From The Dissident Voice
By Gary Leupp

I have in front of me two documents of despair, of disillusionment with the American political system that allows this criminal war to continue. Andrew J. Bacevich in his Washington Post op-ed column and Cindy Sheehan in her statement on her blog express despair over the failure of the Democrats placed in power by an antiwar electorate to take firm measures to end the war in Iraq. Sheehan declares, as she announces her departure from the spotlight that hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike, adding, It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years– 

Professor Bacevich, now sharing Sheehan’s personal grief, calls his earlier hopes that he and others might force the country to change course an illusion, noting that responsibility for the war’s continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. Money, he notes bitterly, maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels– It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent. This is not some great conspiracy. It’s the way our system works.

If there is a positive aspect to this despair, it is this very realization: the system is the problem. It has not so much failed us as we have failed to understand what Sheehan and Bacevich are concluding: it isn’t designed to work for us but for but for them.

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