Earlier today I disputed a claim that support for a change in Iraq policy is not a liberal position. I have noted that not only is leaving Iraq the majority position among liberals, but has also become the majority position in the country. Will this soon become the conservative position as well? Recent developments provide hope that this may be the case.
There have always been some Republicans who have parted from the party line on the war, from libertarians like Ron Paul to isolationists like Pat Buchanan. Many elder Republicans from the Bush I administration also knew better, but they remained quiet until the Iraq Study Group report came out.
There has been speculation that Republican Senators would drop their support for White House policy by September. Losing the support by Richard Lugar may be the beginning of the end of Congressional support for the war. Speaking Monday night, Lugar warned that the chances for success were “very limited” and advised fellow Republicans “We don’t owe the president our unquestioning agreement.” Holding the Excecutive Branch accountable when it is pursuing a policy which undermines our national interests should have been the roll of Congress all along, regardless of party affiliation, but better late than never.
Having Lugar speak out against the war gives other Republicans political cover to speak their minds. George Voinovich, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent Bush a letter yesterday urging him to develop a comprehensive plan for our country’s gradual military disengagement” from Iraq. He also wrote that, “”I am also concerned that we are running out of time.”
Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to Bush yesterday urging the president to develop “a comprehensive plan for our country’s gradual military disengagement” from Iraq. “I am also concerned that we are running out of time,
So far Lugar has also expressed opposition to legislation which will tie George Bush’s hands, hoping Bush will take the lead in changing our policy. Hopefully Bush will take the hint that his risks losing all support and will declare victory and find a way out. If he fails to do so, it will be hard for Senators like Lugar to support the current policy indefinatly after going on record as declaring it a failure.
Go Ron Paul! Go Ron Paul! God Bless Ron Paul! Ron Paul for President 2008!
Ron Paul in CNN debate on June 5, 2007!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwJKGfAWQUo
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the galleys, heard in the very hall of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor—he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and wears their face and their garment, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation—he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city—he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.
— Cicero: orator, statesman, political theorist, lawyer and philosopher of Ancient Rome.
“In the time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” GEORGE ORWELL