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"So, what would you have the Congress do? Continue to pass bills that the President would veto and they don't have the votes to override? Constitutionally, that's a dead end. Eventually you have to pay for the bullets and the helicopter gas."
In short, yes, that's exactly what I would do. Make him veto it three times. Keep the issue front-and-center. Give him three different versions of the same idea. Keep the issue in the headlines, keep the heat on Bush, keep the conversation on Iraq and fight for the principles that people sent you to Washington to uphold. Make the damned GOP vote for this debacle a thousand times. Force Republican Senators to vote to uphold the veto. Hang it from their neck like a fetid albatross.
The Democrats' efforts to end the Iraqqupation end up looking like a formality -- going through the motions of objecting without changing anything. After the veto, they fell all over themselves to strip out the language offensive to Bush, and rush a no-strings appropriation back to his desk in the blink of an eye. They had weeks and weeks to spare. They didn't even make Bush sweat.
How many more Freidmans are we supposed to wait for something to happen? Kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight, as they say. Make your point, underline it and circle it.
The point is that this is a Democracy, and the President is not nor ever shall be a temporary king. He is not Imperator Americanus, and despite being the "Commander in Chief," Congress has a great deal of power. In the hands of the Republican patsies for the past six years, they have bent over (forwards) to surrender that branh's power to the Bushies, and this would have been a good time to ebb that flow. It's not just about war and peace; it's also an issue of checks and balances.
If a war roundly rejected by the American people cannot be ended via the plebiscite embodied by the last Congressional election, how then can we hope to end it?
Democracy is in danger.
1 comment:
A writer in the paper here wrote that Congress had been "interfering" with the Bush's Iraq strategy. I wrote to the paper saying that it wasn't interference, but democracy stupid. Sadly, I think you are right about democracy in danger. I think there are just too many other powerful forces at work and out of control. The conservatives and their governments work hard to control democracy - scare campaigns, blind patriotism, consumerism, all aided by a compliant or perhaps complicit media. We're doomed, unless of course the revolution is coming...
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