Losing war lost election
Informed Comment
... In my view the real significance of the Democratic victory is four-fold.
First, it demonstrates once again that the American public simply will not put up with a return to the age of colonialism and does not want to occupy Asian countries militarily. Do you think that Abu Ghraib and American torture-pornography, the daily grind of violence, the stupid mistakes, have passed them by so that they didn't notice? They might swallow all this reluctantly but they want light at the end of the tunnel. There is not any in Iraq...
Second, Bush is not going to be able to put any more Scalia types on the Federal benches or the Supreme Court.
Third, a Bush administration war on Iran now seems highly unlikely. A major initiative of that sort would need funding, and I don't think Congress will grant it. The Democrats don't want an Iran with a nuclear weapon any more than the Republicans do. But they are more likely to recognize that there is no good evidence that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program, and have been chastened by Iraq enough to distrust purely military solutions to such crises.
Fourth, there will now finally be accountability. It is obvious to me that the Bush administration has been engaged in large-scale crimes and corruption, and has gotten away with it because the Republican heads of the relevant committees have refused to investigate these crimes. Democratic committee heads with subpoena power will finally be able to force the Pentagon and other institutions to fork over the smoking gun documents, and then will be in a position to prosecute. Read more
db: So what did it? What brought abour this 'popular revolution', as Juan Cole put it? 600,000 dead Iraqis or the 2800+ US dead? The military-Industrial complex? Corruption, wars of aggression, Abu Ghraib? Maybe the Israel lobby, or secret prisons or renditions?
... In my view the real significance of the Democratic victory is four-fold.
First, it demonstrates once again that the American public simply will not put up with a return to the age of colonialism and does not want to occupy Asian countries militarily. Do you think that Abu Ghraib and American torture-pornography, the daily grind of violence, the stupid mistakes, have passed them by so that they didn't notice? They might swallow all this reluctantly but they want light at the end of the tunnel. There is not any in Iraq...
Second, Bush is not going to be able to put any more Scalia types on the Federal benches or the Supreme Court.
Third, a Bush administration war on Iran now seems highly unlikely. A major initiative of that sort would need funding, and I don't think Congress will grant it. The Democrats don't want an Iran with a nuclear weapon any more than the Republicans do. But they are more likely to recognize that there is no good evidence that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program, and have been chastened by Iraq enough to distrust purely military solutions to such crises.
Fourth, there will now finally be accountability. It is obvious to me that the Bush administration has been engaged in large-scale crimes and corruption, and has gotten away with it because the Republican heads of the relevant committees have refused to investigate these crimes. Democratic committee heads with subpoena power will finally be able to force the Pentagon and other institutions to fork over the smoking gun documents, and then will be in a position to prosecute. Read more
db: So what did it? What brought abour this 'popular revolution', as Juan Cole put it? 600,000 dead Iraqis or the 2800+ US dead? The military-Industrial complex? Corruption, wars of aggression, Abu Ghraib? Maybe the Israel lobby, or secret prisons or renditions?
None of the above. It's the LOSING that hurts.
posted by exoplanet at 11:55 PM
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