Ask Auntie Pinko
September 26, 2002

Dear Auntie Pinko,

I can't understand what's going on with the Democrats in Congress who are blindly trotting along behind the War on Iraq bandwagon. I'm old enough to remember the last time we let a President tell us there were vital American interests at stake and we should just trust him to know best. Don't they remember? Why are they being such spineless wimps?

Tom R.
Moffat, CO

Dear Tom,

Auntie Pinko is also old enough to remember. Ear-collecting, and body counts on the nightly news. "Gooks," and "destroying the village to save it," and napalm, and young American men coming home with empty eyes and hollowed-out souls.

To justify such horrors, the cause cannot be less than totally compelling, totally validated, and totally supported - not just by an overwhelming majority of Americans, but by our friends and neighbors who share this planet.

The problem with your question, Tom, is in the phrase "the Democrats in Congress." To start with, there are fifty Democrats in the Senate and two hundred and nine in the House of Representatives, and it would not be at all surprising if there were approximately two hundred and sixty different exact viewpoints on America's policy towards Iraq. One thing the Democratic Party has never been good at is getting all of its elected representatives to march in some kind of Party-dictated lockstep. I guess that's why we're not Republicans.

So it's entirely likely that quite a lot of those Democratic Representatives and Senators are firmly opposed to the notion of a unilateral American attack on Iraq. (In fact, Auntie Pinko would bet a free t-shirt on it!) Many Democrats do oppose what you so aptly characterize as the "bandwagon." The problem is threefold:

1. Many who oppose the helter-skelter rush to war are saying so but not being heard or reported in the media;

2. Many who are being reported in the media are having their messages distorted: They are saying that they oppose the war unless the need for it is incontrovertibly proven, which it has not been. But the press either doesn't report that last part or dismisses it; and

3. Many key Democratic leaders are justifiably worried that opposition, distorted by the GOP and corporate-controlled media, will harm midterm election results - and they are keeping their eye on the real prize: Getting back control of the Legislative Branch.

All of these factors combine to frustrate ordinary Democrats like you and I, Tom, who would like to see more gutsy, unequivocal statements from our leaders. Statements like Mr. Gore's, bless him.

It is a frightening commentary on the GOP's dominance of the public dialogue and the corporate controlled media message that almost no one is willing to come out and say they oppose war on Iraq, period. Have you noticed, Tom? Every one has to qualify it by saying they're against it "unless it's really necessary." They have managed to frame the whole debate, not in terms of whether war is good or bad, whether it is a legitimate tool of geopolitical interaction or not, but whether it's "necessary."

And who defines "necessary?"

That is, whether we like it or not, the real boundary of the public discourse on this issue. We cannot say "Well, here's a set of criteria that justify war," because if we do, the debate will then move to the precise definition of each criterion, and each word of each criterion, in a reductio ad absurdum exercise that will end in giving the unelected media and the unelected President control of this decision.

No, the definition of "necessary" must remain squarely where the Constitution places it: in the laps of the more than four hundred men and women elected by their fellow-citizens precisely to make such decisions. Because no matter how hard the media tries to spin the issue, no matter how passionately Mr. Bush shouts from his bully pulpit, no matter how much money is put up to buy them, each of those men and women are ultimately responsible to a comparatively small number of voters.

That's the joker in the deck of American politics. It's harder to buy and bully and spin two hundred and nine elected Democrats than one appointed Republican. And here's the beauty part, Tom: There's something you and I can do to make it even harder! The more we speak out to our Democratic representatives and our Democratic leaders, and the more we get our friends and neighbors to speak out, the harder it will be for them to believe that big money in their campaign funds will buy them their re-election.

It's an uphill fight against the corporate money that pollutes our government. But in the end, numbers - if properly mobilized, organized, and vocalized - will win. Every time. So the ball is in our court.

Thanks for asking Auntie Pinko, Tom!