Disconnect between American People and their elected representatives.
Last evening, as usual my wife and I listened to Friday’s offerings on the local PBS station: Jim Lehrer Newshour, Washington Week, and Bill Moyers’ NOW. All day, though, I had been in a funk about what I thought was Dick Gephardt’s “double cross” to the American people by declaring that he will vote for Bush’s Resolution on Iraq. Evidently Gephardt’s move had effectively deflated a move in the Senate by Biden and Lugar to propose an alternative wording to Bush’s Resolution.
Slowly as I listened, my depresssed state changed a little, as I heard more and more bits of encouraging news, the kind that I had not discovered cruising the newspapers and other sources on the Internet: by an estimated 20 to 1 margin, the American people are telling their representatives in Congress that they are against the prospect of war with Iraq.
What these pundits expressed in addition was interesting: if the mail being received by Congress is in that 20 to 1 range against a ware with Iraq, “Why is there such a strong support in favor of Bush’s Resolution?” The answers, as I recall, were not very plausible. Something like “To be at the side of the President in a time of national crisis.”
Yesterday I posted a piece from the CSM: Forget Desert Storm. Instead Expect Urban Storm. and Nicholas Kristof’s Op Ed in the NYT . Both had virtually the same message: although the Iraqi people hate Saddam, they hate the US more, and will respond to an invasion with determined resistance.
Here’s the disconnect, the America people are telling their representatives, “No, we don’t want war!” It’s disgusting. Via [Blog Left: Critical Interventions]
Indeed, the people are screaming NO WAR and Congress is ignoring them. Why? It is very odd…