| The Way Missye Sees It |
| Politics (Not) As Usual |
| by Missye K. Clarke |
| The House rejects a non-binding resolution to immediately withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, and former Presidents Carter and Clinton suffer from "selective amnesia" in their criticisms of Bush. |
403 to 3.
The enemy was watching this vote very carefully last week.
This was the overwhelming House of Representatives vote now on record after three hours of intense debate last evening. The House vote came to reject a non-binding resolution to immediately withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
The Republicans' move came shortly after Democratic Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, a Vietnam veteran with 30 years in Congress who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, called for a pullout of the nearly 160,000 troops. Murtha had proposed a resolution that would force the president to withdraw the troops "at the earliest predictable date.”
Just three House members stood their ground and declared the US retreat from Iraq as stated from Representative Murtha. They are: Democrats Jose Serrano of New York, Robert Wexler of Florida and Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. Six refused to take a stand and simply voted “present”: Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington; Jerrold Nadler, Maurice Hinchey and Major Owens of New York; Michael Capuano of Massachusetts and William Lacy Clay of Missouri.
As one Marine colonel who made a phone call to Representative Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), said "He asked me to send Congress a message - stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message - that cowards cut and run, Marines never do."
The Democrats that booed and shouted her down, though, ended up voting with Republicans to continue in Iraq until victory against Islamofascists was assured. Interesting, isn’t it? The dissenters have midterm elections next year and look to 2008 to gain enough to get a Democrat in the White House. This isn’t about defeating terrorism and those who want the status quo in Iraq to remain, no, they’re interested in their political lives and turn a war into something it shouldn’t be: political.
That’s not new or unusual, however.
Adding to the tension, two former Presidents broke protocol recently and spoke publicly against their predecessors. Usual protocol stands that no former President speaks negatively about his predecessor in a public fashion or through a public forum. If they had something to say, they’d inform the sitting President through private, discreet means: through his current Cabinet, private mail or private phone conversations – but never in public or through the media. Eisenhower didn’t do this about Kennedy, Nixon about Ford, Ford about Bush, Carter about Reagan or Reagan about Bush 41 and Clinton.
All prior Presidents have followed this tradition. All but two that is.
The 39th President, Jimmy Carter spoke on the Today show recently and said of the current President that “he’d misled the public into war.”
Last week, while former President Bill Clinton was traveling in the Middle East, he spoke of George W. Bush’s handling of Iraq as “a big mistake.”
It seems to me Clinton in particular is a hypocrite. Clinton had said on many occasions in the late 1990s, during his Presidency that, not only was Saddam a threat and had WMDs, that he’d use WMDs when he saw fit to. Bush didn’t even go this far to declare this, Clinton did, though.
The Democratic Party seems to have forgotten these statements, and suffer from bit of selective “political amnesia” nowadays. Thanks to the Internet, talk radio, public record and history, however, the constituents do not.
And the Democrats, who voted overwhelmingly last night with the Republicans to stay the course in Iraq, are now whining the Republicans pulled a “political stunt.”
Hmm. If you call accountability a “political stunt,” so be it. May as well earn that pay raise you’d voted for yourselves.
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