"I'm saddened," said Senate minority leader Tom Daschle,
a Democrat and Vietnam era veteran, "saddened that this president
failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war, saddened
that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create
the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country."
Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, responded that Daschle had
"come mighty close" to giving "comfort to our adversaries."
It was not clear, however, why Saddam Hussein would be comforted when
he saw American leaders freely criticizing each other at a time when
U.S. armed forces were about to end his repressive regime. Those who
impugn the patriotism of the ruling party's critics might in fact give
the enemy the impression that they have lost their faith in the enduring
benefits of our First Amendment freedoms.
When in 1999 President Clinton ordered the bombing of targets in Yugoslavia
to protect ethnic Albanians from the Milosevic regime, Congressman Tom
Delay, now House majority leader, thought that his patriotism compelled
him to question the President's policies: "I don't think we should
be bombing in the Balkans," Delay complained. His colleague Randy
Cunningham even accused the President of conducting "the most inept
foreign policy in the history of the United States."
That Democrats and Republicans oppose each other's views, even in wartime,
is an honorable American tradition. Thousands of Americans who went
into the streets to protest the Clinton administration's bombing of
Belgrade now are marching in the same streets to demonstrate against
President Bush's order to bomb Baghdad. No double standard there.
In a society priding itself in its pursuit of justice and freedom, genuine
patriotism requires loyalty to the nation's constitutional principles,
not fawning acceptance of the policies of its leaders. When, for example,
President Bush announced that "more than 35 countries are giving
crucial support" and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that the
present coalition against Iraq "is larger than the coalition that
existed during the Gulf War in 1991," their vastly exaggerated
assertions needed to be challenged.
"It's a bald-faced lie to suggest that," Ivo Daalder of the
Brookings Institution declared, "even our allies Spain, Italy,
and Bulgaria are not providing troops." The 2002 CIA Fact Book
states that "the population of Coalition countries is approximately
1.18 billion people"--including the 50,000 residents of the Marshall
Islands. When reporters confronted the State Department's spokesman
with this misleading information spread by the Administration, he conceded
that those 35 countries "may not be providing a specific resource,
or they may just be allowing access, overflight or other participation
in that way, or they may just have decided they want to be publicly
associated with the effort to disarm Iraq."
People who care about America's welfare and her future relations to
the rest of the world, have always carefully analyzed the government's
words and actions. When the President told Congress that "Americans
should not expect one battle but a lengthy campaign unlike any other
we have ever seen," what did he imply? Did he refer to the destruction
of the Al Qaida conspiracy worldwide, or did he think of a prolonged
war against one "evil" regime after another?
Patriotic Americans are worried, not that the nation could lose the
war against the Iraqi dictator, but that we could lose too many friends
and make too many enemies. "What we need," wrote Vice President
Hubert Humphrey, "are critical lovers of America - patriots who
express their faith in their country by working to improve it."