C-SPAN’s running Wednesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing again; this is the first chance I’ve had to see it in its entirety.  It’s so fucking frustrating to watch the Dems, who now control both - count ‘em; both - houses of Congress to be trumped, once again, by a Republican who had the balls to say what none of them has.

I’ve seen clips of Hagel’s righteous rant for days, but I finally saw the whole thing, uninterrupted - as well as his equally righteous bitchslapping of fellow Rethugs who implied that the Dem+1 resolution endorsed failure or encouraged the enemy.  And one sentence jumped out at me - one that I haven’t seen covered anywhere yet:

“And this is not about ‘terrorists don’t like freedom’; tell that to the Palestinian people, who have been chained down for many, many years.”

Yeah, I know he’s eyeing the White House.  Yeah, I know he’s a conservative Republican.  But why the fuck is it that he is willing to say what needs to be said, in plain English, without weaseling, and Biden, Kerry, Clinton, Obama, Dodd, and the whole lot of ‘em aren’t?

Note to Democrats:  If you want the White House - if you presume to think that you could possibly lead this country - then grow a fuckin’ pair and start acting like goddamn leaders. 

The only Democrat who has shown a spine through this whole mess is Russ Feingold, and he’s already taken himself out of the race.  Kerry?  Yeah, he finally made some solid statements at this hearing - after Hagel paved the way.  Clinton and Obama?  If they think they can skim our votes off the top without addressing THE issue, Iraq, now and in concrete terms, then neither one deserves the slightest consideration, because they’ll show themselves not to be serious candidates.  Biden and Dodd?  Well, neither stands the proverbial snowball’s chance anyway, but that alone should free them to take moral stands. 

Obviously, moral courage is still in short supply.

If you are not willing to stand up and be counted when it matters . . . if you are not willing to demonstrate a minimum of political courage . . . if you are not willing to skate out where the ice is a little thin and rescue our drowning troops . . . in short, if you are not willing to show a little serious moral leadership, then fuck you.  You don’t deserve my vote.