Comments made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi illustrated all too clearly that Democratic animosity toward President Bush trumps Democratic commitment to fighting terrorism and keeping the world safe from nuclear arms proliferation. Speaking to a gathering of Democratic members of the House of Representatives in Williamsburg, VA on Saturday, Pelosi menacingly stated to her colleagues, “if it appears likely that Bush wants to take the country to war against Iran, the House would take up a bill to deny him the authority to do so.”From a national security perspective, this sentiment, coming as it did from someone third in the line of presidential succession, is significant. Note that Pelosi did not qualify her remarks with any caveats such as whether Congress should authorize war against Iran if Iran attacked another nation, such as Israel, or if an Iranian-produced nuclear device were detonated in an American or allied city, or even if Iran continues to refuse to halt its nuclear weapons program. Pelosi likewise did not make an exception for a scenario in which Iran, seeing Congress’s spineless debates over meaningless “resolutions” on the Iraq War, decided the time was right to invade Iraq and seize its considerable natural resources and slaughter Sunni’s without restraint or mercy.
Based on Pelosi’s statement, none of these provocations, any of which would pose clear and present dangers to global security, would be sufficient for this Democratic Congress to approve military action against Iran and support the Commander in Chief, entirely because he is George W. Bush. For Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues the fundamental threat to America is not Iran, or North Korea, or even Islamic terrorists. Rather than working to deny terrorists of their funding, weaponry, and safe shelter from sponsoring states, the current Congress is more interested in working to deny the President the authority to wage war with Iran regardless of Iran’s actions. Note her choice of words, “deny him the authority” (emphasis added). Congress is not interested in proposing a bill to deny ALL presidents the authority to wage war against Iran, only THIS president.
If a Democrat, Hillary Clinton perhaps, is elected president in 2008, and Iran successfully tests a nuclear weapon and then acts militarily against Israel or the U.S., would the Democratic president respond with war on Iran? Or would Speaker Pelosi’s Congress “deny him [or her] the authority to do so”? Democrats cannot have it both ways. Either Iran is a threat or it is not, and to rule out military action against Iran even before it becomes a necessity is irresponsible and demonstrates a poor grasp of national security policies.
Analyzing Pelosi’s comments further reveals much about the Speaker’s emotions and personal disdain for the President. Courtesy protocol within the U.S. Government, and indeed American culture as a whole, once required the proper name and/or title for the person elected to serve as President, regardless of party. Even in the rancorous Congressional debates immediately prior to the Civil War, Congressmen and Senators referred to the President as “Mr. President” or “President (fill in the blank).” Speaker Pelosi rarely uses the appropriate titles for a sitting president, instead choosing to express her anti-Bush sentiment by generally refusing to acknowledge he is the President, constantly leaving out the title altogether.
The Democratic Party recently threw quite a tantrum in the media when President Bush referred to it as the “Democrat” rather than the “Democratic” Party. The President explained that he simply forgot to include the “ic” suffix and apologized, but that hardly pacified the Democrats, who displayed a remarkable sensitivity to the expected protocol of appropriate titles. For Democrats to constantly refer to the President as simply “Bush” or “Mr. Bush” demonstrates an intentional and personal disrespect for the President, who has the historical expectation of being called “Mr. President,” “Sir,” or “President Bush.” News articles and broadcasts, conservative and liberal, have embraced the stripping of titles in the interest of brevity.
Respect for the office of President has declined in the U.S. and the world to the point that few
are impressed anymore by the title “President of the United States,” when not long ago it was the most imposing and respected position in the world to friend and foe alike. The loss of respect for the office is not a product of President Bush’s perceived shortcomings, but rather arose prominently during the Vietnam War and unfortunately continues to this day.Having witnessed the unseemly behaviors of a former president and the social circles he kept, I understand how loss of respect for the man serving as president occurs. Not all presidents are role models in their private lives. However, even when observing such behavior, to me he was still “Mr. President” or “Sir” and he represented the U.S. to the world. Our presidents must project to the world the image of collective support of the American people, particularly in times of war or crisis. There was nearly unanimous support for war against Saddam Hussein in 2003 based on the available intelligence, yet when the war became more difficult than expected blaming the President became a political opportunity for his personal opponents in both parties.
Despite the patently false accusation, anti-war activists eagerly spread the concept “Bush lied people died.” Where are the chants, “Clinton lied people died”? After all, while in office former President Clinton declared Saddam Hussein a grave threat to the world and pointed out that while others may possess WMD, Hussein had actually used them on Iranians and Kurds (read Clinton’s announcement of strikes in Iraq in 1998 and his justification for them here). Senator Clinton echoed similar assessments of Hussein when she voted to support the war in Iraq.
Democrats do not accuse the Clintons of lying, defending them instead as victims of faulty intelligence. They reserve the liar label for President Bush, who used the same intelligence to justify the removal of Saddam. Al Gore screamed, “He [Bush] betrayed out country. He played on our fears,” despite Gore’s support of the decision to strike Iraq in 1998 for the same reasons Bush cited for war. The effort to portray President Bush as a deceiver and warmonger has influenced international opinion and discredited the office of president itself, a weakening that Democrats will wish they had not encouraged if/when they hold that office and need to wield power to protect the nation.
When 2005 brought the Hurricane Katrina disaster, it was the President’s fault that neither the mayor of New Orleans or the Governor of Louisiana took any action to use local resources to relocate and care for their citizens who chose not to listen to FEMA and NWS warnings to evacuate. Democrats instead encouraged storm victims, particularly African-Americans who lost everything to Katrina, to blame the President and accuse him of not wanting to help black people. Was the African-American mayor accused of this when he failed to utilize hundreds of available local school buses to evacuate the city? No, it was still the President’s fault.
We are failing as a nation to project a strong image to the world during a period of war and crisis (terrorism) and our enemies, terror groups as well as nation states, are well aware of our divisions and personal animosities. Until the American electorate chooses otherwise, President Bush is the President of the United States and should be treated as such by Congress, particularly in public appearances and in front of the controversy-hungry media. The Speaker of the House and her party should not be cementing plans to deny the President of any authority that one day may prove essential to national security simply because they personally dislike the man and covet the office.
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