- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
In a non bizarro world, where a candidate's hair or mixed race didn't matter, McCain's abstention would be, should be, big news. In case you hadn't noticed, he's centered his campaign around the Iraq War. (anyone know his position on immigration? Tort reform? Greenhouse gases? Gays in the military? Thought not). So here is the most momentous vote in Congress since the war began, the point where Congress has effectively repudiated the President's own war strategy and seeks to supplement it's own and the man who wants to be king, or at least king of victory in Iraq is conspicously AWOL (yeah, harsh term for a former POW, but I'm feeling FOX-like on this).
McCain, to hear him on Jon Stewart two nights ago, wants victory, for the troops, for the Iraqis, for all of us. Now Bush and Congress are set for a major battle over how any plan for victory should be pursued and McCain stands on the sidelines with uh, no plan. He won't side with Bush. He won't side with the majority in Congress, and worst of all, he has offered no third way.
That is an act far more damning than his age, his rumored temper, his kissing up to Falwell, or even his Straight Talk Express jerking so far over the median of logic and common sense it would have been pulled over by a drunken Mel Gibson hallicinating he was filming for Lethal Weapon 4.
Actions do speak louder than words. This was not an inconsequential vote. It's one thing to miss some minor vote while campaigning, its another to avoid a vote on the very platform you are campaigning on.
Dead man walking.
