Originally posted by Dan Nixon:
They understand (perhaps better than some Americans) that the politicians are selected by the majority of the people and represent the people. A US sentator literally speaks for millions. The environment that they are familiar with is one where the citizens have NO VOICE and protests are relatively meaningless. A DOZEN protests crying foul do not carry the weight in the Middle East of a single senior US senator calling Gitmo a Gulag. They also know that the president can make war without the American people's consent but he REQUIRES congress to sustain it. They have seen congress thwart presidential legislation many times and can only pray that congress will thwart the war. Such negative comments by a Senator give them hope and fuel the cause.."If only we can hit them harder, kill more Americans, it will give the great Satin's (Bush) detracters in Congress even more power, so that THEY can stop him". Because they now know that Bush WILL keep coming...

Protests, articles, polls simply do not carry a FRACTION of the propaganda power of a single powerful leader's quote in Iraq or Iran. Think about it..if a pole or a protest carried the day in Iran, the Ayetollas would be long gone.
As far as the running and progress of the war is concerned, politicians need to present a united front to the media. But saddly, they are not..



What you're saying makes sense. The insurgents may put more stock in some Senator's sound bite than we do. And they may not know or care much about the facts on the ground here, such as anti-war protests, opinion polls, etc.

But what I said before about dissent being the soul of democracy applies to goofball Senators, too. If our representatives' right to speak out against the war were restricted (either by self-censorship or by law), we would have the same huge problem I mentioned before: no effective check or balance on presidents who want to drag us into ill-advised and unpopular wars. Our system was designed to function only with those checks and balances in place. I don't feel like experimenting with their removal.