Will the Democrats' new control of the House and Senate shake things up that much abroad? They certainly will have plenty of opportunities to alter the present American course of fighting terrorists, the war in Iraq and our overall foreign policy.
For over three years, partisan opponents of the Bush administration have made two arguments against its conduct of the "global war on terror." [That Iraq has made the terrorist threat worse and that our own government with its policies to fight the so-called war are worse than anything actual terrorists could do to us.] ...
In short, despite the election posturing, the Democrats in charge of ensuring a lasting majority are, as of now, somewhat quiet. Can it be that they are seeing that the only choices we have had after Sept. 11 have been mostly either bad or worse - and that, for those in power hoping both to prevent another such attack on our soil and not to "lose Iraq," there aren't any easy solutions?
I mentioned a similar theory.
A book I read some time ago--some sci fi thing, I think--had a bit where the main character offered his opinion that the opposite of freedom isn't slavery--for a slave has so little to lose that they are free to do what they want. The opposite of freedom is in fact responsibility, because your choices are constrained by the knowledge of the impact you will have on others you are responsible for with the decisions you make. Now, I have serious doubts about whether the first part is terribly true in any sense meaningful to actual people rather than philosophers, but there is something to that responsibility being the opposite of freedom.
For the last three years, the opposition was free to just complain about the war. Now the opposition has responsibility. We shall see whether they prefer the responsibility the voters gave them to the freedom they once had.
