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This issue keeps coming up here again and again as the reason why Obama is no better than Clinton on the Iraq War issue. Why doesn't he pull a Kucinich and just stop funding the War? You could say the same thing about Impeachment for both of them. Why not Impeach Bush anyway? The answer is simple: Bush is Insane. Bush had no problem sending thousands of soldiers to their deaths on lies when he damn well knew the truth. It's true the Congress controls the purse strings. But Bush would be responsible for the withdraw. If the Democrats pulled funding of the War, have no doubt, that Bush would no doubt call Congress's bluff (because that's what it is) and he would stop sending supplies to the troops and leave them abandon and defenseless in Iraq. It would be a tragic disaster of epic proportions. And guess who gets the blame?
Kucinich, as are many people here, is of the mind to force Bush to do this. The idea is then to put the blame on Bush. You're not going to like what I am about to say, and I am on record as originally being for Kucinich as president. That idea doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. The Democrats would surely be blamed for hurting our troops and to an extend they would deserve that blame. Why? Because 70+ percent of the population knows that Bush is insane.
Furthermore, Obama can not act alone in this. He can not decide that it is time to stop funding the war and just pull the trigger and get all those DLCers in Congress and the Senate to agree with him. It simply isn't going to happen. Remember when individual members have taken a stand like Kucinich with Impeachment. I remember Feingold also trying to maverick a bill through as well. It won't work. Sure, Obama or Clinton could waste their time banging their heads on the proverbial wall, but they know it is a waste of precious time and resources to arrive at a terrible end.
What is the differece then? The difference comes down to who had the judgement to know Bush was insane from the beginning. William Rivers Pitt surely knew. Many, many people knew that Bush was pulling a fast one on the American people. Members in Congress that voted for the war were one of the following:
1. Fully supportive of the war because they wanted to go to war
2. Were cowards politically and too afraid to not vote for the war
3. Exercising a complete failure of judgement by not looking at the evidence available at the time
Only the last type of person really has any right to run for President, but only if they admittedly made a bad error of judgement. Edwards did this. He knew he made a bad, uninformed decision and he held himself accountable for it, long before he ran for President. This is why I could support him after Kucinich dropped out.
But Clinton, as late as last year, has said that the war was a good thing and she continued to say the Saddam was a WMD threat. This means that not only had she completely failed to exercise good judgement, but she never went back to reexamine all of the facts after the War had become a fiasco *or* that she decided to cover her ass politically. Again, another terrible judgement on her part. She never stoop up and held herself accountable. And she only apologized for her vote after she got trounced from the early primaries and Super Tuesday and knew she was in trouble politically. And she only did it when the issue was forced at a live debate. This is too much to accept for most of the members of the Democratic party. There is a clear difference between her and Obama on the Iraq War issue. And given Obama's legislative record and the political courage he has exhibited on the campaign trail, I have no doubt if he was in Congress at the time, he would surely not have voted for the Iraq War. Hey may even have convinced enough members to put a stop to it. Oh, where we could have been today.
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