[Vision2020] Re: Courageous Barbara Lee!

[Joan Opyr]

Ted writes:

>We can get as nuanced as we want, but I knew with certainty, as I think anyone studying the intentions of the Bush >administration and the PNAC ideology made clear in the 1990s would know, that Bush was going to invade Iraq, no >doubt.  So the distinction between granting the threat of the use of force or the actual use of force is somewhat >meaningless when you know the intention is to use this granted authority to go to war.  And I think a careful reading of >the authority granted did not forbid the use of force, only allowing threats, so Joan, where is the reality in your >distinction?  Let's say I know the guy with the boxing gloves will cross that line no matter what his opponent does and >beat him up?  Do I still grant him authority to use threats?  Paul O'Neill from the W. Bush administrations early days >reported the focus on invading Iraq was active before 9/11.

Let's not get confused.  These aren't my arguments, Ted; they're John Kerry's.  I would not have voted to grant Bush the authority to use force.  I was out protesting both before and after.  Now, would I have voted to grant Clinton the authority to use force?  Perhaps.  Under those circumstances, I might have had cause to believe that war was a final resort, not an inevitability.  Then again, I might not.  I wasn't happy with Clinton's decisions regarding Kosovo and Bosnia, nor yet Somalia.  I haven't said that I agree with Kerry's reasoning on this point, just that I understand it, and I used the boxing analogy to explain it.  I've also pointed out that Kerry has not changed his stance despite strong public opposition to the Iraq war.  This doesn't exactly endear him to Deaniacs like me, but it does seem to me a principled consistency.   
I admit that, on the ground, a principled consistency might be indistinguishable from a foolish one, but as we've been governed these last three-and-a-half years by self-evidently small-minded hobgoblins, that's a chance I'm willing to take.  Who knew that Bush would make such a hash of Iraq?  Some guessed; most didn't have a clue.  Many, myself included, thought Iraq was rather beside the point.  We were still thinking about Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan.  (BTW, Doctors Without Borders has withdrawn its personnel from that country because the U. S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai cannot keep them safe.  The Taliban is resurgent, warlords again control most of the provinces, and Afghanistan will this year produce a bumper crop of opium.  Happy days are here again in needle parks around the globe.  And where do you think that drug money will go?  Guns?  Terrorists?  To buy nuclear bombs from the failed states of the ex-Soviet Union?  So much for the American attention span.)   
Would it be better to be Barbara Lee?  Of course!  I'd much rather be right than reasonable.
Yours sincerely,
Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment     
Agnostic Peacenik CynicGet more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
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