Back to Iraq, Congressman Roskam?

At his 2006 debate with challenger Tammy Duckworth, Illinois Sixth District congressional candidate Peter Roskam had this to say when asked what his strategy was to win the Iraq war? "I don't have a strategy to win in Iraq; I have a goal, that it end well, so we don't have to go back." That response was politically brilliant. Roskam, like anyone remotely informed about that failed, criminal war, knew it was unwinnable. But he also knew that as long as we stayed there we could never be pushed out in defeat. So instead of answering the unanswerable, he offered a bromide sure to soothe his conservative base who tend to mindlessly support senseless American military interventions. It was also a nod to the war party that Roskam wouldn't be a pesky war critic like Republican congressmen Ron Paul (TX) and Walter Jones (NC). Those truth tellers become quickly marginalized by the war party.

In the following seven and a half years, Roskam parlayed that war party support to become House GOP Chief Deputy Whip, the No. 4 House GOP leader. And while the Iraq war gobbled up trillions of dollars, killed 4,489 GI's, physically injured or or mentally damaged hundreds of thousands more, and devastating Iraq, Roskam offered not a peep of criticism. When he did speak up it was to cement his allegiance to the war party with statements like, "The Sixth District is not a 'cut and run' district," or "We didn't go into Iraq with full force." Roskam made those egregious statements early on and has since been quiet as church mouse. Visit his website www.roskam.house.gov, search Iraq war and see what pops up:


•65 YEARS OF (ISRAELI) INDEPENDENCE (4-15-2013)

•IRON DOME A GAMECHANGER, BUT WE MUST DO MORE (10-24-2013)

•WASHINGTON EXAMINER EDITORIAL: WHY DOES NANCY PELOSI FEAR AN OBAMACARE INSPECTOR GENERAL? (3-10-2014)

In all three old citations Iraq is only mentioned tangentially. These links deal with Roskam's real interests of supporting Israel's foreign policy over those of the United States, and his relentless opposition to providing decent health insurance for the 40 millions uninsured. Roskam's avoidance of dealing with the Iraq catastrophe is back on the front burner now that Iraq is in collapse from the war his slavishly supported. But don't expect Roskam to champion our return to Iraq anytime soon. Unlike unrepentant war criminal Dick Cheney and warmongering senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, ginning up a return to Iraq on every news show, Roskam has learned his war party lessons well: vote the war party line but pretend these failed military incursions don't exist.

That is my congressman Peter Roskam: paid to represent the Sixth District; functioning as a lobbyist for the war party.