Senate Wastes Time With Useless Rhetoric |
20th September 2007
Today, the upper house of our great legislative body wasted precious time passing a feel-good amendment when it should have working on more important issues. The amendment read:
To express the sense of the Senate that General David II. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.
Of course, this amendment was issued in response to recent Move On advertisements that have attacked General Petraeus. It angers me that the Senate feels the need to wag their collective finger at Americans using their right to free speech and political expression. Furthermore, this bill again contains the feel good support-the-troops overtone; once again suggesting the fallacy that opposing the war is opposing the troops.
It was the reference to the troops that won this amendment its overwhelming support, with a vote of 72-25. Once again we see how hesitant our representatives are to call a spade a spade when allegations of being unpatriotic are floating about. Both Tester and Baucus embarrassed our state by signing onto this ‘amendment’. The Senate has far more pressing business to take care of; they should spend their time solving the Iraq problem instead of censuring people who are just saying their peace.
Besides, if anyone deserves to be scolded for their behavior towards our military service people, there are far more appropriate targets.
In the words of John Kerry,(with a few exceptions) they voted for him, before they voted aganist him.
Ha Ha Ha. Swede, You’re SO WITTY. Thanks for that gut-busting post. Another gem from you!
Good post Colby and well said.
You said it brother. I was on my way here to post on this issue, but what a piece of crap. Here is what George Bush said about the ‘group’ that Jon Tester and Max Baucus voted to censure for the use of free speech:
I would like to remind both of them that MoveOn.org is an organization made up in part people and voters of this state. It doesn’t matter to me that it was MoveOn.org. That doesn’t really matter though, it could have been CPAC for all I care, it represents voters in a democracy.
We are the voters, they are our representatives and they damn well better be more afraid of irritating us than irritating the military. When this becomes a military state and congress is there to represent the Generals, then they can have that fear. For now, they damn well better worry about representing their constituency first and General Patraes second.
It’s never too late to apologize, without equivocation, for insulting our nation’s soldiers.
It’s never a waste of time for our elected officials to honor them.
Once again, I’m happy that Johnny T is his own man and votes his conscience.
Noodly,
Big difference in taking the time to honor troops and taking the time to condemn those exercising their freedom of speech. One is honorable enough, the other is shameful.
Shane, I stand by my comments at their face value. I don’t claim to know which soldiers need apologies and honoring, and which don’t deserve those decencies.
Nor will I claim that one person or group or another is exempt from criticism for exercising their “free speech”.
Criticism is one thing, an resolution is another. I would add that no group, no matter what or who they are, should be immune to criticism and considered beyond reproach.
This resolution is nothing more than criticism. The attack ad on General Petraeus was an opinion that I, and most of the Senate it seems, thinks was out of line. Nobody attempted to censor Moveon, just strongly disagree. Senators don’t give up any free speech rights themselves. Interesting that 72 of them, including many Democrats chose to vote for the resolution. It appears that Moveon’s view is a minority one, to say the least.
As to the other bill which would require more leave for the soldiers before any redeployment- I’d support that if those very soldiers weren’t needed badly in Iraq. This was more an attempt to control troop levels and the war situation than any concern for our troops. Cutting how many men are available in support of the effort is no better than if you cut the amount of armor or ammunition available. It puts our men in Iraq in a weaker position for a political point. I’m glad it was voted down too.
Maybe Congress should have a higher approval rating than 11%.
I really think Democrats want Bush to be the one to declare Iraq a loss and pull out himself. They’d like the loss pinned on him and they secretly know that a new Democrat President won’t likely pull us out right away either.
Rocky, the loss is all his.
The Senate is not in the business of criticizing freedom of speech.
This is a manifestation of the power of the right wing noise machine - senators could stand and make a fight, but figure why bother, as it will only generate flak - the machine-gun mouths and yapping dogs of right wing radio and FOX TV will have a field day with them, they’ll be flayed in every podunk town that has a Dave Berg spouting RNC bullshit. So they figure, “Vote for the damned thing, and move on.”
I’m always behind the eight ball on stuff like this, figuring it our too late - the probable reason for this debate and vote was to take headlines away from habeas corpus and troop stays over there - two very ugly Republican filibusters. Seems to have worked.
Oh come on… it’s another case of “manufactured outrage”. This is the same party that swiftboated McCain and Kerry, mocked every soldier that was ever wounded with “purple bandaids”, morphed a crippled Vietnam Vet into Osama and Saddam in ads… and the GOP is in a tizzy over this?
puh-leez!