Politics & Power Quote by Raul Grijalva

A sentence like this isn’t trying to win an argument about Iraq so much as to declare that the argument is over. Grijalva’s phrasing shifts the locus of authority away from generals, policy papers, and pundits and plants it squarely in “the American people,” a democratic battering ram meant to end debate: if the public has “decided,” leaders are late to the verdict.

The line is carefully engineered to sound like accountability without naming culprits. “It was a mistake to choose to go to war” uses passive moral grammar: the war becomes a decision error, not a crime, not a deception, not a chain of choices made by identifiable officials. That’s politically useful. It allows condemnation without triggering the reflexive backlash that comes with direct accusation, and it keeps the door open to coalition-building among voters who regret the war for different reasons (human cost, money, credibility, instability) and at different temperatures (sadness, anger, embarrassment).

Its subtext is a mid-2000s reality check: public opinion has turned, and elected Democrats can now frame opposition as common sense rather than fringe dissent. The word “choose” is doing quiet work too, insisting the war wasn’t inevitable or forced by history; it was elective. In one clause, Grijalva positions himself as aligned with the electorate’s hindsight while nudging them toward a sharper conclusion: if this was a choice, then someone chose badly, and the next choice is at the ballot box.