Your war, not mine!

Townhall ^ | May 10, 2007 | Victor David Hanson

[wizr]

Please, Master, explain your accreditation. Not that I don’t believe your wonderful knowledge, just whence it came, that I may be scholarly as you are.

[Billthedrill]

So why not come clean about their changes of heart?

There was no change of heart - the heart was not the organ involved. What evolved was a war so nearly won that an adversarial position became safe enough and politically advantageous for certain of the Dems to adopt. It did, after all, help win a majority in Congress.

The question now is having attained majority status, what to do with it? The safety of the adversarial position depended greatly on being in minority; that is, on being able to criticize without bearing a responsibility for the outcome. That is gone now, although the more strident of the antiwar faction seems particularly slow in realizing the potential cost of being held responsible for what the country in general regards as a negative outcome, but that they do not. In short, losing the war or the appearance of loss was an acceptable outcome so long as it resulted in a gain of political power. The latter has changed.

That accounts for an achingly unsuccessful and obvious attempt to rewrite the history of the war's antecedents. There never was a Kuwait invasion, Saddam was an enlightened leader, women had great rights in Iraq, there were never any WMD's, etc, etc - this sort of silly revisionism is the only way the antiwar faction of the Dems can maintain its sense of rectitude but it cuts out anyone on record as knowing better. That would include Kerry and Clinton, and if they now feel a little abused by this determined denial of historical fact that is perfectly understandable (and their just dessert, but that is another issue). Hence the antiwar faction's enthusiasm for Obama, who is relatively immune from criticism from that point of view.

This is simply the logical conclusion of a determined refusal to accept responsibility, a determined clinging to minority status and the freedom of criticism that is derived from that. The antiwar faction wants to have its cake and eat it too - it wants to propose radical solutions and blame any negative results on Bush, who, since any Democratic culpability is ignored or defined away, now bears the sole responsibility for getting everyone in the situation in the first place. And that is simply not going to do, and the wiser heads in the Democratic leadership know it. Those of lesser wisdom are happily leading the party toward a precipice, and unfortunately as the majority they will be leading the country there as well.