Plenty of Blame To Go Around

Oh, where to start with the whole "General Betray Us" mess?

It's tempting -- and warranted -- to go after the Republicans in the Senate for sponsoring a resolution condemning MoveOn.org's New York Times ad. To lash them with withering commentary for wasting the time of the United States Senate with a debate over how one organization chose to debate the war in Iraq.

But, really, would that be fair? It seems a bit like yelling at a puppy for eating the hamburger you dropped on the floor. They couldn't be expected to control themselves. Their president's little war is an unmitigated disaster, with the only real question now being how to minimize the catastrophe caused by our national arrogance and ignorance. So of course the Republicans would leap at the chance to change the debate, and even to somehow blame the liberals for the mess.

For true frustration, I'm having a hard time choosing between Senate Democrats and MoveOn itself.

MoveOn pisses me off because of the idiotic decision to take out the ad in the first place. I mean, c'mon, did they really think they could beat the Republicans in the battle to reduce painful, complex political issues to petty, meaningless jingos? The Republicans practically invented that game. They certainly wrote all the rules. They also kept all the copies of the rulebook, and can revise it any time they want. So at least one of those smart-but-overly-earnest young radicals at MoveOn must have read the headline to that ad and thought, "Hmmm....I wonder if Republicans might, in an orgasm of gleeful cynicism, turn that around on us and suddenly make this whole war debate about us resorting to childish name-calling instead of being about the thousands of people dying in Iraq." Well, apparently they didn't. But they should have.

But the Democrats...The Democrats.

Sigh.

The democrats. I'm not convinced they even deserve capitalization anymore. I cut them some slack when they couldn't set deadlines for troop withdrawal, and couldn't set limits on funding for the war. The truth is they simply don't have the enough votes in Congress to oppose the President that directly. And, to be fair, there is room for debate over when, how, and perhaps even whether to draw down our troops (having created the catastrophe, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of now walking away and abandoning the Iraqi people to the thugs that will take over in the vacuum left by the U.S. military -- but that's a debate for another day).

All reserves of slack, however, were cut off when they not only let this ridiculous piece of legislation see the light of day, not only allowed it to take up precious time on the floor of the United States Senate, not only failed to cut off debate on it, but voted for and passed it.

Let me repeat that. Democrats, the party I count on to offer at least some protection to the civil liberties enshrined in our Constitution, voted, on the floor of the Senate of the United States of America, to condemn an act of free speech.

No. No. No.

Seriously, No. For the love of Bob the Refrigerator God, try, just for a little while, to have some principles and to stick by them.

That's it. No clever wrap-up. Just a desperate plea to the party I voted for: You won the election, so please start acting like it.