And so our Sicilian Expedition begins. This morning the Senate approved- by a vote of 77 to 23 - President Bush's self-authored war powers resolution against Iraq, less than a day after the House's vote to do the same. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the opposition party would have offered a little more, well, opposition. But this wasn't a democratic debate - it was a loyalty test, and every politician with something to lose had to wrap him or herself in the flag and get behind our court-appointed President, or else. How else to explain the Promethean contortions of Senator John Kerry, already gunning for the Democratic nomination for the 2004 Presidential Election, whose cautious skepticism about this imperial Middle Eastern adventure evaporated in the face of Karl Rove's masterful (and absolutely irresponsible) campaign to transform Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction into the only issue of this November's election cycle? Or the embarassing doublespeak offered by Senator Hillary Clinton - another politician with Oval Office hoop dreams - who excused her "yes" vote for the hastily-drafted Bush resolution by claiming it wasn't the carte blanche for the President to act without Congressional accountability that it in fact actually is? I'd like to think that Senator Daschle's rationale for his last-minute reversal in the administration's favor was an act of political judo, a skilled attempt to use the enemy's strength against himself, but we all know that he, too, is a perennial Presidential aspirant, and more interested in looking out for Number One than "to speak with one voice at this critical moment." (His words, not mine) And that was the Senate Majority Leader, mind you. With backbone like that from the top dog, I don't blame the rank-and-file Dems for folding like a house of cards. How wonderful to think, though, that even our supposedly-principled Congressmen have decided to concede Bush his splendid little war in exchange for the mere possibility of running for President in 2004. Are human lives really that cheap? Ten thousand Iraqis for a primary bid? Twenty? Fifty? And what about the poor American grunts who will inevitably die as well, to ensure the political future of some chickenshit Beltway Democrat? Kudos to Senator Edward Kennedy, who began his national political career in defiance of Nixon and Chief Justice Berger's attempt to make protesting Vietnam veterans common criminals, and now leads what's left of the liberal opposition to Dubya's bid for an imperial America that does as it pleases and answers to no one. But he's only one man, in a country that has branded such questions as unpatriotic. Can't be asking all those pesky questions about might, right, and the shape of things to come when there's a war to be fought, can we now?