Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Moderates may hold solution to Iraq war

I'll admit I enjoy a good political debate and even the occaisional down and dirty political fight. But the entrenched partisanship and increasingly ugly rhetoric surrounding the issue of the war in Iraq is going way out of bounds.

The latest troubling turn is the complete vilification in the blogosphere of Illinois Reps Dan Lipinski (D) and Mark Kirk (R) for their recent Chicago Tonight appearance where they discussed the need for a bipartisan effort to develop a solution for the Iraq War.

I for one think we should never have gotten into the mess, and I think everyone agrees that there were big problems with the way the war has been handled. But we are there. We helped make the mess so we have to help clean it up. We have a commitment to the people of Iraq as well as to the men and women in our military to figure out the best way to proceed.

The republican congress couldn't fix it and despite a supposed mandate the democratic congress can't seem to make the situation any better. Middle america is getting tired of the rantings of both the right and the left. Tired of the finger pointing, the expectations of failure from the left and the rose-colored progress reports of the right, mostly we are exhausted by the need to put a political spin on every aspect of this war.

We should expect moderates in congress from both sides of the aisle to get together and figure this mess out. I don't know if the Iraq study group plan Lipinski and Kirk are supporting is the way to go - but I do know that getting moderates talking about real solutions is the only chance we have to get out of this mess. Lipinski and Kirk may get blasted from the fringes - but here in the middle I say good start, keep it up and god-speed.

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