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At the debate this week, Wesley Cark said, “I think this party's making a great mistake by trying to make a litmus test on who would have or did or didn't vote for that resolution last October.”
This is something I’ve heard over and over at DU, and after hearing Clark say this I decided to stop lurking and post this message because I wholeheartedly agree with Clark that it is a huge mistake for people to rule out candidates simply on the IWR vote.
Clark went on to say, “The real issue in front of us is that this president misled the American people and the Congress into war.”
We now know that the Bush administration had made up false intelligence and that they didn’t have a postwar plan in place, but were those things so clear in October 2002? Even under the Clinton administration, there was credible evidence of WMD programs in Iraq. The British had produced evidence of a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. And all that was only the information that was made known to the public. If the Bush administration was able to mislead the public with evidence that was scrutinized by the international press, think of how much misinformation they would have been able to spread in backrooms in top secret briefings with Congress that couldn’t be second-guessed by anyone.
I have no doubt that the administration was able to produce more than enough evidence to convince a rational Senator or Congressman to vote for the IWR. The question facing Congress in October 2002 was how much they wanted to trust Bush, the CIA, and the military intelligence they were looking at during the IWR vote.
Perhaps it’s indefensible for a candidate to say that they trusted Bush or the CIA; how could they be so stupid? That seems to be a prevalent attitude around here, but I doubt many people on this forum spent more time poring over intelligence than Congressional staff last October. The candidates running for President now were not alone in voting for the IWR and that is enough evidence to establish that the intelligence was not clear cut one way or the other. I really can not dismiss a candidate for putting a little bit of trust in the President of the United States. It will be a sad day when we can’t trust the President to be truthful about something as serious as going to war. Unfortunately, that day is right now, and I think that Bush’s betrayal over the Iraq issue is something that inspired all the candidates to run now. If they made a mistake of trusting Bush then, it has only strengthened their resolve to seek the presidency, and it is certainly a mistake they will not make again.
Now what if a candidate did not trust President Bush at that time? Then, the clear answer would be to circle the wagons and fight against the war with everything you’ve got, right? I don’t think the answer is so clear. The military had been mobilizing for months against Iraq, and we were pretty much ready to go before Bush even came to Congress for approval. I seriously doubt that any action short of passing a Resolution forbidding Bush from moving into Iraq would have stopped him then. The best Congress could have done would be something like Biden-Lugar, which failed anyway and would not have stopped Bush from certifying a threat and moving in.
If you did not trust Bush’s evidence on Iraq at that time, why trust Bush to even wait for Congressional approval? By the time the resolution hit the House floor, the military was ready to go, and they weren’t going to be pulled back by any Congressional action. The question facing Congress in October 2002 was really how to force Bush to go into Iraq the right way, with an international coalition. Bush was going to go before the UN, and there was no way any other countries were going to jump on board if our own Congress had disapproved of the war. Voting for the resolution was our best shot at getting a real international coalition. Unfortunately, Bush’s half-assed diplomacy got us only a half-assed coalition.
So what if you don't trust anything Bushdoes ? If you believe in MIHOP or LIHOP at all, I think you’d agree with me that if Congress had somehow managed to stop Bush from going to war, it would almost guarantee that another terrorist attack would hit American soil. The Democratic Party would be painted as failing to protect the American people, and Bush would be riding a free ticket to reelection. If Congress had stopped the IWR and another large terrorist attack occurred, it might have meant the end of the Democratic Party as we know it.
It was all too convenient that the IWR hit Congress just weeks before the 2002 November elections. Karl Rove was using the heartstrings of the American public as ransom and the lives of American soldiers as a political tool. When you look back to October 2002, you see a Congress between a rock and a hard place. There was no good way to vote, and I don’t blame any candidate for the choice they made. I blame President Bush for putting them in that situation.
No doubt, some posters will point out that Kucinich fought against the resolution, and he should certainly be commended for that. However, people need to realize that that fight, although noble, was relatively inconsequential. Bush had already moved all his pawns into place, and the Democrats did not have a move to avoid checkmate. Whether Democrats voted for the IWR or not, we were going to war, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
Wesley Clark continued his debate comment by saying, “This administration took us to war recklessly and without need to do so and it was wrong. And that is the issue in this election and that is the issue we should be taking to the American people.”
If we’re going to blame anyone for the past, we need to blame President Bush. When we’re choosing a Democratic candidate, we need to look to the future. If the most important issue to you is Iraq, you should look at the plans that each candidate has for getting us out of Iraq. Don’t base your vote on something that Senators and Congressmen had to do last October when they were backed into a corner by the manipulative right wing hawks and PNAC strategists. That’s exactly what the Republicans want us to do. In Iraq they created another issue, like gay marriage, where one stance helps a candidate in the primaries but will hurt them in the general election. Basing your vote on the IWR is doing exactly what the Republicans wanted us to do when they put Congress in that difficult position last October.
You can say that you are against war in general, and that you support Kucinich, but your really can’t divide the other candidates’ Iraq positions based on the IWR vote. Some candidates support the $87 billion, some want to pull out faster than others, some want to go to NATO for help. An IWR vote one way or another isn’t dispositive of a position on any election issue. We’re not choosing a candidate to vote on the IWR, we’re choosing a candidate to get us out of Iraq and lead this nation for another four years.
So I urge people to do as General Clark suggested and look past the IWR vote. Give all the candidates a fair chance and choose the best candidatefor you. Stop thinking about October 2002 and start thinking about November 2004.
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