Monday, November 10, 2003
Missing in Action
Joe Biden and other Democrats made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows yesterday suggesting ways for the Bush gang to internationalize operations in Iraq. Biden occasionally seems like a younger version one of those old guys who used to hang around the cracker barrel in Sam Drucker's store in Hooterville. Like those denizens of Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, he's always ready to talk, full of ideas, but ultimately full of something else. While his suggestion that Bush ought to turn Iraq over to a NATO-led council under U.N. control isn't bad, Bush simply won't do it voluntarily. In the LA Weekly, Marc Cooper wonders why the Democrats are content to spin Bidenesque scenarios but then roll over, instead of fighting for another way when they have the administration's nuts in their grasp. He also wonders what's become of the peace movement since the war devolved into debacle. Off dreaming dreamy dreams of Dennis Kucinich, maybe--but missing in action, definitely.
It was nice of Al Gore to decloak himself yesterday and give a major speech on security and the Patriot Act in Washington. He's right, of course. But I can't help wishing he had spoken up two years ago. Now, it's easy for the right to dismiss him as yesterday's news, just another ranting gadfly around the cracker barrel, and for the public to dismiss him witih, "Gee, I remember him. Didn't he run for president a few years ago?"
Joe Biden and other Democrats made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows yesterday suggesting ways for the Bush gang to internationalize operations in Iraq. Biden occasionally seems like a younger version one of those old guys who used to hang around the cracker barrel in Sam Drucker's store in Hooterville. Like those denizens of Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, he's always ready to talk, full of ideas, but ultimately full of something else. While his suggestion that Bush ought to turn Iraq over to a NATO-led council under U.N. control isn't bad, Bush simply won't do it voluntarily. In the LA Weekly, Marc Cooper wonders why the Democrats are content to spin Bidenesque scenarios but then roll over, instead of fighting for another way when they have the administration's nuts in their grasp. He also wonders what's become of the peace movement since the war devolved into debacle. Off dreaming dreamy dreams of Dennis Kucinich, maybe--but missing in action, definitely.
It was nice of Al Gore to decloak himself yesterday and give a major speech on security and the Patriot Act in Washington. He's right, of course. But I can't help wishing he had spoken up two years ago. Now, it's easy for the right to dismiss him as yesterday's news, just another ranting gadfly around the cracker barrel, and for the public to dismiss him witih, "Gee, I remember him. Didn't he run for president a few years ago?"
