Oliver Willis

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? – John F. Kerry, 4/23/71

America would not be in Iraq without the Democratic party. The party decided in 2002 to do what was politically expedient, rather than what was morally superior. They voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq and clear the issue off the table so they could talk about “safe” things like social security and medicare.

This strategy lost the 2002 elections.
This strategy lost the 2004 elections.

And if they keep it up, Democrats will continue to lose elections for the forseeable future. The war in Iraq was a bad idea made even worse by the Bush administration’s feckless execution. They have failed at every conceivable level, from simply securing the weapons Hussein had, providing our troops with suitable armor, to articulating why the hell we’re in Iraq as terrorists are able to strike London and other nations without batting an eye. They’re going to hit America again soon.

The Democratic party was in charge during our nation’s darkest hours. It was a Democratic president in the guise of Franklin Roosevelt who simultaneously beat back a Republican-supported Depression (the Republican response was that prosperity was “around the corner”), and took our nation into the ultimately succesful war against the Axis. It was a Democratic president, Harry Truman, who made the decision to drop the atomic bomb and end the Pacific side of WWII. It was a Democrat, John F. Kennedy who stared down communists in Cuba and provided the impetus for his succesor, Democrat Lyndon Johnson to sign into law legislation outlawing the racism that had marred our nation. It was Democrats who did these things, socially progressive and militarily aggresive – and they didn’t do them out of fear of offending one group or another.

They did them because it was the right thing to do.

It is time now for the Democratic party, especially the Democrats who voted to authorize the war on Iraq, to demand an exit from Iraq by a certain date (Sen. Feingold says Dec 31, 2006 — whether you agree or not, he’s showed some cajones by putting a stake in the ground) and a simultaneous re-dedication to destroying Al Qaeda and its supporters.