by Patrick J. Buchanan – March 5, 2002

Despite Sen. Trent Lott’s demand that we all fall in behind the commander in chief, the Senate has a constitutional duty to debate the wider war the president has begun to pursue.

Far from being unpatriotic, such a debate is the quintessence of patriotism. In World War II, patriots argued the wisdom of FDR’s “Europe-First” policy that left our men on Corregidor to the mercy of the butchers of Bataan. And U.S. generals wrangled ferociously with Churchill over where and when to invade Hitler’s “Fortress Europe.”