Silencing The American Voice

When the news came out several weeks ago that Washington would be sending 21,500 troops to Iraq, there was an immediate roar of outrage from around the country. With the recent Democrat victory to take back congress, there was a sense that the American people would finally have the opportunity to have their collected voices heard. On the surface of things the election seemed to be a vote against the war and a vote for the reinstatement of the constitution and refocus on social issues like universal health care. But the dream of having US troops pulled out of the abyss of an already lost war was quickly dashed. The decision to send these 21500 troops over to the war was in short a spit in the face of those who bothered to vote. So now that the news has been released that the Bush/Cheney White house wants to send another 80,000+ on top of the 21,500, it remains unclear what the average US citizen’s reaction is going to be. On top of all this, Senate Democrats have had every one of their efforts to curb this war stymied.

Today the senate Republicans turned back an effort to bring US troops home before the 2008 elections. This is the same bill that passed fairly easily in the House and seemed to have some promise of passing in the Senate as well but true to form, the Republicans rode the same patriotic wave that that they have been straddling for the past six years. Forget the fact that more than 56% of Americans want the troops to come home sooner than later, what we have in Washington is a partisan politics by any means approach to doing business.    

So the question that must be asked here is this, how much of the American voice is now silenced from American politics. More to the point, will the US voter population revert back to the same attitudes that came out of the 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon where the faith in politics became so embittered that for the next thirty + years nobody believed that their voices meant anything. In fact, there was no feeling left that came out of the short John F Kennedy years. At it now seems like we are heading down the same road. With the pentagons 26,000 and the White houses 80,000, there is little reason to believe that the same shell that the US voter retreated into during the darkest days of the voters themselves won’t be full again.  

Until Next Time.    

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