Pelosi
by tristero
This morning, I visited our brave men and women at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center. It is a place of prayers, of honor, of respect, and reflection. And I left there more committed than ever to bringing the war to an end.
I told my colleagues yesterday that the biggest ethical issue facing our country for the past three and a half years is the war in Iraq. This unnecessary pre-emptive war has come at great cost. Nearly 2,900 of our brave troops have lost their lives and more than 21,000 more have suffered lasting wounds. Since the war began, Congress has appropriated more than $350 billion, and the United States has suffered devastating damage to our reputation in the eyes of the world.
The notion that the war is an ethical issue is an important one. It ties the mindset of a party that would appoint a Mark Foley to the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children or an Eric Keroack to oversee Title X funding to the kind of mentality that would wage an immoral, insane war.
And quite rightly, Pelosi understands that the prosecution of this war, the continued American involvement in the carnage of a civil war, the utterly pointless deaths, the gut-wrenching lack of positive alternatives as long as Bush is in office, the madness of American exceptionalism and pretensions to military/economic empire, the unspeakable corruption and cronyism, and the torture … Without a doubt, the Bush/Iraq war is the pre-eminent moral issue facing the country right now and the foreseeable future.
Let’s hope that she and her caucus continue to have the courage to speak up and more importantly, act, on their principles.