Stardate 20021011.1516

(On Screen): After months of debate about what this nation should do, my point of view has totally prevailed. The authorization for war which passed last night could have been watered down, but was not. It could have been equivocal, and indeed there was a major attempt by some to cripple it. Senator Byrd, in particular, tried to amend the bill to make it require UN authorization. He also attempted a filibuster, and a motion for cloture passed 75-25.

The actual legislative process in the Senate was complicated. In actuality, there were two bills. The one which they've been debating and writing and rewriting and amending for the last few days was S.J.Res 45. In the course of that, they considered a number of limitation. For instance, Senator Levin proposed that it be limited to a grant of authority to use force to find and destroy Iraq's WMDs and delivery systems, and only upon passage of a new UN resolution.

Senator Byrd tried to include a sunset date on the authorization. Senator Durbin attempted to make it so that hostilities could only begin in the event of "imminent threat" from Iraqi WMDs. And after 11 days of deliberation S.J.Res 45 was tabled by unanimous consent.

That's because the bill they actually passed, with almost no debate and with no attempts at amendment, was S.J.Res 46, which was the authorization which had been worked out in negotiation between Senate Republicans and the leaders of both parties in the House. It was a copy of the bill which passed the House, and the Senate vote late last night was on the bill which had previously passed the House.

The reason that last night's Senate deliberation and passage of S.J.Res 46 was so brief was because the process of wrangling over S.J.Res 45 had proven that there was a solid majority in the Senate who would not accept any attempt to weaken the authorization.

So an authorization was passed, and it was what I hoped it would be. All the limitations I feared were actually proposed, but were voted down.

It also appears that the administration plans something like the kind of post-war reconstruction/reform in Iraq which I have been advocating.

We will lead a coalition into war, but it will be coalition we choose, rather than one forced on us. It won't contain any nation which hates us or which will try to use its membership against us. President Bush now has legal authority to carry out his threat to the UN to act without it if the UN doesn't live up to its responsibility.

From my point of view, the current situation is almost exactly what I hoped would happen by now. It's a total political victory for my side in the debate.

I have no idea whether I actually made any contribution to that. I have attempted to present on this site my opinion, and I have tried to explain my reasons. I know that I have influenced at least a few of my fellow citizens, because they've written to tell me so. Some say that they were undecided until they began reading my site, and found that my arguments convinced them. Others have written to say that they had a feeling that war was necessary but didn't really have any way to explain why, and that they found me giving them reasons for what they believed. I'm glad I was able to do that; it's the main reason I'm participating in this process.

I've tried to seek out those whose opinions differed from mine, to engage in public debate. Often the result was less than satisfactory, but at least I did try.

Nonetheless, there's no way to know whether I actually directly affected, even in a small way, the process which led to this outcome. And ultimately it doesn't really matter.

Part of the failing of many of those on the left and many of those opposed to war was that they completely failed to propose any kind of credible alternative which the undecided center found convincing. The center saw people like me making cogent explanations of what we thought was happening, reasonable analyses of the alternatives, and arguments for why all the alternatives to war were worse. On the left they saw dithering, vagueness and an enormous amount of name calling and adolescent spite. What many concluded was that the left didn't actually have an answer.

I think part of the reason why was that it's scary to take a stand. It's scary to actually propose a course of action. You're taking responsibility for it.

When you oppose, when you say "no", then if you're overruled and it goes wrong, you can stand up and say, "I told you so!" But since you haven't actually proposed any alternative, you don't have to feel any responsibility for what happens. I think a lot of those on the left shrank away from that responsibility, that ethical burden of actually proposing a course of action and trying to defend it.

Others, I think, are simply too fuzzy-headed to realize that pious aphorisms and intensive introspection are not a plan. After 25 years working as an engineer, that's one mistake I could never m