Security & Terrorism Three days that transformed America
By MARTIN SIEFF
UPI Senior News Analyst
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- On Thursday, a Democratic national politician
for the first time managed to do what former Vice President Al Gore,
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, their running mates and more than $150
million of Democratic consulting and campaign resources signally failed to
do in more than five years and two national elections: He mauled President
George W. Bush.
"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It's a flawed policy wrapped in
illusion. The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress," said
Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania as he called for an immediate U.S.
withdrawal from that country.
"The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq. But
it's time for a change in direction," Murtha said. "Our military is
suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the
present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not
in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or
the Persian Gulf region. "
Murtha's blistering speech Thursday could have been easily shrugged off if
it came from Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone
of Minnesota, or even Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. But Murtha
had been gung ho for the war and accepted the intelligence evaluations at
face value that were presented to Congress arguing the necessity of it.
Now, he has transformed the political dynamics of the Democratic Party. He
is the first prominent Democrat since former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in his
meteoric lightning rise and fall in 2003 to early 2004 to attack the
president head-on on Iraq. In January 2004 in the Iowa caucuses and the New
Hampshire primary, Democratic voters overwhelmingly repudiated Dean's bold
stand against the war and not a single leading Democrat since has dared to
oppose it outspokenly and consistently.
But Murtha, who has no presidential ambitions -- at least not so far -- has
smashed that consensus and that taboo. And he did so only weeks after the
indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice president Dick Cheney's
longtime chief of staff in the Valerie Plame leak case, and within weeks of
the U.S. military death toll in Iraq finally breaking the 2,000 barrier
Murtha's speech was the third of three political body blows to hammer the
president in this, yet another "black" week for he man who just a year ago
was reelected to a second term with more votes than any American had ever
received in history.
First, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, the Vietnam vet who has always opposed
the Iraq war, came out with his strongest condemnation of the president's
policies yet in a Tuesday speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in
Washington, DC.
"Trust and confidence in the United States has been seriously eroded," Hagel
said. "We are seen by many in the Middle East as an obstacle to peace, an
aggressor and an occupier. Our policies are a significant source of
friction. ... We have made very bad decision we could possibly make. ... The
problem now is how to get out without further destabilizing the Middle
East."
In the first months after the rapid occupation of Iraq, Hagel was looked
down upon by the GOP rank and file as a wild, romantic maverick, and even
during the first year of the occupation of Iraq as the insurgency there
slowly but inexorably took hold in the Sunni Muslim areas, he was still seen
as an isolated eccentric by most of his fellow GOP senators.
But now Hagel is steadily emerging as one of the most influential and
respected figures in the party. As Republican congressmen in long-safe but
suddenly vulnerable districts seek to distance themselves from the
president's plunging approval ratings as fast as they can, he alone of all
the prominent figures in the party offers the prospect of some kind of
inoculation against the Iraq virus that is decimating the party's supporters
nationwide.
For also on Tuesday, a Black Tuesday indeed for the White House, the Senate
overwhelmingly passed virtually unanimously by 98 votes to nil -- easily a
veto-proof majority, a resolution demanding progress reports and
accountability from the administration on progress -- or the lack of it --
in Iraq.
The resolution was helmed by one of the most experienced and respected
mainstream Republican leaders in the Senate, Sen. John Warner of Virginia,
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Hagel, far from being isolated, is now a key leader even of Republican
majority thinking in the Senate. The overwhelming approval of the resolution
was a huge personal triumph for him. Tellingly, he described it as "a
critical turning point in congressional involvement" on war policymaking.
And on Wednesday, the House and Senate at a reconciliation conference agreed
to even rein in some of the government's more far-reaching powers as
conditions for renewing the Patriot Act.
But it is the rise of Hagel and the emergence of Murtha as an outspoken and
devastating critic of the war that are the worst news for the White House.
A year ago, Hagel was an isolated figure in the Senate and Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, Bush's personal handpicked choice for the
post, was spoken of as a likely front-running presidential candidate for
2008. Bush's legacy appeared to be good for years, if not decades to come.
But now First is a busted flush, embarrassed by revelations and
investigations about conflict of interest on stock sales and widely
discredited by his rash and unsupported diagnosis and handling of the Terry
Schiavo right to die case.
A vast political shift took place in Washington this week. It splintered the
Republican majority in the Senate and it energized the Democratic opposition
in the House of Representatives. And none of the fierce and impassioned
political counter-attacks of the president and Vice President Dick Cheney as
yet have shown any sign of putting those two Category 5 political hurricanes
back in the bottle.
Cheney Wednesday night condemned critics of the Iraq war and told a
supportive conservative audience from the Frontiers of Freedom group, "The
president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory,
or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite
history,"
But the 73-year-old Murtha, a Vietnam vet himself, did not sit back
passively the way Sen. Kerry did through August 2004 when he was endlessly
mauled by Bush supporters trashing his Vietnam combat record. The
Pennsylvania congressman hit back, and hit back hard.
In a pointed reference to Cheney's own failure to serve in Vietnam, he said
"people with five deferments" had no right to make such remarks. If Kerry
had fought back that way 15 months ago, he might have had a chance of
winning.
As it was, Murtha has pioneered the a new attack strategy for Democrats in
the next year's run up to the crucial 2006 congressional elections: Do not
cower in a corner any more on national security issues, but come out
swinging with both fists.
It took only three days to transfer the dynamic of U.S. national politics,
but the consequences are going to take months and even years to reveal their
full implications.
(c) Copyright 2005 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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--
The most common elements are hydrogen and stupidity - Harlan Ellison
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