Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Ladies and gentleman… I have discovered the cause of our unusually warm winter…well, if you don’t count the last few weeks. There is incontrovertible circumstantial evidence that the warm weather in December can be directly contributed to the HOT AIR coming out of Washington. Yes, like the Christmas decorations in the mall, election season comes earlier every year. It’s now Mid-February and we are already bringing out the dirt, slinging the mud, and making promises we certainly cannot keep. This year at the forefront of all those favorite politician pastimes is the Democratic front runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton (ever notice the Republican candidates haven’t brought up the dirt about each other…hmm).
On Saturday, Sen. Clinton was giving a speech when, according to Reuters’ Jim Wolf, she “called for a 90-day deadline to start pulling American troops from Iraq.” The criticism coming her way from the Democrats in congress can be attributed to her support of the authorization of the war in 2002, and now that she is a candidate, she’s doing her level best to make up for what Sen. Harry Reid has called, “the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country.”
The bill she has proposed in the Senate will effectively cap the troops at the January 1 level. This will stop the President from sending the promised 21,500 US troops to reinforce the ones already there. Her plan would then call for a phased pullout, although no specific end date was given. Her main opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, has said that he would call, “for a phased withdrawal to be wrapped up by the end of March 2008.” The Senators are leading the charge in the debate about the troop buildup, and have positioned themselves to be what they will be by next year, the head of the Democratic Party.
But why are they doing this now? Like most things in Washington, their pullout plans are driven by polls. The Associated Press via Polling Report.com has the opposition to the troop buildup at 63% of the population, while only 35% approved of the increase. They’re not making this decision because the truly believe in it, and that is not the government our founding fathers wanted. They wanted a government that was not a democracy, but a republic, which is a governing body of the best and the brightest people to make the best decisions for the country, not the mob deciding for their own material and uninformed lives (I think we can all agree that the average American doesn’t know where Iraq is, let alone what’s really going on there). The polling politicians no longer stand on the morals, but stand on the shifting numbers that make up the political landscape.
It is at this time of the year that we ask the question, “Can this candidate handle the pressures of the job?” When asking that question of Sen. Clinton, you would suppose she could. It is true that she’s been through a tumultuous White House once before, and knows best what can happen due to the stress of the Oval Office, (I didn’t mean the scandal, but it fits pretty well into what I said). However, now I’m not so sure. She has been quoted as saying, “If George Bush doesn't end the war before he leaves office, when I'm president, I will.” Does this mean she isn’t willing to deal with the war? Does this mean she isn’t ready to take on the challenges that this President handles while many in Washington label him as slow, stupid, and incapable of running the military? At the very least, it says to me that she’s not willing to take on one of the major challenges of being a President, inheriting the legacy of the one who came before. I mean, its not like President Bush inherited a struggling economy and a growing terrorist threat from his predecessor.
The bottom line is this, the President has decided to increase the troop level because generals and military analysts have told him, using their expert opinion coupled with their experience, that he needed to do so. Naysayers cried for a plan, and he gave them one. It now seems that the Democrats only wanted one so they could have something to vote against, because they had no grounds to impeach him. Polls have turned the political landscape into a tree swaying in a hurricane, and the Democrats have picked this moment to prohibit the President from doing his job and following the advice of his congress approved cabinet. They have said if we pull out that, “would collapse the Iraqi government, tear the country apart ‘and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale.’” Even now, Congress has set in motion the act of revoking the authorization of the war, making President Bush’s actions in Iraq an abuse of power, making him a tyrant. Although their plan most likely will not produce another “King George” and the President will be forced to follow the demands of the Congress, the Democrats and Republicans who voted for the resolution would assume responsibility for the outcome of that action. My prediction is that would spell a victory for a candidate who stood by the President, and held to their morals.