"[Congressional candidate Steve] Harrison also questions [City Councilman Michael] McMahon's position on the Iraq war: Was McMahon for it before he was against it?

Harrison was irked in particular by a line in the city delegation's endorsement of McMahon [for Congress in the 13^th CD] last week that said McMahon "will play an important role in bringing our troops home from Iraq."
 
‘I will not let that statement stand,’ Harrison told us. ‘Mike clearly endorsed the war.’

As evidence, Harrison points to the fact that McMahon was one of 17 Council members who voted against a 2003 resolution, which passed the Council, opposing any U.S. attack on Iraq until all diplomatic avenues were exhausted.
 
‘To me, this is somebody who is pandering,’ Harrison said. ‘The question is where he really stands. We won't know until he gets to Washington.’

                                —Staten Island Advance- June 15, 2008

 
City Council and State legislative resolutions about foreign policy or national defense are mostly a matter of eunichs attempting to wank with both hands. The City Council surely does not have the ability to undertake in-depth examinations on such matters. Frankly, the there are times when it seems like can barely handle investigating important matters within their own purview. Apparently though, such matters are far more glamorous than overseeing the mundane tasks of city or state governance, especially to those members who’d rather be serving in Congress, which may be most of them.
 
In some constituencies, it is even what the voters want most. Assemblyman Dov Hikind’s constituents want him to spend his time railing against any attempt by the Israeli government to rid itself of the cancerous tumor called the West Bank, and given such activities keep him from trying to advance his mostly conservative agenda at his place of work, I’m inclined to agree with them. Likewise, until they find themselves with a child of school age, most Brownstone Brooklynites probably think the most important thing their Councilmember can do is vote against the war.
 
Staten Island Councilman Michael McMahon excuses his vote against the 2003 Iraq antiwar resolution saying, "we were elected to deal with the problems of the City of New York, not render opinions on foreign affairs, of which we did not have sufficient data.."
 
This did not stop McMahon from co-sponsoring some idiotic non-binding resolution of other kinds, but he seems to have drawn a line with regard to foriegn policy. And, clearly there is a difference: except if one is either a pacifist or a monster, one would not expect lawmakers to vote upon matters of war and peace without sufficient date. By contrast, there is no conceivable objective data that could help one sort out why they would vote for some of the crap Mr. McMahon has put his name on in the name of what passes for politics in the County of Richmond. But that is a topic for another day.
 
McMahon has since declared himself to be against the war, and has outlined a rationale for what he acknowledges is a change of position. McMahon said that nobody expected the Bush administration "to occupy Iraq and totally mismanage the operation....like most Americans, I felt somewhat betrayed by his abuse of my trust".
 
Let me be frank, if one wants a candidate who’s endorsed a immediate withdrawal in the manner of Dennis Kucinich, then Steve Harrison is your guy. If, however, one would find sufficient a candidate whose ideas about withdrawal from Iraq bear more resemblance to those of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, then Mr. McMahon would appear to be quite acceptable, perhaps even preferable.
 
Still Mr. Harrison feels the 2003 vote is disqualifying. Many local activists agree, even though many of the same folks excused John Edwards for doing something similar.
 
Although I opposed the war from the beginning, I happen think that a lot of good people, like Edwards and John Kerry (along with a lot of not so good people) were wrong on the war, but I think that the good people who were wrong on the war, were wrong for the right reasons. They believed, based on the doctored data they had seen, that granting the President the authorization he sought was justified under the circumstances.
 
This was the wrong position, but not one which in and of itself was inherently evil. Of course, I also happen to think that not all the people opposed to the war were so good either, ---Pat Buchanan comes to mind, as does ANSWER. 
 
Harrison not only questions McMahon's vote on the war resolution, but he also questions the sincerity of McMahon's current position on the matter. Is he correct?
 
We know that, in 2003, McMahon cast his one and only vote which might indicate a position, failing to support a symbolic anti-war resolution at the City Council. We also know that, in 2004 McMahon supported ultra-anti-war candidate Howard Dean for President, which seems to indicate a shift in his sentiments. A McMahon supporter has also cited a statement, I think at the funeral of a soldier, where McMahon said the war had gone on for too long, but this may not have been a call to end the war--it could have been a weary prayer that we finish the job quickly and go home, which I think is the hope of most war supporters as well--or it may really have been an anti-war statement--I dunno. Finally, we know that, in Brooklyn Conservative Party Leader Jerry Kassar has stated that, in 2008, McMahon made statements which seemed intended to convey his support for the war.
 
To some extent, none of this really matters if one is going to hold against Mr. McMahon his vote on the 2003 resolution. However, even those who would do so must concede that that vote is only relevant to be held against McMahon if his opponent took a different position at the time. The evidence indicates this was not the case.
 
There is no public record of any anti-war statement by Harrison from that time. In 2002, at the time Congress took its vote on the war, Harrison was openly supporting pro-war Congressman Vito Fossella's re-election. On the very day Congress voted for the war resolution, Harrison was so outraged at the Republicans that he wrote a $250 check to the Republican-Conservative candidate for State Comptroller, John Faso. Shortly thereafter, Harrison wrote another in a series of checks to Joe Bruno’s hand-picked, pro-war, anti-abortion, pro-school prayer State Senate candidate, Councilman Marty Golden, who was running against a Democratic incumbent.
 
Harrison’s explanation for all this is that he did so to advance an important local zoning proposal; however, that miserable excuse fails to explain (1) that the Democrat Golden ran against favored the same zoning change, (2) that Golden was surely more effective working for that change on the Council where he was sitting, rather than in the State Senate, and (3) that zoning can in no way explain Harrison's contributions to the Conservative Party, a Statewide Republican, and Vito Fossella.
 
Frankly, all the donations in that pattern (Conservative Party, Statewide Republican, Golden and Fossella) are better explained as an effort to buy Republican and Conservative support for Golden's open Council seat if and when Golden won the Senate race (he did). In fact, Harrison's donations follow almost to the letter the exact pattern in which Brooklyn Republicans and Conservatives extort suckers for their support, for positions as various as races for the City Council and appointments to the Court of Claims.  
 
I recently heard a speaker at a local political club describe how it worked. The amounts seem to vary, depending upon the office and the finances of the mark being conned, but the pattern of donations apparently remained the same, as I suspect did the pitch (never a straight quid pro quo; it is merely suggested that such financial support would be "helpful") and the result (most of the suckers seem to get the rug pulled out from under them--which is what eventually happened to Harrison).
 
On election day 2002, in the aftermath of the war vote, Harrison, an important Bay Ridge civic leader, stood outside a polling handing out palm cards with Vito Fossella's name on them, even though Fossella had just voted to authorize a war in Iraq. It is inconceivable that a person morally outraged by the war vote in 2002 could have handed out palm cards on election day with Vito Fossella's name, just because of some attenuated connection to a local re-zoning.
 
At the very least, such activities would indicate something less than moral indignation. Therefore, I think it is safe to assume that Harrison came around on the war sometime later than 2002. But when?
 
I’ve searched and could find no public record of any Harrison statement against the war until 2006, when he started running for Congress. Better late than never, I suppose.

Certainly, there was no effort by Harrison, then Chair of Brooklyn Community Board 10, to introduce any anti-war resolutions at his Board, even though similar resolutions passed at the City Council and other Community Boards. Likewise, though Harrison was President of a local Democratic club, and plenty of Democratic clubs passed anti-war resolutions in 2002-2003, there is no public record that the club Harrison lead ever took such a position.
 
So, all we know is that Harrison continued to support Congressman Fossella election in the aftermath of the war vote; after that we have nothing. Surely, if Harrison was as passionately against the war as he would have us believe, there would exist one letter to the editor, one name in an ad, one resolution at a Community Board or a political club, one contribution to an-antiwar group or candidate, or one photo at an anti-war rally, prior to 2006. But no one has been able to produce any such documentation.
 
And no Steve, a statement by Marty Golden saying he heard you (presumably from across the table when you were working for him stuffing envelopes) speak against the war in 2002, would not count.    
 
So, it appears that like Mr. McMahon, Mr. Harrison was also a Johnny-come-lately to the anti-war cause. Neither candidate could be bothered to make an anti-war statement until they starting running for Congress, but I'm glad that they've both done so, now.  But let's face facts, neither of these guys has the standing to claim that they are the moral equivalent of Wayne Morse or Ernest Gruening (read your history, folks).

Of course, only one of them does.