A Strong Opponent
Posted at 10:30 am on Friday, January 19, 2007, in Uncategorized, and tagged 2008, bush, cheney, iraq, tapper.
I have an issue with Barack Obama’s claims to have never been a supporter of the Iraq war. That it is all nice-and-dandy — and I will take a moment to make clear that if Obama were to become the nominee, I would surely vote for him (but my preference at this stage is the more experienced Joe Biden) — but the junior Illinois Senator wasn’t a member of the Senate when the authoritative vote was cast in that fateful autumn of 2002.
Back then, one who didn’t agree with the vice president’s plan for war in Iraq, a supposed natural translation in the war on terror — Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction, by the way — one was viciously maligned as a traitor — from the right, and from the press, mainstream or conservative. Although a few democrats did shun the weighty criticism that they were apparently being “unAmerican,” and rightly so, as it turned out, more democrats in the Senate did vote to give authorization for Bush to wage war in Iraq than not to (29-22; and out of the 22, only one is a legitimate presidential contender — Russ Feingold — and even that is being polite). Barack Obama wasn’t one of them, of course. He couldn’t be; he wasn’t in office yet.
So what is Obama’s proof, when there is really only one public action that everyone — Hillary, Biden, Edwards, Kerry — is being judged upon? How “strong an opponent” can you really be from the Illinois state legislature?
I opined on Jake Tapper’s blog…
I don’t think being “a consistent and strong opponent of this war” counts unless you voted one way or another in the Senate (in 2002). That’s like me declaring my candidacy and stating that I have always been a strong supporter of mail-carrier rights. Whose to say that I haven’t?
No related posts.
January 20th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Well, you CAN be a strong opponent of the war in Iraq from the Illinois House of Representatives, it’s just that your opinions don’t carry as much weight as a national political figure and don’t matter as much. Obama’s “proof” is, among other of his actions, that he spoke at a rally in Chicago in 2003 against the war and even wrote articles about his opposition. He was an opponent of the war in much the same way as a lot of Americans were: it’s just that their opinions didn’t matter as much as those of their elected reps when the drumbeat of war was sounding. I agree that there’s a double standard here in that other Senators who are now running are held to their votes, while Obama’s can’t be held to such a standard. But to argue that the only way your opinion against the war would count is if you were an elected national representative unfairly discounts the millions of people who were opposed to the war when it began.
January 21st, 2007 at 8:59 am
I agree, and thanks for all this information. It seems it will be “easier” for Obama since he wasn’t in the Senate for that vote in 2002.