Reply #20: A very complicated issue. [View All]

[Old and In the Way]

The backdrop was 9/11, anthrax attacks, and this administration's blitz (with accompanying media support)....and the coming mid-term elections.

I saw it as a Hobson's choice. Vote against the War resolution and if Bush is right, WMD's are found....risk the label of "The Party of Appeasers' and 'Saddam/Al-Qaeda Supporters'. Vote against and defeat, then another "event" occurs...who gets blamed? Vote for the War and piss off the left-of-center Democrats (us). Actually, I saw the vote as support of the Office of the Presidency...not necessarily Bush. This was about giving the sitting President the authority and flexibility to deal with what they were told was an immenent threat. If it was a Democratic President (and he was confronted with a real immenent threat, wouldn't we want the Republicans to support?)

It wasn't so much that the Democrat's were wrong to support the Office of the President....they were wrong to trust this pResident. He is the one that lied about the causus belli and inarguably has made the task more difficult for future Presidents who will be confronted by events that require bi-partisan support. That is the real tragedy here. Democrats trusted this man to do the right thing...instead, he did it for personal and political reasons based on lies that were told to Congress and the American people.

I'm disappointed that the Democrats didn't stand against....but I also understanmd the political calculus and the poker hand that Bush was playing. He bluffed, we folded, the country lost the pot.

It was Bush's War and Bush's Lie.....he'll be the one that wears that scarlet letter in the history of US Presidents.