Democratic Doublespeak
by sarabeth at 6:00 am on September 27th, 2007 in Democrats, Iraq WarOn CNN’s Situation Room on Tuesday, Wolf Blitzer asked Nancy Pelosi about Democrats’ failure to do anything constructive to bring the Iraq war to an end. She tried to shelter behind Republican obstructionism in the Senate, as if people haven’t been asking for months why Democrats don’t simply make continued funding for the war conditional on a meaningful withdrawal plan. He asked the obvious follow-up. If her reply means anything at all, please let me know, because to me it is pure distilled gobbledygook:
BLITZER: Let’s talk about the war in Iraq. When you became speaker, you said bringing the war to an end is my highest priority as speaker. Now, you’ve been speaker now for nine months. The war, if anything, is not only continuing but it’s expanding. There are more troops now in Iraq than there were when you became the speaker. What are you going to do about that?
PELOSI: Well, what we did when we took office. We took the majority here. We changed the debate on the war. We put a bill on the president’s desk that said that we wanted the redeployment of troops out of Iraq to begin in a timely fashion and to end within a year. The president vetoed that bill. He got quite a response to that veto and the Republicans in the Senate then decided that he was never going to get a bill on his desk again, so we have a barrier. And it’s important for the American people to know that while I can bring a bill to the floor in the House, it cannot be brought up in the Senate unless there is a 60 vote.
BLITZER: But you could in the House of Representatives use your power of the purse, the money, just to stop funding the war if you really wanted to.
PELOSI: I wish the speaker had all the power you just described. I certainly could do that. That doesn’t bar the minority from bringing up a funding resolution. They have their parliamentary prerogatives, as well.
I still cannot believe that Wolf Blitzer meekly accepted that non-answer.
Until Pelosi and Reid grow a spine on the subject of using war funding as a policy-change weapon, there’s going to be zero change in direction in the Iraq war. And there’s zero sign of Pelosi and Reid growing said spine. This is despite all the polls which clearly indicate that Americans strongly support using war funding to force Bush to start withdrawing from Iraq.
There is only one way all this makes sense. No matter what Pelosi or Reid or any other Democratic leader says, bringing the war to an end is nobody’s highest priority. It’s not even a kinda sorta high priority. They just like to talk about it. No one has the slightest intention of actually doing anything meaningful.
And anyone who has ever harbored hopes of seeing any meaningful legislative action to hasten the end of the Iraq war is the kind of certifiable lunatic that I used to be till very recently.
johnwin wrote:
If the truth is known no one knows what to do constructively.
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 9:40 am ¶
Martin Ferrini wrote:
I too used to have hope that the excruciatingly slow wheels of political justice would surely grind towards some salvation or resolution of the war and everything else that is so wrong (I’ll spare the by now obvious, progressive laundry list). No longer. Somewhere between stumbling upon the doggedley realist Arthur Silber and grokking the terrifying premise of Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” I now find myself beginning to become resigned to the very real possibility that there is nothing anyone can do to stop our inevitable descent into an insidious fascism. It really is just all “about the Benjamins” and very few people seem able to perceive or admit just how far along we already are.
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 11:12 am ¶
sarabeth wrote:
in order to withdraw our troops (as opposed to chasing Bush’s wet dream of creating an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself)?
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 11:26 am ¶
matt wrote:
-1 for use of the word grokking
+1 for all about the benjamins
total score=even par
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 11:53 am ¶
JimC wrote:
What’s up with this?
I expected that from Clinton and Obama but I figured Edwards would put a stake in the ground and commit to getting the troops out (if anything to differentiate himself from the leading two candidates)??? If Edwards was the President, presumably the Democrats would still hold the House and Senate, so why not commit to bringing all the troops home by 2013?
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 6:11 am ¶
sac wrote:
Because the president you voted for has gotten us so far into a huge fucking mess that it’s simply realistic to say that we’ll be there in 2013.
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 7:44 am ¶
JimC wrote:
Yes, I know that, but Edwards was supposed to be the candidate that the anti-war crowd could depend on to get us out ASAP, was he not? So, I thought the point was to get us out now, period, eat the consequences and deal with it later. So it seems even the most anti-war candidates concede then that they do not have a solution to end the war and if they can’t end the war, then they must do what then?
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 8:15 am ¶
sac wrote:
Well, the president you voted for will just bide his time until his term ends by half-assing it with “surges” and by flying Condoleeza around to engage in pretend diplomacy. The Dems will do what they do best: wilt. Hillary will win the election and immediately keep the number of troops in Iraq at about the same level as they are now, maybe shuffle them around a bit in a nod to “redeployment.” Meanwhile, more bases will be built in Iraq, further entrenching our presence there. McDonald’s stock will rise. The American public will dig around for reserve stockpiles of outrage to lob at Congress every few weeks. Shopping will continue unabated. Sec. of State Biden will propose Iraqi Partition Plan 6.0 to thunderous ambivalence. Blogs will be started with great passion, then abandoned. Bin Laden will sign on with Good Morning America for a new segment: “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden,” co-hosted with Matt Lauer.
So it is written…
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 8:58 am ¶
matt wrote:
his position is that there will be approximately 3500 troops to guard the embassy and protect NGOs. it’s not 0 troops, but it’s also not grounds for you to call into question his anti-war positions.
there’s no gotcha here.
and sac is largely correct, although joe biden’s ego won’t fit in the same administration as hillary’s.
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 9:53 am ¶
JimC wrote:
The quote however was specific to combat troops. If he is leaving only 3500 to protect the embassy then there is a disconnect that he needs to explain (between embassy security and combat troops). I don’t know if has clarified that since the debate but there’s a distinction between troops to protect the embassy and combat troops.
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 10:08 am ¶
matt wrote:
I really have to ask you, are you completely illiterate?
troops to protect the embassy or ngo workers are quite apart from this. what words didn’t you understand?
i promise you that this willful mischaracterization isn’t going to continue.
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 8:16 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
there you go again, bringing facts into it
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 8:50 pm ¶
JimC wrote:
Oh come on just a little, but seriously, I hadn’t read the full context until your link. So it sounds like he is in fact still the true anti-war candidate. I’m actually ok with that. If a Democrat does get elected on an anti-war platform, the last thing I want is a half-hearted anti-war President that will just cause more harm. Either we pull out completely (except of course for the embassy troops) or we stay full in it. None of this squishy crap.
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 9:24 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
precisely my point. why spoil a good argument by first figuring out what the facts are?
instead of posting 5,you should have spent 20 seconds doing a little search and looking at what he’d actually said.
Posted 29 Sep 2007 at 4:52 am ¶