Monday, February 19, 2007

Nancy Pelosi: Power vs. Responsibility


Hat Tip to Black Five, Point Five, Blue Star Chronicles and finally Charlie Daniels for an open letter to Nancy Pelosi that he has on his Soapbox and Message Board.

First a little about Charlie Daniels, he is one patriotic American, and I mean the true blue hero kind of American, the kind of American that Congress needs to emulate. His song, "In America" (lyrics here) should be blaring over any air wave that the troops can tune in to. The astonishing thing about this song is that is wasn't written since 9/11 or since the War on Terror started, it was written in 1980. "In America" ranks up there with Toby Keith's "The Angry American", that is just how powerful it is. Now, if you haven't gone back and read the lyrics, please do and I would truly appreciate it if you would find the tune on iTunes or the like and really listen to it. It Rocks!!

Now, on to the focus of this post. Daniels' letter to Reid and Pelosi plainly states what the Democrats should be thinking about; the fallout from leaving Iraq without the job being done. He lists quite a few realistic outcomes and asks if they have a plan to counter that effect. It is quite remarkable.

What I am seeing with Pelosi is that she is still on her Speaker Honeymoon. She is flexing her muscles, making sure that everyone knows she is in charge. Just take a look at many of her photos and in particular some moving footage, there is an obvious smirk on her face. She is loving the limelight. Sadly, she is, as Daniels pointed out, thinking short term and only honing in on way to inflict pain on the White House. In short, she is concentrating on power.

Looking back to recent weeks with the issue over her requested military transport, she was fixated on her status, appearance and place in history as the first female Speaker. A responsible person who protests to be concerned with the lack of armor and equipment for the troops would have conversely taken a smaller plane, or flown commercial flights and then ask that the saved funds be put into equipping the troops.

A responsible person would, instead of attempting to smear the Commander in Chief at every opportunity, quietly go to the White House and talk with the President to hammer out significant, real and valuable answers to the problems facing our country in private. Instead, she is behaving like a newly selected team captain of the cheer leading squad at the high school of your choice.

I shudder to think how she will react when the terrorists bring their attacks to US soil, when Iran takes over Iraq for Al-Qaeda, when the Kuwaiti oilfields are cut off, and on a deeper level, how we are perceived on the world stage considering we have not seen a military event to its end since 1945. Daniels makes some amazingly chilling points in this letter and I hope that Pelosi and her followers realize that power and responsibility are not mutually exclusive.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You nailed that. It's all about power. I keep looking for a statesman in the political limelight somewhere and I haven't seen one yet. Well, maybe a couple.

Nancy Pelosi is a dangerous woman. I'd be willing to bet a big percentage of Americans don't even know who she is.

Thanks for the mention :)

Ken said...

I think they do have a plan fallout. A really bad one. They are using the exact same playbook that they did in Vietnam. Difference being they got us into Vietnam and somehow managed to convince themselves, that generation, and the world that it was the Republican's war.

Fast forward to today and they look to the 'slow bleed' strategery, blame the lack of progress on the lack of properly trained troops (you can see that coming in the wording of Semper-I Murtha's proposals) , and overall mismanagement by the Bush administration. Their plan is to let it go to h-e-double hockey sitcks and then point their fingers at the Republicans.

Like I said, it's not a good plan. It's not a plan for victory. It's not even a plan for defeat. It's a plan for assigning blame. Yet their blame game will be daylighted by bloggers such as you, Mudville, Smash, and others. Keep pointing out their shamelessness.