John Edwards Responds to DFA Participants on Iraq War

There were many responses - including my own - to Democracy For America's [DFA's] recent request for citizen-participants' ideas about the ways Congress can and should respond to the cry for bringing an end to the tragic Iraq War.

2008 presidential candidate John Edwards has offered his response, filled with gratitude for our particiption and clarity about his own ideas as to how he believes Congress should respond to the crisis at hand. His ideas include the Congressional use of funding authority in order to draw down troops levels and to force President Bush to steadily bring troops out of Iraq and to stop the escalation of this war.

"It is not enough to debate whether we're going to debate and give speeches. No more non-binding resolutions," says Senator Edwards. "The Congress needs to stop this President from making yet another in a long series of tragic mistakes and end this war in Iraq."

This is a sharply distinct statement on where Senator Edwards stands today - a testimony to his personal and political evolution since 2002 about which he's publicly admitted that he believes he was wrong when he'd voted for the Iraq Resolution.

For those who put any stock in long-failed political advisor Bob Shrum's intuition and judgment, the current Edwards position may be seen as nothing more than a finger-in-the-wind political position. It should be obvious that the opinion of Shrum is the opinion of a man who lives - who relies and can thrive only on the hope that he will be believed - even though most advice he's given over the past five years has amounted to disastrous political outcomes.

Those who understand that the future of America is about more than "horseraces and poker chips" [see Harvey Wasserman's quote below] will likely see that the bruised egos of past political advisor-losers who claim to be the voice Edwards depended upon to make decisions for him are the voices of the totally lost in a whole new wilderness of hopeful and conscientious political possibilities. Edwards has left the curiously confession-laden Shrum and other bruised egos of the "architects of defeat" far behind in their little wire-pulling backrooms as Edwards moves further by the day into the light of the America inhabited by everyday people outside the D.C. Beltway.

What's this?
A man who will actually not grovel at the "brilliant" feet of Karl Rove?
Good for Edwards!

On TV, "strategists" like James Carville, Robert Shrum and so many other slick operators grovelled shamelessly at the "brilliance" of Karl Rove while ignoring the miserable campaign they mis-handled right from the start. Arnold Schwarzenegger called the Democrats a bunch of losers, and this is exactly who he meant.

For these backroom wire pullers, issues are poker chips and the horserace is all that matters. Shrum has lost every campaign he's run.

- Harvey Wasserman, 11-11-04

Senator Edwards' formal statement on Iraq can be viewed here.