Good Friday morning Fellow Seekers,
This piece is cross-posted at my new home, MinnPost.com.
I’ve written before, admiringly, about the October 2002 speech Barack Obama gave opposing the war in Iraq, the same month that Congress voted to authorize the war.
On one such recent occasion, a comment in the thread by Centauri argued that Obama’s stand against the war was not lonely and therefore may not have been as courageous as it is sometimes portrayed.
His chief fact in support of that argument was this: The great majority of Illinois Democrats in Congress voted against the Iraq War resolution.
I checked the congressional records and confirmed that eight of the 10 Illinois Dems in the U.S. House voted No on the resolution. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois also opposed the resolution authorizing the use of force.
All eight Illinois Republican congressmen plus GOP Sen. Peter Fitzgerald voted Aye. The Chicago newspapers were editorializing in favor of the resolution, and polls showed that a majority of Americans and the majority of Illinoisans favored the use of U.S. military force to remove Saddam Hussein.
In the last Dem Prez debate, Obama did claim that:
“It was not [politically] smart for me to oppose the war at the start of this war, but I did so because it was the right thing to do.”
I take that to be a claim that it was an act of political courage.
It had not previously occurred to me that the question of whether Obama’s speech demonstrated good judgment, and whether it demonstrated political courage, could be separated. But they can, and perhaps should.
If the climate in Illinois was such that most Democratic elected officials opposed the war, it hardly seems that the decision of a state senator who was presumably contemplating a run for Fitzgerald’s U.S. Senate seat qualifies for a Profile in Courage award for taking the same position.
None of this changes the contrast that Obama draws with Sen. Hillary Clinton’s vote in favor of the resolution authorizing the war. Nor does it subtract from the prescience that Obama demonstrated in his remarks themselves, which included this passage:
“I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.
I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”
But still, is the ‘prescience’ that of Obama or his colleagues?
The context makes it less of an act of leadership.
I’m not a Barack Obama supporter but I don’t know why his opposition to the Iraq War in 2002 couldn’t be on par with these included in “Profiles in Courage” (from Wikipedia):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiles_in_Courage
” * John Quincy Adams from Massachusetts, for breaking away from the Federalist Party.
* Daniel Webster also from Massachusetts, for speaking in favor of the Compromise of 1850.
* Thomas Hart Benton from Missouri, for staying in the Democratic Party despite his opposition to the extension of slavery in the territories.
* Sam Houston from Texas, for speaking against the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Sam Houston was also profiled for opposing Texas’ secession from the Union. For refusing to support the secession of Texas, Houston was deposed from the office of Governor.
* Edmund G. Ross from Kansas, for voting for acquittal in Andrew Johnson impeachment trial. As a result of Ross’ vote, and six other Republicans, Johnson’s presidency was saved, and the stature of the office was preserved.
* Lucius Lamar from Mississippi, for eulogizing Charles Sumner on the Senate Floor and other efforts to mend ties between the North and South during Reconstruction, and for his principled opposition to the Bland-Allison Act to permit free coinage of silver.
* George Norris from Nebraska, for opposing Joseph Gurney Cannon’s autocratic power as Speaker of the House, for speaking out against arming U.S. merchant ships during the United States’ neutral period in World War I, and for supporting the Presidential Campaign of Democrat Al Smith.
* Robert A. Taft from Ohio, for criticizing the Nuremberg Trials for trying Nazi war criminals under what Taft considered ex post facto laws.”
I don’t know what the others from Illinois said in their defenbse of their votes but it Obama’s speech qualified his vote, I think it qualifies as an act of political courage on the order of Daniel Webste’s speech in favor of the Compromise of 1850 which nbody remembers today. (for that matter who remembers any of the “acts of courage” profiled today?). When one recalls how anyone who soke out against the war in 2002 and 2003 was vilified and accused of being a traitor by the lowlifes in the Bush administration, and their many supporters around the country, I think Obama deserves a little credit.
It appears that the Ill Dem delegation was stronger against the war than the Dem party nationally—-good for them, they were responsible leaders.
Obama took an unequivocal position that Bush’s (proposed) War was unnecessary and “dumb”, when he was running for a US senate seat in a state where a majority of citizens favored the war because they were terrified. In such circumstances, his speech seems quite politically courageous to me. And it should to any objective, aware person who lived through that time.
I consider this attempt by Team Clinton to tarnish Obama’s clear and prescient record against Bush’s oil war (compared to Hillary’s utter, abject colossal failure on it) to be swift-boating. They are shameless and are coming to resemble KKKarl Rover, whom they likely admire. And they are not being called on it by the MSM. Or even here.
Obama’s vote against the war (with which I totally agree) was an act of courage only if it endangered his re-election. The fact that he was going along with the rest of the Illinois congressional delegation makes this seem less likely.