-By Chuck Busch
Again, Joe Lieberman — the Democratic party’s 2000 presidential candidate — said it well on Friday:
The non-binding resolution before us is not about stopping a hypothetical plan. It is about disapproving a plan that is being carried out now by our fellow Americans in uniform, in the field. In that sense, as I have said, it is unprecedented in Congressional history, in American history. This resolution is about shouting into the wind. It is about ignoring realities of what’s happening on the ground in Baghdad.
It proposes nothing. It contains no plan for victory or retreat. It proposes nothing. It is a strategy of “no,” while our soldiers are saying, “yes, sir” to their commanding officers as they go forward into battle.
And that is why I will vote against the resolution by voting against cloture.
I understand the frustration, anger, and exhaustion that so many Americans, so many members of Congress, feel about Iraq, the desire to throw up one’s hands and simply say, “Enough.” And I am painfully aware of the enormous toll of this war in human life — and of the mistakes that have been made in the war’s conduct.
But let us now not make another mistake. In the midst of a fluid and uncertain situation in Iraq, we should not be so bound up in our own arguments and disagreements, so committed to the positions we have staked out, that the political battle over here takes precedence over the real battle over there. Whatever the passions of the moment, the point of reference for our decision-making should be military movements on the battlefields of Iraq, not political maneuverings in the halls of Congress.
It’s not an obviously wining strategy — being consistently supportive of this escalation in U.S. involvement in Iraq. In fact, if the surge doesn’t help stabilize Iraq, it will be a thankless position. But it’s the right thing, especially now that the plan is not but a theoretical plan but a work in progress.
____________
Chuck Busch may be contacted via email him atBuscCharles@aol.com