It was understandable that in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks, Democrat politicians stood side by side with President Bush’s Republicans in a united front against international terrorism. Fourteen months on from that traumatic moment in US history, the Democrat position is no longer acceptable.
Beaten soundly at the midterm elections and now the minority party in both Houses of Congress, the Democrats are reviewing their political strategy. It must be hoped that with the announced departure of Richard Gephardt, as minority leader in the House of Representatives, the new leadership will look seriously at what may at first seem a controversial agenda — that of actively opposing a warmongering president who is pulling out every nationalistic stop to head his country, the Middle East and the wider world toward a disaster of unimaginable magnitude. The Democrat problem was that once they had rallied round the president and the flag a year ago, it was hard for them to stand back and produce constructive criticism. They feared the charge of being unpatriotic and of undermining the White House drive to crush the unseen terrorist enemy. A minority of Americans entertains considerable doubts about the saber rattling jingoism of the Bush White House, but few politicians among the Democrats, has been brave enough to stand up and echo these reservations. Certainly the Democrat Party as a whole rarely raised its voice to question the administration.
Democrats have so far failed significantly to highlight the hugely questionable linkage between international terrorism and Saddam Hussain’s Iraq, whose alleged weapons of mass destruction are being used as an excuse to prepare the extremely dangerous commitment of the US military to a Middle East invasion.
When countries go to war, truth is always the first casualty. Only a brave man will attempt to swim against the tide of patriotism that wells up, even though in normal times, his arguments and questions might be considered admissible and reasonable.
The United States is already at war with international terrorism and is poised on the brink of war with Iraq. Republican hawks in Congress, as well as the Bush administration, need to be forced by a determined political opposition, to account for their policies and justify their intentions. The Republicans won the midterm elections on the back of war fever. The domestic agenda to cut taxes and rein in spending was always an irrelevance. In their heart of hearts, most voters must have realized that the immense sums necessary to prosecute a Middle East war, let alone a global campaign against terrorism, are going to require more, not less government spending. That expenditure will either have to be paid for by issuing new debt or by higher, not lower taxes. Neither solution is going to do much to ease the gathering US recession.
The Democrats therefore owe it to the American people to let go the coattails of the jingoistic White House and take an independent stand to challenge Bush’s warmongering policies. Party bosses may calculate with standard political cynicism that they have little to lose between now and the presidential elections. If Bush comes unstuck, they will have put clear blue water between themselves and the administration. If he does not, they are unlikely to be in a worse position than they are now.
Nevertheless, however self-serving such a radical realignment of Democrat policy may be, the party owes it to the US electorate to make sure that the Bush administration is forced to account for itself, every step of the way along its belligerent path. What can no longer be allowed to happen is that the Bush White House should lead the country sleep-walking into a deadly and possibly catastrophic war. With their election defeat the Democrats have received a wake-up call. In their response to that electoral disaster, they in their turn can give a wake-up call to the American people.
