[Mb-civic] Who Will Say 'No More'? - Gary Hart - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Who Will Say 'No More'?

By Gary Hart
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page A15

"Waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool said to push on," warned 
an anti-Vietnam war song those many years ago. The McGovern presidential 
campaign, in those days, which I know something about, is widely viewed 
as a cause for the decline of the Democratic Party, a gateway through 
which a new conservative era entered.

Like the cat that jumped on a hot stove and thereafter wouldn't jump on 
any stove, hot or cold, today's Democratic leaders didn't want to make 
that mistake again. Many supported the Iraq war resolution and -- as the 
Big Muddy is rising yet again -- now find themselves tongue-tied or 
trying to trump a war president by calling for deployment of more 
troops. Thus does good money follow bad and bad politics get even worse.

History will deal with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives who 
misled a mighty nation into a flawed war that is draining the finest 
military in the world, diverting Guard and reserve forces that should be 
on the front line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances 
that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold War, accumulating 
staggering deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding 
Iraqi buildings we've blown up, and weakening America's national security.

But what will history say about an opposition party that stands silent 
while all this goes on? My generation of Democrats jumped on the hot 
stove of Vietnam and now, with its members in positions of 
responsibility, it is afraid of jumping on any political stove. In their 
leaders, the American people look for strength, determination and 
self-confidence, but they also look for courage, wisdom, judgment and, 
in times of moral crisis, the willingness to say: "I was wrong."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301178.html?nav=hcmodule
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