I can only write what I know.
I know that I personally am quite upset with the new Congress for not taking more courageous stands and for giving in to what I can only view as political expediency. For taking the safe way out on issues. For counting on George Bush and his administration to be so despicable that Democrats figure there's no way they won't be re-elected, and in bigger numbers.
I do understand there's value in political calculation. But I think the Democrats are missing a big, fat crucial issue on which they could take both an assertive and politically safe stand on.
It's not immigration. It's not abortion. It's not gay rights. Unfortunately it's not even healthcare, which you think would have universal appeal.
"It's the war, stupid!" (apologies to Bill C.)
Let me state unequivocally that I'm quite proud of the Democrats who have voted to end the occupaytion in Iraq. They are a credit to their party and their country.
I don't know how many times I've heard the excuse, "Many Democratic House members and Senators can't oppose the war because they can't risk not being re-elected."
It's these Red/Rural/Repucklicken districts, don't you see? We need to represent them at any price, at any cost, even if we have to give George Bush and the Government's War Machine unlimited and unfettered funding and approval to continue to occupay and fight in Iraq.
I do buy the "conservative district" argument to a certain extent, and despite my rant above, I want a Democratic Congress.
But why can't congress investigate the war? Its duplicitous start? Its fraudulent execution? Congress should be examining every inch of this war in public hearings and exposing the lies, fraud and crime for the official record.
Because guess what? The heart of America has soured on the war. And so has the heartland. People are ready to galvanize against this war.
We know that from what we live and what we breathe.
We know it from anecdotal and empirical evidence such as from this diary about a trip to Iowa:
"IF he gets home then; I don't know if he'll ever make it home, alive or not."
"Just like the rest of his unit. He was totally gung-ho when he first went in, but now he's 180 degrees the other direction. He says there's no reason to be there anymore, and he just wants to come home."
"A few years after it started, when everything was clearly going downhill. Bush and those boys never changed anything about what they were doing there, even when it obviously wasn't working. And we're still there when everybody knows we got no business there. What else are we supposed to think? (than that it's a war for oil)"
"How many more billions are we going to have to spend on the medical care for the ones do make it home wounded? It's just never going to stop,"
"We remember how many people suffered after coming home from Vietnam. This is just going to be so much worse."
"You know, it's tough. Usually I vote on moral issues--and so does my family...But at the same time,...I'd still definitely have to say I would vote for the person who says they'll stop the war."
We also know it from verifiable scientific evidence like this poll (pdf):
A new national poll indicates rural Americans are no longer reliably Republican, and the Bush administration's conduct of the war in Iraq seems mainly to blame.
And an overwhelming number of respondents knew someone who has served:
Rural Voters Survey:
Frequency Questionnaire, May 31 - June 5, 2007
Q.123 Do you know someone who is currently serving, or has recently served in the military in Iraq or Afghanistan? (IF YES) Is that person you, a family member, a friend, or just someone
you know?
Yes - respondent..................................................................2
Yes - family member...........................................................27
Yes - friend..........................................................................28
Yes - someone you know....................................................18
No........................................................................................24
(Don't know/refused)............................................................0
Total Yes............................................................................75
No........................................................................................24
(front-paged here, reported on here, analyzed here)
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And a dedicated dkos soul regularly lets us know, just who the war dead are:
[T]he dead come from places you probably never heard of: Aliceville, Eagle River, Woodruff, Milford, Rigby, Streamwood, Kendallville, Horn Lake, Creedmore, Nankin, Dillsburg. And from cities we all know: Dallas, Tucson, Los Angeles, Seattle, Omaha, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New Orleans.
(map courtesy of icasualties.org)
This map give the mistaken impression that some of the "Red State" or Rural voters may not be as heavily invested in the war. But that couldn't be further from the truth.
Because the truth, as we've seen above is that both rural and red America are heavily invested in this war and on a personal level. And many of them are growing weary.
So let's look at a truer picture of the war dead from the heartland.
First: Here's the raw data:
(Iraq Casualty Coalition Count)
Icasualties also has another map that shows the state breakdown interactively.
To get a better picture, we can view this cartogram which sizes states base on the number of war dead. The following cartogram has two scales: the physical size of the state represents the number of war dead and the bluer states are more highly populated (Click map to expand):
But it still is skewed because higher population states naturally have more war dead.
(Although note some of the states in the Northeast. Their size is relatively large compared to how we usually see them on a regular map suggesting a high number of war deaths, but their color is also light suggesting they are lower populated states. This suggests they bear the burden of a high number of war deaths relatively speaking.)
A better picture might be a cartogram based on a state's percentage of war dead(click map to expand):
Here it's simple. The size of the state corresponds to its number (percentage) of war dead. Note that many of the Midwestern states show almost full size, indicating the relatively higher percentage of war dead. (Note color has no meaning in this map other than to differentiate the states)
And again let's look again at Northeast...on this map their relative sizes suggest that they have a higher percentage of war dead compared to their population, something the previous map also suggested.
I couldn't decide which map would be better so I left both in.
Final Thoughts
I've been discussing the heartland of America...including rural America, and the Midwest. Or as Webster's defines it, "the central geographical region of the United States in which mainstream or traditional values predominate"
But the heartland is more than that. It is the Pacific, the West, and the MidWest. It is the Gulf, the South and the Mid-South. It is the Atlantic, the East and the Northeast. It's Alaska and Hawaii. It's Guam and Puerto Rico. It's American Samoa and the Marianas.
The heartland, the heart of this great land and the heart of this great nation has been deeply touched by war. And it's grieving.
Now it's up to the politicians to get out in front and do the right thing. Democrats could and should win over the nation and the world by leading. Democrats should be investigating the war and bringing all the fraud and deception to light. If they did this they would have the people of the nation pounding down doors to join them.
And if Republicans had any balls they would do the same.
Why they don't, remains a nagging question. The moral collapse of the failed Bush administration and the failure of the Republican Congress to challenge them may go down as one of the biggest moral collapses of leadership in history.
Let's urge the Democrats to do their best to stop it.
Democrats don't need to win. They need to try to win. But they look good trying, even if they initially fail. And they shouldn't be afraid to admit some of their own mistakes. The administration is well known as the instigator of this war. But Dems will look good admitting their own culpability and wanting to learn and expose the truth. Republicans will come off as obfuscators wanting to hide the truth and take part in partisan finger-pointing and yelling "you too." Dems can counter that tactic simply, by refusing to engage in it. In seeking the truth they have all the cover they need.
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Acknowledgements: Cartograms produced using Frank Hardisty’s version of the Gastner-Newman method, first publicized in "Generating population density-equalizing maps", Michael T. Gastner and M.E.J Newman, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, vol. 101, pp. 7499-7504, 2004.
Update [2007-6-27 1:56:21 by BentLiberal]:: Version of last map with Alaska and Hawaii:
(The reason I don't usually include them is that the cartograms seem to not graph detatched land masses very well - so I'm not positive on the accuracy)