Keith Olbermann, in one of his “special comment” features last night, expressed immense disappointment in the failure on the part of all branches of government to withdraw American troops from Iraq. He argues that “few men or women elected in our history…have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear: Get us out of Iraq.” Olbermann is mostly upset with the Democrats’ recent compromise in the Iraq spending bill to not include a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. In addition to Olbermann’s intense attack on the Democrats, he also offers a vitriolic condemnation of the president himself as a stubborn and insensitive leader:
“How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic. Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally–first, last and always–that the troops would not suffer…You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.”
Agreement spread like fire on many blogs on the left, including the Democratic Daily, the Populist, and Bring it On. The Moderate Voice, however, does not accept Olbermann’s statements without qualification, and claims that troops will remain in Iraq for years to come. TMV maintains some faith in the Democratic party, explaining that this latest move was done simply to “satisfy the base:”
“To me, it was quite clear that the Democrats were, well, playing politics. They had no intention of truly clashing with George W. Bush…The Democrats don’t want to stop funding the troops in Iraq: it will make them look bad and hurt them politically. The Democrats cannot win a battle over the war in Iraq: Bush can simply veto every bill he doesn’t like – the Democrats will not have a veto-proof majority on controversial Iraq War bills.
Yet it is this “playing politics” that Olbermann sees as an alternative for bravery. The Democratic Daily alerts readers that not all Democrats are voting for the bill; John Kerry and Christopher Dodd will reject the bill with a vocal “NO” (in doing so, they could still be playing their own politics).
While Olbermann chides the Democratic party for its cowardice, the blog Echidne of the Snakes pays less attention to political games and focuses on the media structures that seem to turn Democratic congress members away from the needs of their constituents. EOC says that our political system “used to work somewhat better when we had a free press that was required to make an effort at informing The People in objective reality. Olbermann aside, the commercial media in this country is a fully vested member of the Bush regime… The disastrous war in Iraq is the direct result of our not having a political crisis over that stolen election.”
Interesting. If I’m employed by the government, I certainly haven’t seen my check from the big boss. Also, I’m pretty sure that “the commercial media” is not a homogenous group that can be categorized in this way–it’s not like we all share one big newsroom.
Daniel DeRito of Bring It On gets the last word. In this age of political games, frustration, and power plays, he predicts that “the deafening drone that will emerge will be the sound of the collective awareness and awakening of an American voter tsunami hell bent on tearing up the template of our two party system and starting over.”
Eric Hirsch is a Columbia Journalism Review intern.