions to restart many banned activities.
So to say that a different administration wouldn’t have gone to war isn’t provable, and I suspect, and have long believed, that another war with Iraq was inevitable given this pattern of behavior.
I think your analysis ought to account for how any other administration would have handled sanctions breakdown - that was bound to happen, given how the cards were stacked in the UN. With no sanctions, how would any of your hypothetical administrations have contained Hussein?
If the Iraq war hadn’t been a total cock-up, there’s no way Liberal or anybody else who argued for it in 2002-2003 would be saying that the the Dems deserved any credit for it. They would be proudly saying “The Iraq War is a Republican War.”
Can you explain how that post says that the Dems are just as responisble (or close to it)… as Bush is? I don’t see it from that one sentence:
But no, the Dems aren’t as responsible, though they do share some of the blame. People often forget that the Senate was controlled by the Democrats (if only by 1 vote) at the time of the AUMF vote. The Dems could have easily blocked the AUMF if they wanted to. Now, we don’t know what Bush would have done if that happened, but it’s possible the war might not have been fought.
Plus, no matter how you look at it, Bush (and his administration) led us into war. He was the sine qua non of the Iraq war. The Dems are to be blamed for not doing their due diligence, but that’s a different matter. This is Bush’s war.
We don’t know what Bush would have done? Got some pretty good guesses though, don’t we? Let’s see now, Congressional elections coming up, 9/11 fever in full bloom, gosh, I just wonder what he might have done? Come in his pants, for starters.
A lot of us forget that the AUMF was not sold as a declaration of war, The Leader was swearing up, down and sideways that it was intended to strengthen his hand for negotiation, he was swearing mighty oaths that he would pursue every diplomatic possibility. He was lying through his teeth, and now we know that.
But anyone who voted against the AUMF was saying, in effect, “The Leader is a lying sack of shit!”. Paul Wellstone had that kind of gumption, rest his soul, but it is not widely spread amongst the craven class.
So its kind of like saying “Sure, I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but why didn’t he jump out of the way when he saw the bullet coming?”
To me, the key point is the credit issue. If the situation in Iraq were a peaceful, stable democracy right now, and Pelosi and Reid said that they deserved as much credit as Bush for the good results, I’d laugh like a lunatic. While it’s not fair to say that they’ve done nothing, clearly the lion’s share of the credit should go to the Bush administration.
That being the case, no honest appraiser can say the reverse should be any different: the lion’s share of the blame for a bad situation also belongs to this administration
Yes, the Dems are wholly at fault. At gunpoint, they forced the President onto that aircraft carrier and made him stand in his flightsuit at the podium in front of the “Mission Accomplished” sign.
It is a lie to say that I have ever argued in favor of a US military invasion of Iraq.
In fact, my arguments were the opposite. From 19 March, 2003:
Therefore, I support the liberation of those who wish to be liberated, but not by the U.S. military. That military should be used only to defend and retaliate with respect to specific threats to U.S. citizens.I have always and consistently argued that initial force is a tyranny. In fact, that defines my worldview. Perhaps it was difficult for you to entertain a more nuanced position than “Bush is a retard” versus “Bush is a god”. At any rate, a retraction from you is in order.
The part of the post that I think is off-base is that somehow the war would be over if Congress didn’t give another dollar for it.
We’d just end up with 150,000 troops in Iraq with no gasoline, electricity, bullets, or other consumables. It takes money to get the troops home. The alternative to no money for the war is no troops coming home.
The power of the purse is a very blunt instrument. I noted that immediately after the election, Dick Cheney repeatedly dared Pelosi and Reid to cut off funds for the war. Apparently some people did not see through the clever ruse Cheney set forth: cut off funds and the troops are stuck, and Congress will get the blame. And you can’t force the President to withdraw the troops without (a) giving him the money to do it and (b) having a veto-proof majority to pass a law requiring the withdrawal.
If a serial killer asks me for money to buy guns so he can shoot people, and I give it to him willingly, then exactly how much less culpable do you hold me for the murders? What would a judge or jury say?
Naturally, you will say the analogy is flawed. Otherwise, you’d have to concede the point. So just in plain direct terms to the issue as is, why are people less culpable for enabling and funding violence than the people who do the dirty work of carrying it out?
Good point. The Pubbies won quite a few seats in the Senate that October, and they almost certainly would have won the same, or more, if the AUMF got voted down. Still… Americans weren’t itching to go to war at that time, and anything that could have slowed the process down would have been good. If the Dems had taken the time to actually read the NIE (as only a few did), they might have more easily seen thru the “mushroom cloud rhetoric” of the Bush administration and still been able to block passage even though they were in the minority. A tough thing to to, and not very likely, but still possible.
What I was actually thinking about is whether Bush would have invaded if he hadn’t been able to get the AUMF. I’m not so sure about that.
True, it was sold that way, but plenty of us saw through that BS. I would hope that a US Senator would be able to do so as well. Then there was the Levin amendment, which got voted down-- it would have put one more layer of approval on whether Bush could actually invade. I think only 4 Democratic Senators who voted for the AUMF also voted for the that amendment.
For an interesting blow-by-blow analysis of the lead-up to the AUMF, read “Hillary’s War” from the NYT Sunday Magazine last year. It’s looking at it thru what Hillary did, but I think she’s pretty typical of Democrats who voted for the war. In particular, note “A Forgotten Vote” section that starts on p3-- that’s about the Levin amendment.
As did quite a few other Dems and a few Pubbies, too. I don’t think you had to call Bush a lying sack of shit, even implicitly, by not voting for the AUMF. We can disagree on policy matters without calling each other liars.
“As responsible?” Complete nonsense. “Responsible?” Yes, absolutely. They enabled Bush, and I think most of the Democrats who voted for the resolution did so because politically it made sense to vote for it - people hated Saddam, and a few of them wanted to shore up their credentials on defense. That’s vile, even if it’s less vile than starting the war.
Let me propose a different analogy, and tell me if it is flawed. There is a new mayor in town, who absolutely hates the Jones family that lives out in the outskirts. But he’s a crafty guy, so he starts spreading rumors, along with fabricated documents, about how the Jones family was involved in the horrific kidnapping that shocked and horrified the town last year. It all sounds so plausible. And he asks people for donations to mount an investigation into the Jones family and their dealings. Except that if you read the fine print, his request is pretty open ended, and in fact once he gets the money, he uses it to buy a gun and goes and kills all the members of the Jones family, who, we later find out with evidence that was found in their house, were completely innocent.
Who is more responsible? The mayor or the people who granted his request for money?
The problem with your analogy is that is wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t “hey, I want to bomb Iraq back to the stone age even though they pose no threat to us, but I can’t without money. Can I have money?”.
Here’s a potentially Godwinizing example: Albert Speer is generally not thought of as being as evil as Hitler, or as responsible for the holocaust. Is that reasonable?
The war was a neocon think tank construct. The forcing of the intelligence was actively done by Cheney. The tossing out of countering opinions was Republican decision. We asked Turkey to assist and they said Sadaam was a paper tiger and no threat.
Once wardrums are being beaten, it is very difficult to not listen. If you go against them and the war turns out good ,you can kiss your career goodbye. Ask the French .
However once this fiasco starrted ,to continue funding it has been a horrible mistake.
It is a Bush,Cheney, Wolfowitz, Kristol neocon war. Couldn’t have done it without them.
I think that’s an excellent analogy, and part of what I argued myself early on, back in 2003. Its only weakness is that it no longer applies. The whole town is the wiser now, but people keep donating. If I were a Democrat, I’d be mad as hell. Those people ran on an anti-war platform, and I would feel terribly let down. I think it is a mistake to reward them with support and defensive arguments that they have not earned. If you simply must have Democrats, then at least replace these with ones who will do what they say.