Partisan Cowards

All they are saying, is give war a chance...

There comes a time when politicians have to set side their partisanship, their fealty to their president, their dreams of military success, to finally listen to the screaming words of the public they are charged to represent.

During the last two days in the US senate, Republican after Republican has spoken in favour of the continuation of absolute chaos - in favour of sending more US troops into Iraq's civil war. As Joe Biden (D-DE) put it today: why do you think Sadr and his fighters are laying low right now? Because they've been "scared off"? A handy right-wing talking point that's supposedly proof of the "success" of the so-called surge. Think again. As Biden pointed out, US troops are busy in the Sunni areas of Baghdad fighting Sadr's war for him. Why should he waste his men in battles when the Americans are more than willing to sacrifice their own?

Yet, right-wing war apologists are still trotting out the same old lines: any talk of withdrawing from Iraq emboldens Osama bin Laden. Yes, that's what Mitch McConnell (R-Useless) parroted in the senate again today. He and his warmongering colleagues prefer this posture when it comes to dealing with reality and most likely spend much of their time planning "victory" with these. Hey. It worked on the porch. Why shouldn't it be the same in real life? Surge on!

The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics...

~Simone Weil

And that's exactly why the Republicans (and Lieberman, of course) can't support withdrawal: they think they'd be traitors to their party and their president despite the fact that Bush is a lame duck (or a "political cadaver", as Hugo Chavez called him) while they ignore the reality that their war party already had more than enough chances to prove they knew what they were doing in Iraq. All they have left is political desperation. All they have left is their damaged egos. And, just like their position on the Iraq war, they won't surrender those without a fight either. They'd rather destroy more lives than destroy their self-righteousness.

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And so they keep lying. And so they continue the violence. And so many more thousands will die. And so their partisanship will continue because, when it all comes down to it, being a good party sycophant is much more important than actually having a conscience.

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.

~Mary Roberts Rinehart