It's Pat!

I can count on one hand the number of times I've agreed with Pat Buchanan and still have enough fingers left to pop the top off a cat food can. The cats would be on their own however, if I had to count the number of times I wanted to lob a spitball at the back of Pat's head during a live appearance he made at a TV station in Atlanta I worked for during Pat's delusion that he could be elected president. But, I had a mortgage and future cat food tins to buy back then … so, alas, they were only thoughts. But, I digress.

This rare occurrence of agreement with Pat happened as I was reading one of his latest columns entitled "Why Congress Caved to Bush." He nails it.

Why did the Democrats capitulate?

Because they lack the courage of their convictions. Because they fear the consequences if they put their antiwar beliefs into practice. Because they are afraid if they defund the war and force President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops, the calamity he predicts will come to pass and they will be held accountable for losing Iraq and the strategic disaster that might well ensue.

[…]

The congressional Democrats are cynical, but they are not stupid. If the surge works and U.S. troops are being withdrawn by fall 2008, they do not want it said of them that they “cut and ran” when the going got tough, that they played Chamberlain to Bush’s Churchill.

And if the war is going badly in 2008, they know that the American people, in repudiating the party of Bush and Cheney, have no other choice than the party of Hillary and Pelosi and Harry Reid.

The Dems know they are not beholden to the people who put them in office – where else will they go if the Dems don't get us out of Iraq as polls show most people want Congress to do? They'll vote Republican? Riiiiiight. So, while the Dems may have to take some abuse in the interim, they know they still have the vote of the poor suckers who think war is immoral, and especially immoral when it's founded on lies and out and out greed.

I pray earnestly that one day we'll have a two party system in this country – or at the very least, we'll discover either leaders with guts or be able to pull ourselves away from American Idol long enough to realize that we do have the power to change this corrupt system.