The nation's senators have spent weeks debating a resolution to condemn President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives now are spending a week on the same useless activity. This could best be described as the "Anna Nicole Resolution." It is a sexy piece of legislation that has no real meaning, like the life of the infamous gold-digger centerfold, who died last week an untimely death.
What a spectacle! What a waste of airtime and newsprint!
Congressional resolutions have no force of law. Most resolutions are for things like expressing condolences or to praise the work of an organization or civic leader. These things are rarely mentioned by the news media and are completed in a perfunctory fashion. It's a pleasant little diversion for our lawmakers that takes up little time and does no harm.
This is not the case with the Iraq resolution, which empowers our enemies, undermines our military leaders and destroys the morale of the men and women we have sent into harm's way.
This display on the floor of the House of Representatives is a lot like those endless shots of Anna Nicole faking kisses and striking near obscene poses for the camera. It's all for show. When the lights dimmed, Anna didn't feel loved, just empty. That is why she sought comfort in drugs.
As our congressmen strut around this week, I can't help but believe they feel empty, too. If Anna Nicole had a worthwhile plan for her life, it wasn't known. If those congressional leaders have a worthwhile plan for Iraq, it isn't known, either.
While Anna Nicole was constantly trying to reinvent herself in order to be relevant, so are those congressmen and senators who were criticizing the president for not sending more troops to Iraq, who now are criticizing him for doing just that.
This debate over a meaningless resolution is proof positive that the nation's lawmakers have too much time on their hands. After this spectacle, we should demand that legislative sessions be cut in half, along with our legislators' pensions and salaries. Let them go back home and do some meaningful work like the citizen legislators in days of old! Those men spent their time between sessions plowing fields and mucking stalls. Most of today's legislators are well suited to that last task. They certainly have shoveled enough manure in Washington!
What was Anna Nicole looking for? Fame and fortune, even though the former was for all the wrong reasons. What are those pushing the Iraq resolution looking for? Fame and fortune. For our legislators, it's all wrapped up in the next election. Democrats and a few wimpy Republicans simply cannot imagine what their lives would be like if they lost the next election. They could not imagine having to get a real job again or being out of the political spotlight. They have read the opinion polls and they are running scared.
Yes, they know that the people being polled often say what they think will make them look good to the polltaker. If all they hear on the nightly news is what is going wrong in Iraq and negative attacks on the president's plan to put more troops there, the polls reflect that.
The big pot of gold in the next election is under the rainbow that ends at the doorstep of the White House. If we win in Iraq – by that I mean that the country has a stable, democratically elected government that is not only willing but able to defeat insurgents – Bush and his Republican supporters will get the credit.
It doesn't have to be that way. Democrats could be part of the solution but, instead, they are betting their political futures on our defeat in Iraq. Of course the only way that can happen is if we turn tail and run. We are still, by the grace of God, the most powerful country on earth. The only thing we need to win in Iraq is the political will to do so.
Yes, these bleeding-heart liberals, who are always trying to make us believe that they care about those who are downtrodden and oppressed, are willing to leave the people that we rescued from a brutal dictator vulnerable to the next strongman.
At least poor, misguided Anna Nicole was more honest than that about what she was doing and why she was doing it.
Related special offer:
Sen. Tom Coburn's "Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders into Insiders"