More on: Cowardice, or Business as Usual?

Yesterday I criticized the Democrats for taking more interest in their job security than in carrying out the American people’s mandate to end the Iraq war. This "New York Times" headline sums up the mess:

"Many Voices, No Debate, as Senate Is Stifled on War"

I’ve heard only one politician, Democrat or Republican, speak convincingly about the need for direct, immediate action to end the war. He shares my diagnosis of Democrats – weak knees and absence of vertebrae.

Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) said on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”:

Well, I think part of the problem is that obviously a majority of the Senate voted for this war, and a lot of them have a real concern about how they‘re going to come off if they just have to admit that this thing was a mistake and we need to get out.
And so you have, in the Warner resolution, some nice language, but it talks about not withdrawing any of the troops in the near future. It talks about increasing the war in al Anbar Province, which was really another form of escalation. It talks about saying we can‘t consider cutting off the funding.

So it essentially cuts us off at the knees in terms of our ability to get out of this war. And I guess it has to do with the continuing feeling that some members of the Senate want to have it both ways. They want to sort of say they‘re against the war, but they don‘t want to take the steps to end the war.

The fact is, the president and the Republican leadership are so out of touch with reality of the American people is, they don‘t understand that this war is a disaster, and the American people want us out of there.

Now, the problem is, it‘s a little easier for them to pull a stunt like this, because the Democrats are being too weak as well. We‘re talking about primarily just whether or not we‘re going to have a weak resolution about the escalation. But the election in November, we hadn‘t even heard about the escalation. The issue here is, how can we, as Democrats, working with some Republicans, find a way to end this war, to have a timetable to end it, and to get tough on this thing?

And that‘s my concern on the Democratic side is, we‘re being too timid. We‘ve got to take on this war directly.

The way to enforce it in my bill is to simply say the funding is no longer there at the end. But this idea that somehow we‘re going to take away something from the troops that are there already, that‘s just not true. Our proposal is that the troops will be out of there. That‘s the safest thing for the troops is to not be there.
And that‘s what our proposal would do. It wouldn‘t take away their equipment. That‘s just one of the red herrings or phony arguments that the Republicans use, and usually effectively scare the Democrats into not standing up for what is right.