Harold Meyerson: The GOP's Spineless Sages

[marmar]

From The American Prospect:


The GOP's Spineless Sages

When it comes to getting us out of Iraq, top Republican Senators are all talk and no action.

Harold Meyerson | July 19, 2007 | web only



Anyone searching for the highest forms of invertebrate life need look no further than the floor of the U.S. Senate last week and this. These spineless specimens go by various names -- Republican moderates; respected senior Republicans; Dick Lugar, John Warner, Pete Domenici, George Voinovich.
They have seen the folly of our course in Iraq. The mission, they understand, cannot be accomplished. The Iraqi government, they discern, is hopelessly sectarian.

In wisdom, they are paragons. In action, they are nullities.

Perhaps they are simply farsighted. They have seen the problem with Nouri al-Maliki's administration in faraway Baghdad. They seem unable to see the problem with the Bush administration at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Lugars and the Warners seem to share with many of their Democratic colleagues a common assessment of our presence in Iraq: It has become an unfocused and costly occupation in a land beset by civil war. We should, in good order, pull back, leaving behind only what we need to deter jihadists who threaten us.

Problem is, the Warners and the Lugars don't actually want to act on their perception. They oppose the legislation by Democrats Carl Levin and Jack Reed that would require the administration to begin reducing our forces in Iraq within 120 days and to remove all but that anti-jihadist force by next April.

Instead, they have drafted legislation that would require the administration to draw up plans for a pullback -- but not to implement them. Indeed, they act continually as if George Bush and Dick Cheney are amenable to argument and open to facts. "I'm hopeful they'll change their minds," Domenici said last week after a meeting with national security adviser Stephen Hadley. "I think we should continue to ratchet up the pressure, in addition to our words," said Voinovich, "to let the White House know we are very sincere."

Very sincere -- now there's a threat that concentrates the mind. These Republicans who proclaim their independence without acting on it have failed to come to terms with the single most important reality confronting them: that Bush and Cheney will keep the war going until Congress forces them to stop. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_gops_spineless_sages

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Spineless Sages? As in the Three Sages---

Larry, Curly & Mo?

[flakey_foont]

2. Oh, a wise guy, eh?

Don't insult the Stooges by comparing them to those other plonkers

[Jackpine Radical]

3. NyukNyukNyukNyukNyukNyuk!