Politics & Power Quote by Chris Van Hollen

Van Hollen is doing a particular kind of Washington cleanup: laundering a messy, contested legacy through the language of unity. “This body, the United States Congress” is stiff on purpose, a reminder that legitimacy flows from institutions, not personalities. Then comes the insistence on “united, Republicans and Democrats alike,” a rhetorical shield aimed at two targets at once: critics who argue the post-9/11 response was reckless, and partisans who want to pin the war’s failures on the other side. Unity here is less a memory than a claim to shared ownership.

The verb choices are doing quiet work. “Taking that action” avoids naming the Authorization for Use of Military Force, a phrase that would immediately summon debates over open-ended war powers. “Toppling the Taliban government” is crisp, measurable, almost tidy; “working to try” immediately softens the harder parts of what followed, signaling effort over outcome. And “root out al Qaeda and find Osama bin Laden” compresses years of mission drift into a morally legible manhunt narrative: a story Americans recognize as justified.

The subtext is that Congress wasn’t merely supportive; it was complicit and therefore credible when it later seeks to reform, repeal, or re-argue the post-9/11 framework. This is political memory as positioning: a bid to reclaim the high ground by saying, essentially, we all voted for the first chapter, so we can responsibly rewrite the ending.