There were a number of things I liked about last night’s debate. The most important was that the questions were not asked by media pundits or anchors, who all too often allow their provincial and warped Beltway “conventional wisdom” to determine which questions are put to the candidates and which questions (and issues) are ignored. Instead, the questions were asked by ordinary Americans, who didn’t pussyfoot around the issues, or slant their questions toward a reflexively pro-conservative agenda. Which is why we had this exchange last night, perhaps the most significant question that was asked and answered all evening. Here’s the question:
QUESTION: Thank you for taking my question. The 2006 election gave the Democrats in office a mandate to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Since that time, 800 of our military service members have died there.
As the mother of an American soldier deploying to Iraq for a second time, I would like to know if the perception is true that the Democrats are putting politics before conscience.
How many more soldiers must die while these political games continue in our government?
Is the reason why we are still in Iraq and seemingly will be for some time due to the Democrats’ fear that blame for the loss of the war will be placed on them by the Republican spin machine?
And here’s how various candidates answered this very serious question from a soldier’s mother:
(cont.)
Senator Clinton went first:
CLINTON: Well, I want to thank her and her son for their service and their sacrifice. When we send a soldier or Marine to combat in Iraq, we really are sending a family.
And since the election of 2006, the Democrats have tried repeatedly to win Republican support with a simple proposition that we need to set a timeline to begin bringing our troops home now.
I happen to agree that there is no military solution, and the Iraqis refuse to pursue the political solutions. In fact, I asked the Pentagon a simple question: Have you prepared for withdrawing our troops? In response, I got a letter accusing me of being unpatriotic; that I shouldn’t be asking questions.
Well, one of the problems is that there are a lot of questions that we’re asking but we’re not getting answers from the Bush administration.
Senator Clinton gave a classic non-answer. First, she thanks the mother and her son for their service. Let me be the first to say that I’ve had it with politicians uttering these self-serving statements of praise for our troops’ sacrifices. Nothing could be more meaningless than to praise someone for risking their lives for a lie while you, a powerful Senator, with the ability to take the lead on getting those troops home, does nothing of substance to achieve that goal.
Then Clinton turns the question on its head, making it all about her. “Look what I’ve done,” she says, I asked a question of the Defense Department and they were mean to me!” Frankly, I don’t care that she was attacked by some neoconservative second banana with an office at the Pentagon. Was she wrongly attacked? Sure. Was it politically motivated? No doubt. But it had no bearing on what this mother wanted to know.
It was simply shameless self-promotion by Senator Clinton to respond in this fashion. She turned a mother’s honest request for an explanation as to why nothing has been accomplished by a Democratic Congress to end the war since January, into a blatant attempt to garner sympathy, while also portraying herself as someone working hard to end the war, when nothing could be further from the truth. Being attacked by the Bush administration is not evidence of anything Clinton has done. Its simply standard operating procedure by the Republicans. A day doesn’t go by when one of them is attacking Senator Clinton or her husband for one thing or another. To imply, as Clinton did, that such attacks establish her anti-war bona fides is beyond ludicrous, and actually more than a little bit insulting to our collective intelligence.
Yet, this is all that the leading contender fro the Democratic nomination felt was needed to answer this question. Claim that the Democrats failure to end the war was all the fault of the Republicans and the Bush administration, and had nothing to do with her or her compatriots in the Democratic Congressional leadership.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich gave a very different response:
KUCINICH: If you’re not going to answer the question, I’m going to answer the mother that troop — question.
The answer to your question, ma’am, is: Yes, it is politics. The Democrats have failed the American people. When we took over in January, the American people didn’t expect us to give them a Democratic version of the war. They expected us to act quickly to end the war.
And here’s how we can do it. It doesn’t take legislation. That’s a phony excuse to say that you don’t have the votes. We appropriated $97 billion a month ago. We should tell President Bush, no more funds for the war, use that money to bring the troops home, use it to bring the troops home.
(APPLAUSE)
And, Anderson, right, now if people want to send that message to Congress…
The contrast between Clinton’s weasely and condescending non-answer and Kucinich’s blunt confession of the Democrats’ failure could not be more apparent. Kucinich doesn’t blame the Republicans, and with good reason. We (and surely the Democratic Leaders) already knew that the GOP members of Congress would oppose their strategy, and that Bush would veto any attempt to establish a “timeline” to withdraw from Iraq. That approach, as we have seen, was dead on arrival, as Kucinich rightly implies.
Instead, he points to the only viable strategy the Democrats have to force Bush and the Republicans to compromise: defund the war. Simply fail to approve legislation for any monies other than those necessary to withdraw our forces. Bush can veto legislation, but he can’t force Congress to give him the funds to continue the occupation. Senator Clinton knows that as well as you or I or Congressman Kucinich does. She knew (or should have known) that the Democratic plan was a non-starter, but she still refuses to tell the American people why she and the leaders of the House and Senate refused to employ the only strategy that had any chance of success to change the course of the Iraq war, a war which 7 out of 10 Americans want ended and the troops brought home.
Perhaps Kucinich, as a long shot candidate at best, feels freer to acknowledge the truth that the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. They could have chosen to defund the war, but backed away from that option before ever seriously considering it. And his response to this debate question makes clear that he strongly believes the only reason the war continues is because the Democrats see a political advantage in allowing the war to continue. They will seek to tar Republicans, and by extension, the Republican Presidential nominee in 2008, with Bush’s war of choice, rather than take any real action to do the right thing now.
It’s a sad state of affairs that such marginal candidates as Mr. Kucinich and former Senator Gravel are the ones whose position on the war most closely match the position of most Democratic voters. The front runners continue to present themselves as anti-war, yet they are also unwilling to adopt the only approach that might lead to ending US involvement in this destructive conflict, one which undermines our national security even as it bleeds billions of dollars out of our economy each week. Indeed, Clinton has specifically stated she will keep troops in Iraq after their combat role is completed, and both Obama and Edwards have suggested at various times that they may also leave a “residual force” in Iraq. And none of them has clearly spoken out against further US military action against Iran.
And that is the real shame of our current political scene, one which the debate last night highlights. The acknowledged front runners, the candidates with most money, the largest organizations and the greatest establishment support are still afraid to follow where democratic voters desire to lead them: out of Iraq, completely and unequivocally.
