Last week, Sam Worley-Ekstrom’s opinion piece, “No more liberal compromises: we need more than just a new president,” made two claims. First, the anybody-but-Bush crowd is hypocritical in their opposition to the Iraq war because they did not vocally oppose earlier American foreign policies. Second, “too many liberals compromise themselves and their causes into oblivion,” through passionless and overly civil politics.

Both claims are intimately tied to the vehement lack of compromise and discussion displayed by the Bush administration, its appointees and Republican congressional leadership. Today’s anti-war sentiment is, in fact, justified in the context of the uncompromising Bush administration, and Worley-Ekstrom’s broader derision of political compromise is a misguided restatement of the current problem rather than a valid solution.

It is unfair to attack people for opposing George W. Bush’s war but not the foreign policies of earlier presidents. While holding earlier U.S. foreign policies accountable is very important, the uncompromising administrative and diplomatic lead up to the Iraq war (also the fact that there was any war at all) strongly justifies broader and more vocal public opposition to the current war.

First, unlike Bill Clinton’s administration, George W. Bush’s defense circles are overflowing (into influential conservative think-tanks like the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)) with hawkish neo-conservatives who have advocated military action in Iraq since Clinton’s presidency and have pushed for it since the beginning of Bush 43’s (see Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty). In fact, the signers of a 1998 PNAC letter to then President Clinton pledging their commitment to military removal of Saddam Hussein included at least 11 Bush appointees to the State and Defense departments (Richard Perle is not technically a member of either of those departments, but he may as well be). The relative completeness of the neo-con hold on Bush’s foreign policy illustrates exactly how this group abandoned all compromise and discussion, and it is an important reason why people are becoming angry now.

Second, anger at the incredible lack of diplomacy (read: compromise and discussion, and see Donald Rumsfeld’s comments regarding Europe) and disregard for international consensus throughout the entire war episode is a pillar of anybody-but-Bush-ism. This snide unilateralism is unique to this administration, at least in recent history, and has elicited a reaction unique to this war.

Third, current investigations into intelligence reveal that at the least, administration officials interpreted the CIA’s nuanced intelligence reports in an extreme way, and at the worst, lied, manipulated intelligence or pressured intelligence officials to justify their war. One thing they did not do is compromise. Overall, it is this administration’s lack of compromise, discussion and thoughtful consideration that makes its war so insidious, wrong and opposable.

In a more general sense, Worley-Ekstrom’s criticism of political compromise and civility is, to use his phrase, “myopic and naïve.” While a call for liberals to take stronger stands is appropriate, extending this criticism such as he does unfairly discounts the role of compromise in our democracy.

In 1996 Bill Clinton crossed the aisle and signed into law the welfare reform bill. This bill included work requirements, time limits and punishments for non-compliance that had conservative lawmakers tickled pink and some liberals blowing smoke out their ears. Did all the poor shrivel up and die like the liberals claimed? No. Did they all get sweet new jobs, pump out 2.3 kids and have a chicken in every pot? No. But the number of people receiving welfare has been more than halved, and many measures indicate that ex-recipients are better off than they were on welfare. To be sure, welfare is not a perfect program, but the compromise between Republican calls for “personal responsibility” and traditionally Democratic entitlement programs has at least moved the welfare debate forward and has at most made millions of families better off.

The rigidity of the Bush administration and Republican congressional leaders means this type of effective policy-making is impossible today. The National Journal reports that the new Medicare bill, for example, was rewritten outside of the House-Senate conference committee by Republicans leaders and handpicked favorable Democrats. Then it was pushed through the House on an unprecedented all-nighter roll call vote barely passing after Bush personally contacted two junior Republican house members, and Speaker Dennis Haster (R-Ill) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson (R) acted such that they are, according to the Washington Post, now being investigated by an ethics committee.

An egregious example of non-compromise and lack of civility took place last July. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee released their draft of a pension reform bill for Democrats to read at midnight on the night before the mark-up was scheduled to conclude. When Democrats called for a full reading of the bill and used the time to actually review it themselves in an adjacent conference room, Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) called capitol police to have them forcibly removed.

This is what uncompromising politicians look like domestically. They shut down debate, crowd out alternative viewpoints, grind congressional procedures to a halt and highlight extreme views of their parties. Compromise is how good legislation gets created, passed and enacted. It has, in fact, “gotten us somewhere.”

While compromise may not be the most rousing cry for rallying political troops to, say, vote in a presidential primary, it is the reality of democracy. Calling for liberals to be uncompromising in their politics domestically and internationally will only create political photo-negatives of the people we all seem to hate so much: Neo-Cons, Fox News, Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and so on. If Macalester students, all very powerful and smart people in the grand scheme of things, cannot step back and add constructively to this process, who can?