House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) yesterday reaffirmed her commitment to end the war in Iraq, but her words were greeted with skepticism and some boos by anti-war liberal activists.
Addressing the liberal pressure group Campaign for America’s Future, Pelosi called the war in Iraq a “tragedy” and a “grotesque mistake,” but her words elicited catcalls for her to do more.
Pelosi acknowledged the protesters and even challenged them.
At one point in her remarks, she told the protesters, “The best preparation for combat is combat.”
When someone shouted a question about Darfur, Pelosi segued into a discussion about her visit to Sudan last year. But she then pivoted and with a smile asked, “Just getting back to the war now, if I may. Do you mind if I do that?”
I’ve got two reactions:
First, I think the Democrats have opened themselves up for a world of hurt by getting in bed with the Michael Moore anti-war types. These people are simply out of the mainstream of American politics. They demand full-scale American defeat in Iraq and they demand it now, yet a large portion of America stands firmly against that. The Democrats simply are not going to be able to present enough of a moderate front to make significant gains in elections if they keep having to either pander to these fringist loons or suffer their embarrassing boos.
And the Democrats won’t be able to make any electoral gains at all if the Republicans stop helping them by alienating their base with silly immigration laws and profligate spending. But I digress.
Second, it’s interesting that a bunch of staunch anti-war liberals would be asking Rep. Pelosi about when we’re going into Darfur. As tragic as Darfur is, Iraq was just as bad. If not worse.
According to Wikipedia the World Health Organization but the total number of people killed in the Darfur conflict at 50,000 in 2004. More recent studies from 2006 have upgraded that number to approximately 400,000 - 450,000, putting the number killed per year since the beginning of the conflict at about 133,000 or so.
According to the best numbers available, Saddam was murdering approximately 25,000 of his own citizens every single year (which, interestingly enough, is more than the number of civilians who die in Iraq now because of the war). And that number is just for executions. It doesn’t even calculate the number of Iraqis who starved to death because Saddam was stealing billions from UN oil-for-food program that was supposed to be feeding Iraqis, nor does it calculate the hundreds of thousands killed in Saddam’s wars of aggression in the region.
The humanitarian crisis in Iraq was, prior to U.S. invasion, every bit as bad as the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. So how can anyone oppose the war in Iraq but support intervention in Darfur?
It doesn’t make any sense.