"With that vote, our hope, really our prayer, is that the president will finally listen, listen to the generals, listen to the Iraq Study Group, listen to the American people and listen to a bipartisan Congress,'' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday, bristling when a reporter asked whether the vote would be substantive or symbolic.
"I don't really know what you mean by 'symbolic.' I believe that a bipartisan resolution saying we don't want the escalation of the war in Iraq is the beginning of the end of the present policy in Iraq,'' Reid said. San Francisco Chronicle, January 21, 2007, Marc Sandalow reporting (a very good reporter, btw).
Mumbles, methinks thou doth protest too much. Nevertheless, I think I can help here, Harry. A "symbolic" vote is one which the President can legally and Constitutionally ignore, and then do whatever the hell he feels like doing. Let us apply this definition to your "bipartisan resolution." Okay, the answer's in already: your resolution is symbolic, and it is not the beginning of the end of anything, unless it is the beginning of the end of the American citizenry, who want this goddam war over, taking you seriously about anything at all. Let me give you a case in point: how successful was the bipartisan bill in the last Congress which restored federal spending to embryonic stem cell research? How well did the President listen?
I do think the idea of "praying" is a nice touch. That's your best shot if you want Bush to come around. What you don't seem to get, Mr. Mumbles (and it's a cluelessness shared by your counterpart in the House, La Diva Pelosi), is that you do not understand Bush by means of "policy analysis." If you want to figure out Bush, you need to begin reading books on Abnormal Psychology, with special attention to personality disorders, and then burrow down further to "histrionic personalities." It's all there, Mr. Majority Leader. If you want to know why absolutely everything you do in a precatory, placating manner fails to yield the desired result, you will find the answers therein (to use Bugs Bunny's favorite preposition). Bugs Bunny, by the way, could teach you a lot about how to deal with bad guys. He didn't mollify, plead or beg. He outsmarted them or used fiendishly clever force. I would encourage you to obtain a DVD of the Best of Bugs, especially one that contains "Racketeer Rabbit," where Bugs, bunking down one rainy night in an abandoned house, finds it taken over by gangsters Rocky & Hugo. Rocky is a lot like Edward G. Robinson, of course, and Bugs, beginning at a point of complete helplessness, uses guile and cunning to turn the tables on Rocky, and finally sends the gangster running panic-stricken down the road to escape another of the Rabbit's clever tricks. Bugs did not bother with "symbolic resolutions" to appeal to Rocky's better side, because Rocky didn't have one. Neither does Bush. Whatever label you choose to use after leafing through the DSM psychological tables (narcissist, anti-social personality) does not matter so much. The important thing is for you to recognize what you're dealing with.
Put Kurt Vonnegut on your reading list too, including his sort-of memoir A Man Without A Country. Despite the title, Vonnegut is a World War II vet who loves the United States and laments its hostile takeover by people he calls "PPs," short for Psychopathic Personalities. "PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts...They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive...Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next."
Kurt is describing people who lack a conscience. I suspect the Democratic leadership already knows the Bush High Command fits the diagnosis, and they don't need my reading and viewing list. So who are the Dems trying to fool with their "symbolic resolution?" The answer is simple: Us. By doing something that won't work, which appeals only to the Imaginary Focus Group which operates as a wind sock for each of Hillary Clinton's "evolving positions," the Dems can appear to do something without risking responsibility. It's not impressive. Their out, their excuse, is that they must "support the troops" (as La Diva so recently reiterated) by sending money to Iraq to keep the grunts riding around in their Humvees until they're blown sky high over Baghdad.
What a load of crap. They have the power; they just won't use what Lee Hamilton, at Indiana University's Center for Congress, calls their main leverage: "The power of the purse is the most important power of Congress. James Madison in the Federalist papers called it 'the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people'. It checks the power of the President and gives Congress vast influence over American society, because federal spending reaches into the life of every citizen." Refuse to approve any more spending requests from Bush in the form of his Iraq "supplementals." Tell him the money he now has is for the purpose of getting the troops home safely; after that, there will be no more money. As the Commander-in-Chief, that becomes his new and only duty, where the Iraq war is concerned: to oversee the withdrawal of a military force which no longer has Congressional funding to prosecute the "war." You figure it out, George; you put them there. Now get them home.
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