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OK-Sen: This Week with Andrew Rice |
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My boy Andrew Rice, who will challenge the notorious global-warming denier Jim Inhofe in November and hopefully become the Democrats’ 60th Senator, had a great week:
He finished in second place for Senator Russ Feingold’s Progressive Patriots Fund contest, prompting a donation from the Fund. For Andrew to come in second behind a high-profile candidate like Rick Noriega testifies powerfully to the growing enthusiasm that supporters across the country are feeling for his campaign.
Andrew also picked up a major endorsement from Democracy for America. They also lay out some great reasons for defeating Inhofe - his vote against banning torture, his anti-environmental stances (and anti-Weather Channel invective?) - which add up to what we already knew: Inhofe is another corporatist extremist hiding behind the mantle of “family values” he’s never really represented.
Add these endorsements to the one Andrew picked up last Tuesday from the Oklahoma AFL-CIO (who represent over 100,000 workers in the state), and it’s clear that his campaign is picking up major steam in an election year when, as Andrew says, “a lot of people in DC don’t realize that there are no red and blue states anymore.”
In other news, unsettling reports of Antarctic ice breaking apart make it even more of a priority to drive the deniers out of the Senate, and get progressives willing to face reality in.
Finally, on a tragic note, last Sunday the death toll of US soldiers in Iraq reached 4,000. One of those soldiers, possibly the 4,000th, was Sergeant Chris Hake, an Oklahoma native. Bob Geiger notes that Hake supported the war, but I do not believe that we dishonor his memory if we question the choices of the political party that sent Sergeant Hake to Iraq. As someone who believes that the US should withdraw from Iraq, I would prefer to have Chris alive so that we could debate the war, rather than mourning him and all the other brave people who have died for a war the GOP pushed on our country through lies and fearmongering.
That’s another reason to help elect Andrew to the Senate: he opposes the war and Senator Inhofe’s repeated rubber-stamping of the President’s decisions. Just like many other Oklahomans, Andrew is no stranger to loss: his brother died in the 9/11 attacks, which is one reason Andrew is angry about the Bush administration’s decision to concentrate on Iraq instead of Afghanistan.
There can be no mistaking that now, after five years of bloody confrontation, the U.S. mission in Iraq is about policing a brutal civil war — not about fighting global terrorism. That fight is in Pakistan and Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, who reports to Congress on the status of the war early next month, has said along with others that the War in Iraq can only be ended politically, not militarily. I think we can safely say that American troops have done their job. It is time for America’s political leaders to do theirs.
I couldn’t agree more.
If you choose to contribute to Andrew, you can do so here.
UPDATE [3/31, 11:55 PM]: After giving it a little bit of reflection, I have some reservations about the rhetoric of some progressives - including Andrew (and myself) - regarding the need to shift our military focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. I believe we should leave Iraq, as Andrew does; but I do not think we can “win” in Afghanistan without serious changes in strategy. This line of thinking in no way diminishes my respect or support for Andrew; it is simply meant to encourage greater reflection among anti-war progressives, and I believe it complements what he is saying about Iraq.
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