House Dems Must Learn From Desert Storm – NOW

During most of the 1990s, I worked at personal development seminars that took place every few months. One of the speakers who appeared almost every summer was retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of all Allied troops in the first Gulf War (frequently referred to as Desert Storm for one of the major operations in the campaign). As you might imagine of someone who commanded approximately 750,000 troops, General Schwarzkopf was an engaging speaker and the audience was enthralled by his talks. He always took questions at the end and, regardless of the focus of that summer’s talk, one question was always asked: “Why didn’t we go into Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein from power while we were already in the Middle East in force?” His answer made a lot of sense. Allied intelligence believed that Saddam’s replacement would be much worse than Saddam himself. The old adage “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” came to mind.

About a dozen years later, itching to fight someone post-9/11, fake “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction being found in Saddam Hussein’s bedroom closet was “uncovered” and the second Iraq war began. Saddam Hussein was executed shortly thereafter. General Schwarzkopf’s answer to the annual question was correct; removing Saddam from power unleashed people who were far worse than he was, including ISIS. Twenty years after the start of the second Gulf War, the world is still paying the price for disregarding the lessons of the first Gulf War.

What’s this got to do with Congressional Democrats? Their “strategy” of repeatedly voting the party line when dealing with the Speakership has allowed the removal of Kevin McCarthy as the Speaker of the House, with the threat of someone much worse being elected Speaker in his place. Instead of leveraging McCarthy’s problems with the radical right wing of his party, as I suggested in my last post, the House Democrats have subsequently toed the party line and, en masse, voted for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in some sort of strategy to share power with the majority Republicans, something that has absolutely no chance of happening. Like it was during the humiliating fifteen rounds of voting it took for McCarthy to become Speaker, the plan seems to be to sit back and allow the already embarrassed Republican Party to be embarrassed even further, despite the probability that whomever the Republicans vote in as the next Speaker will be much worse than McCarthy was. While all this extra humiliation is being heaped on the Republicans (increasing their embarrassment level from 99% to 99.1%), the United States is being held hostage because the House must vote on crucial legislation and they can’t do that without a Speaker. Is it really worth “piling on” the opposition when doing so harms the country and may result in a much worse Speaker than McCarthy being elected? I doubt that many sane American citizens think so.

House Democrats have been eloquent in stating their objections to Kevin McCarthy’s actions as Speaker and they’ve made some good points. They complain that he allowed a bill calling for the impeachment of President Joe Biden to reach a full House vote while sidestepping the proper procedure that would likely have seen that bill being killed in committee due to the lack of any evidence whatsoever. My guess is that McCarthy did that to appease the radical right wing of the House, the same people he had to trade favors-for-votes with in order to be elected Speaker in the first place. Ultimately, except for the time it took to defeat the impeachment bill, no harm was done. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“AOC”) spoke eloquently about McCarthy’s shortcomings and emphasized that McCarthy had lied to the Democrats as a reason they didn’t do anything to prevent McCarthy’s ouster. I often enjoy watching AOC use facts and logic to show the fallacies in someone’s argument, just as I enjoy watching Katie Porter use her whiteboard to do the same mathematically. But while it’s always disconcerting to be lied to, AOC’s lack of a law degree likely intensified her dismay. The large number of lawyers on both sides of the House aisle know that lying is just business as usual. They may even make McCarthy an honorary attorney.

What I do know about McCarthy is that he didn’t let the United States ruin its credit rating and reputation by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, something many of his radical right members wanted him to do. And he didn’t allow the government to shut down, also something his radical right members wanted him to do, instead agreeing to a temporary measure to keep the government open until mid-November. Whether you like McCarthy or not, ultimately he put the country’s needs ahead of his own and, ultimately, he lost the Speakership because of it. Would Jim Jordan have done that? No. But Jim Jordan wouldn’t lie to House Democrats. He’d tell them they’ll get absolutely nothing and he’d mean it.

Would anybody running to replace McCarthy ensure that the government stays open and that the country’s reputation and credit rating remain intact? Some would, most wouldn’t. The U.S. can’t just hope that someone who’s not willing to shut down the government because of some wild conspiracy theory will become the next Speaker. We need to be certain. It’s time for House Democrats to show some leadership, despite being in the minority. They do, after all, want to be in the majority come 2024.

The House Democrats need to give up their dreams of sharing power with a new Speaker and they need to realize that having a functioning House (such as it is) is more important than being able to point at the Republicans and embarrass them a little bit more because they’ve basically brought the government to its knees. It’s time that the Dems back the “devil they know”, Kevin McCarthy, for Speaker. They can likely get some concessions from him for their votes. Even if they can’t, knowing that preventing the possible government shutdown in November requires a Speaker who will work to keep the government running, over the wishes of a few radical House members, must override their desire to continue to embarrass the opposition. Handle this now, before we get a chance to see what Hell is unleashed by the devil we don’t know. The citizens of the United States, who the House represents, deserve better than what they’re getting from their elected officials right now.