Anti-war in theory vs anti-war in practice

Last year, Kirsten Gillibrand won election to Congress. She became only the second Democrat in more than a century to be elected to the House. I voted for her because there were only two candidates on the ballot and she was certainly less bad than the incumbent Republican. But it was a vote cast with little enthusiasm. There was little to suggest that she'd deviate much from the corporate Democrat line. I was happy she won less for its own sake than for the principle that a non-Republican can actually win around here.

Still, I expected little of her on most things, especially on the issue that most animated the Democrats that elected her: Iraq.

Rep. Gillibrand recently voted to continue funding the aggression against Iraq. Adirondack Musing blog, a strong supporter of Gillibrand, expressed disappointment in the Congresswoman.

He wrote: Rep. Gillibrand...how about fighting to end the Iraq War rather than fighting to win your next election?

I wasn't really disappointed because I completely expected her to vote this way. It is certainly to bad that she was more interested in keeping her job than in doing her job. But it's not surprising. It's consistent with the equivocation on Iraq that she showed throughout her campaign.

But I think it's an equivocation most Democrats pretended not to see in their desperate attempt to get one of their own elected. It's exactly the same thing so many Democrats did with regard to John Kerry in 2004.

I suppose it's yet another example of why we need true multipartyism in this country. Many elected Democrats are anti-war in theory. They are anti-war when it's politically expedient, when they are before certain crowds. We need leaders who are anti-war in practice.