The Honolulu Advertiser Editorial Writer Jerry Burris seconds Abercrombie's call for debate:

There's no doubt that U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, likes to talk. [More accurately, he likes to hear himself talk] Abercrombie began his public life in Hawaii as a critic of the Vietnam War, and clearly those memories remain. [But what happened in Southeast Asia after the American pull out is never remembered because most leftists simply ignore the existence of the Killing Fields from the mid 1970s to the present] Abercrombie and many colleagues (including Republicans) have introduced a resolution (HJ 55) calling on the Bush administration to set a date (Oct. 1, 2006) by which the United States will begin its withdrawal from Iraq. The resolution also urges President Bush to announce by the end of this year that this withdrawal process will begin.

According to Abercrombie setting a date to cut and run as long as it isn't "immediate" is acceptable. He'll be happy to be able to brag about another American retreat and again evade the resulting blood-bath given his selective memory.

There was a debate not to long ago in the United States Congress and a quite acrimonious one at that. In Democratic practice no debate can be over until they have their way. With the Congressional vote of 403-3 against an immediate pull out, Abercrombie has a job before him. So, he'll just whine about not enough debate and hold his breath until he gets his way.

However, some "debate" is more equal than others, as columnist Mark Steyn states:

'''Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, came out with a big statement on Iraq last week. Did you hear about it? Probably not. Everyone was still raving about his Democrat colleague, Rep. Jack Murtha, whose carefully nuanced position on Iraq is: We're all doomed unless we pull out by next Tuesday. (I quote from memory.) These sad hollow men may yet get their way -- which is to say they may succeed in persuading the American people that a remarkable victory in the Middle East is in fact a humiliating defeat. It would be an incredible achievement. Peter Worthington, the Canadian columnist and veteran of World War II and Korea, likes to say that there's no such thing as an unpopular won war. The Democrat-media alliance are determined to make Iraq an exception to that rule. In a week's time, Iraqis will participate in the most open political contest in the history of the Middle East. They're building the freest society in the region, and the only truly federal system. In three-quarters of the country, life has never been better. There's an economic boom in the Shia south and a tourist boom in the Kurdish north, and, while the only thing going boom in the Sunni Triangle are the suicide bombers, there were fewer of those in November than in the previous seven months.'''

And, just like in Vietnam, Abercrombie is uninterested in the stakes involved in the current war:

And here's where the scale of the Bush gamble becomes clear. Islam and "the West" have a long history. And, without rehashing the last millennium and a half, the Muslim conquest of Europe and then the Crusades and the fall of Andalusia, if you take out a map of the world and look at the rise of the European empires you notice a curious thing: in conquering the world the imperial powers for the most part simply bypassed the Islamic world. They made Africa and South Asia and Latin America and everywhere else seats of European power, but they left the Middle East alone. And, even when they eventually got their hands on the region, after the First World War, they made no serious attempt to reform the neighborhood. We live with the consequences of that today.

So Bush has chosen to embark on a project every other great power of the last half-millennium has shrunk from: the transformation of the Middle East. You can argue the merits of that, but once it's underway it's preposterous to suggest we need to have it all wrapped up by Jan. 24.

If Bush's gambit fails the West will have to take off the gloves and fight a war of no quarter against the Islamists or face endless terror attacks and demands motivated by an ideology of Moslem hegemony. Then the Western left, which no longer possesses the instinct of self preservation, will really have something to whine about.

However, Abercrombie has been able to take time from his busy schedule of engineering another American defeat to attack Honolulu city councilman Charles Djou. Djou wants the Feds to look into the $10 million city mass transit study:

I filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation today over the City's $10 million mass transit study. First, the City never asked any bidders on this $10 million study to compete on price. This is a huge amount of money to just give to a firm for a study without any price competition. Second, a dark cloud concerning inappropriate behavior and possible corrupt conduct hangs over the treatment of subcontractors by Parsons Brinkerhoff, the company that won this mass transit contract.

Abercrombie is shocked, shocked, that anyone could question the integrity of Hawaii's no bid government contract system. Abercrombie also seems to think that the Honolulu city council works for him and maybe he is right:

Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie called a news conference and suggested that City Councilman Charles Djou - who had voted against increasing the general excise tax to pay for a transit system - was trying to delay the project by asking for an investigation without evidence of an actual problem.

"What I'm hoping, if this is grandstanding, is that it gets pointed out and that this kid goes back in his corner and tries to do something useful," Abercrombie said.

Abercrombie might go back to Washington D.C. and do something useful like repeal the Jones Act (yeah, right), instead of attacking Djou for doing his job.

I can't help but wonder Abercrombie bringing up HJ 55 at this time (it has been dead since June) is meant as a bargaining chip to discourage federal investigation into the doings of the most corrupt state in the Union.’’’

Grant Jones operates the weblog The Dougout at http://www.kalapanapundit.blogspot.com

Guest Commentary...