My fellow Americans:

Since last Memorial Day, 980 American soldiers and Marines have died in Iraq. An average of nearly four a day have died this month alone. This past week, the United States Congress, led by the Democratic Party, had the chance to begin the process of stopping this carnage, and the Congress did not. The reason they did not? Ignorance. On the issue of voting to withhold more money to fund the war, they were ignorant of what it means to defund the war, and thus unable to make the case for it. Mix that ignorance with the Democrats’ traditional spinelessness, even with 70 percent of the electorate backing them, and the result is a fizzle heard ’round the world.

The estimable Mr. Greenwald observes of the Democrats:

They are both fearful and incapable of defending any position unless, from the outset, they are assured, by their conniving and principle-free consultants, that most Americans already agree with it. The idea of forcefully articulating a view in order to change public opinion — such as explaining why de-funding is a perfectly valid option like all the others for ending the war — never occurs to them.

It never occurred to people who should know better, like House Armed Services chair Carl Levin. It never occurred to Barack Obama, who’s supposed to be so bright. If this is the best thinking the “opposition” party can offer, we are well and truly screwed.

Pouring more money and blood down the rathole in Iraq is exactly the kind of thing the Founders worried about—citizens being forced to fund military adventuring undertaken for the executive’s personal aggrandizement, which had plagued nations for centuries. The Constitution gives the power of the purse to the Congress precisely to check the executive in this very situation. So the question is, if not by exercising its Constitutional right and moral responsibility to tie the president’s purse-strings, how precisely does the Congress propose to represent the people’s wish to end this war? By waiting for a jubilee year and then going on bended knee to the Decider and the Dark Lord and begging them to grant us a boon?

Let me know if that works out. I’m going to the beach. Possibly for the rest of the summer.