1115.org

In days of yore, a quaint term was applied to those among us who entered politics. They were described as public servants, probably in the quaint hope that the label might inspire some of those who went on to become congressmen and senators to actually serve the public, to act in the public interest. As opposed to functioning as party apparatchiks, whose primary loyalty is not to the public interest or their constituents, but to the party and to party leaders.

One of the things the Bush presidency has done over the last six years is throw into sharp focus how far we have moved from that antiquated notion of public service.

I don’t think the Foley-Hastert-Boehner-Reynolds-Shimkus-Fordham page scandal is the most obscene manifestation of this progress. I think this is much more obscene:

Now today comes word fom Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, that two other Senate Republicans have told him they’ll break with the White House Iraq strategy.

But here’s the hook — they won’t do so until after the November elections.

“Two leading Republican Senators have come to me,” Biden recalled, and said that after the election “the need to protect the president will be nonexistent” and Republicans will be freer to break with the White House and call for change in Iraq.

These sterling patriots may be anonymous for now, but they will have names soon enough. And then we will be able to applaud them, all of us, for their vision and for their courage. For seeing so clearly that our Iraq “policy” (if that word can be applied to the attitude of refusing to have a plan) is f***ed up, but having the guts nevertheless to hold their tongues till no one can accuse them of not being team players. Even if it means delaying the turnaround of our Iraq policy, even if that delay leads to five or twenty or a hundred needless deaths of American soldiers, even if it leads to ten times that many deaths of Iraqi civilians.

What’s a finite, countable number of lives when set against political principles, especially the hallowed principle of blind loyalty to a bankrupt president before an election? Everyone knows that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. There will be time enough later to come to the aid of the people, including those whose lives continue to be needlessly exposed to futile risk.