Democrats Take Over the House

Nancy Pelosi is now the Speaker of the House. Secretary Rumsfeld has resigned. And the Democrats are celebrating.

Pelosi has promised to put ethics and bipartisanship ahead of everything. She has also stated that immediate withdrawal and impeachment are “off the table.” The Democrats have been meeting with President Bush to set the new course for Iraq. And that’s really all you need to know.

Why did the Republican Party lose?

Instead of advocating moral values, they were convicted of scandals. Rather than practicing fiscal restraint, they built a bridge to nowhere. Instead of fighting crime, they supported amnesty for illegal aliens. Most notably, instead of staying the course in Iraq, President Bush had suggested that we need a new plan. That’s why conservatives stayed home.

Libertarian voters have been frustrated with the expansion of government on socio-economic policy, whether it was the Gravina Island Bridge, prescription drugs for seniors, or the expansion of homeland security that apparently harms our civil liberties. While the Bush Administration has been relatively soft on same-sex marriage and abortion on demand, they have been consistent, nonetheless.

Independent voters were convinced that neither party had a plan for the most important issue of the election. Democrats effectively denied plans to “cut and run”, while Republicans had suddenly abandoned the current policy in Iraq. Because Republicans did not outline their agenda for Iraq swiftly before Election Day, it was apparent that Republicans showed an admission to the public that they confessed to what the Democrats had been hinting for years. Instead of running on a bad plan, Republicans decided to run with no plan.

Where else did the right go wrong?

Bush has tried tirelessly to fit the mold of Ronald Reagan. In search of his “Evil Empire” moment, he offered the “Axis of Evil” – Iraq, Iran, and North Korea - all of which had been in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Not long after came the invasion of Iraq to stop Saddam’s development of biological weapons.

In retrospect, it was foolish to provoke too many enemies at one time. The timeline of events sent the wrong message. Iraq, Iran, and North Korea – stop pursuing nukes. Then came the invasion of Iraq. Iran and North Korea, while in pursuit of nuclear weapons for years, felt the urgency to speed up their nuclear programs to act as a deterrent to the United States. As a result, Israel is in greater danger.

I maintain that going after Saddam was the right thing to do. Iraqi liberation had long been an American policy, rather than a Bush policy. Take, for example, the Iraqi Liberation Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1998, which calls for the United States to “establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq.”

In greater detail, “It is the sense of the Congress that once the Saddam Hussein regime is removed from power in Iraq, the United States should support Iraq's transition to democracy by providing immediate and substantial humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, by providing democracy transition assistance to Iraqi parties and movements with democratic goals, and by convening Iraq's foreign creditors to develop a multilateral response to Iraq's foreign debt incurred by Saddam Hussein's regime.”

Around this time period, Clinton’s foreign policy was especially hawkish. The question remains – what stopped Clinton from invading Iraq? It may have been, ironically enough, that he didn’t want to take any more heat for the increasing of gas prices. It may have also been his recognition of world government, or more specifically, the United Nations as the final authority. It may have even a potential bait-piece for the Republicans to suggest that Clinton was looking for ways to distract attention away from the Monica Lewinsky Scandal.

The argument that emphasizes the fact that the United States sided with Hussein during the war with Iran is self-defeated for many reasons. We were never allies with Iran, that’s number one. And second, we accept in our history that we fought alongside of Joseph Stalin and the Red Army, which also became an enemy and a threat to the United States.

But Republicans have failed to address all of that. In fact, very few Americans realize that the Iraqi Liberation Act exists. As a result, the War in Iraq became a losing issue.

So what are the Democrats planning to do about Iraq? Now that they are back in power, they have no reason to be angry. Many conservatives are skeptical of their promise to work with a president who has opened himself to new ideas. He has appointed Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld, and is ready to take Iraq into a new direction. Only time will tell how long the Bush-Pelosi coalition will last.