Confessional
I blast Richard Cohen all the time, but today he's at least half right.
True enough, as far as it goes, but Cohen ignores a couple of points.
First, he alludes to his own whisper of doubt; the evidence that the Bush administration was exaggerating at best, lying at worst was out there, but the press just "whispered" about it. While it is easy, now, for columnists to claim that democrats didn't make a "mistake," but rather lacked the courage of their convictions, it is equally true that convictions can be career shorteners for politicians if the press fails to do it's job. The overwhelming consensus in our nation's press was as jingoistic as the Hearst and Pulitzer operations were in the build up to the Spanish-American War. In so doing, they gave no political cover to the Senators that had to stand up and vote on the resolutions.
Secondly, he seems to have forgotten what an all-fire hurry the GOP was in to prosecute this war. While it was obvious that Iraq wasn't exactly about to invade Czechoslovakia the following week, the GOP leadership forced a vote on Iraq before the 2002 elections. Rather than permitting impassioned debate on the Senate floor, they turned the question into a referendum on the Global War on Terror. Failing to support preznit at that juncture would surely have been used by the Rovians as signs of weakness (indeed, even a vote in support of preznit would not inoculate them from such charges, but Dems have always underestimated the cynicism and repulsiveness of Rove's tactics). Moreover, failing to support the resolution would have undermined the U.S.'s supposed efforts to get international support for disarming Hussein.
So, yes, Democrats are indeed guilty of "lapses in judgment" in supporting the resolution. They too were operating in the terra-ist inspired miasma that was clouding the skies post Sept. 11, 2001 while at the same time they were making political calculations that were based on a pre-Rove mindset in Washington. And yes, they relied far too much on Colin Powell -- lots of us did, to our enduring shame.
But Cohen forgets the context -- the full blast of the Bush/Cheney campaign to market the invasion of Iraq, with the full-throated support of Republicans, and the role of the press in abetting it.
Furthermore, it was only a month ago that Cohen was admonishing democrats for their realism. Wha' happened?
In their respective confessions, neither Edwards nor Biden explains why they were not persuaded by the evidence that Bush & Co. was exaggerating - concocting is possibly a better word - Saddam's nuclear threat. Of course, before 9/11, Americans hardly feared Saddam's chemical or biological weapons.
Sept. 11 changed all that. The terrorist attacks unhinged America. Cooler heads in the Bush administration seized the moment to plump for a war they always wanted while many of the rest of us - myself included - got caught up in an emotional frenzy. Even after the passions of the moment cooled - even after it was clear Iraq was no real imminent threat - few of us demanded that Bush back down. The best I could do was whisper some doubt. On July 25, 2002, I wrote that the Bush administration would pay dearly if it was, as was then becoming clear, going to wage war for specious reasons. "War plans are being drawn up at the Pentagon," I wrote. "But explanations are lacking at the White House."
True enough, as far as it goes, but Cohen ignores a couple of points.
First, he alludes to his own whisper of doubt; the evidence that the Bush administration was exaggerating at best, lying at worst was out there, but the press just "whispered" about it. While it is easy, now, for columnists to claim that democrats didn't make a "mistake," but rather lacked the courage of their convictions, it is equally true that convictions can be career shorteners for politicians if the press fails to do it's job. The overwhelming consensus in our nation's press was as jingoistic as the Hearst and Pulitzer operations were in the build up to the Spanish-American War. In so doing, they gave no political cover to the Senators that had to stand up and vote on the resolutions.
Secondly, he seems to have forgotten what an all-fire hurry the GOP was in to prosecute this war. While it was obvious that Iraq wasn't exactly about to invade Czechoslovakia the following week, the GOP leadership forced a vote on Iraq before the 2002 elections. Rather than permitting impassioned debate on the Senate floor, they turned the question into a referendum on the Global War on Terror. Failing to support preznit at that juncture would surely have been used by the Rovians as signs of weakness (indeed, even a vote in support of preznit would not inoculate them from such charges, but Dems have always underestimated the cynicism and repulsiveness of Rove's tactics). Moreover, failing to support the resolution would have undermined the U.S.'s supposed efforts to get international support for disarming Hussein.
So, yes, Democrats are indeed guilty of "lapses in judgment" in supporting the resolution. They too were operating in the terra-ist inspired miasma that was clouding the skies post Sept. 11, 2001 while at the same time they were making political calculations that were based on a pre-Rove mindset in Washington. And yes, they relied far too much on Colin Powell -- lots of us did, to our enduring shame.
But Cohen forgets the context -- the full blast of the Bush/Cheney campaign to market the invasion of Iraq, with the full-throated support of Republicans, and the role of the press in abetting it.
Furthermore, it was only a month ago that Cohen was admonishing democrats for their realism. Wha' happened?
posted by John at 12:05 PM
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