Thursday, March 22, 2007

Vennochi: End the War. Now!

It's time for the Democrats in Congress to actually lead on this issue, she says. She does ignore two teensy problems facing Democrats, though: a Senate filibuster and a Presidential veto. Even so, she's right. Democrats need to continue to step up and demand out of Iraq - ASAP. At the very least, the House's current proposed August 2008 pullout is a price too steep.

Vennochi's words:

Lawmakers are galvanized by the firing of eight federal prosecutors who worked under Gonzales. They are demanding public testimony from White House aides, including Karl Rove. The White House is resisting, setting up a showdown over executive privilege.The political sideshow proceeds with gusto, with all parties committed to their usual roles.

When it comes to ending a war that has taken 3,223 American lives since it began four years ago, Congress is paralyzed, not galvanized, even with Democrats in control.

In other words, it's time to get tough on the toughest issue facing America: the war in Iraq.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Democratic Disunity

The Social Security crisis showed clearly what Democratic unity can accomplish even as Democrats were in the minority.

The trouble I see is that we liberal Democrats have still not convinced our moderate bretheren that a staged but quick withdrawal from Iraq is wise and prudent. A lot of what our side in this debate says is true but only weakly convincing. Yes, the American people are tired. Yes, the Bush Administration will screw up any occupation. Moderates want to know about civil war, genocide, regional conflict, and Iran.

To my thinking, a huge part of this is the weakness of our instititutions. We lack a Heritage Foundation or an American Enterprise Institute. If we had one, a clear, well-articulated discussion on the genocide issue would be floating around, everyone would be quoting it. Hunting around I cannot find a "Surge: Plan vs Actual" paper anywhere. You'd think if we, like Vennochi, wanted to win this debate, that someone somewhere would have done our homework for us.

On genocide, I can only come up with one reference (!) -- an opinion on March 5 from Samantha Power of Harvard who is an expert on genocide. If we're going to convince the moderates, we at least gotta hand in our homework.

-KBusch

Ryan said...

The Center for American Progress had an entire Sudan campaign. Our institutions are limited and behind the curve, but we do have one or two good ones.

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