[Rhodes22-list] Politics - Shameless Partisanship

[brad haslett]

Gotta go fly again, flame away!

 
 
 
 

October 08, 2004, 9:41 a.m.
Shame, Shame, Shame

Many of you just don’t care about this war.



We should have let sanctions work longer. We should
have given inspections another try. The WMDs weren't
there so we shouldn't have gone to war. It's a
mistake. A grand diversion. The wrong war, the wrong
place, at the wrong time. 

Shame on all you people. 

I don't mean those of you who opposed the war at the
time and I don't mean those of you who think Bush
bungled the job after the fact. I mean you and you and
you — and most especially John Kerry and John Edwards.
Shame on you both. 

You voted for this war but you voted against the peace
you say is so important to win merely because you
decided that toppling the tyranny of Howard Dean's
high poll numbers was worth paying any price, bearing
any burden. 

But forget all that. I just watched John Kerry preen
in front of the cameras about how "good diplomacy"
would have prevented the mistake he voted for. "Good
diplomacy" in John Kerry's world would have let French
and Russian politicians continue to line their pockets
in the name of keeping Saddam in power so he could
rape and murder and torture until "good diplomacy"
welcomed him back into the "international community"
and gave him the weapons he sought. I suppose in John
Kerry's world good diplomacy lets the boys in the back
of the bar finish raping the girl for fear of causing
a fuss. 

Okay, that was unfair. It just seems everything old is
new again. Bush "lied" because he believed the same
intelligence John Kerry believed. Bush "lied" even
though John Edwards called the threat from Iraq
"imminent" — something Bush never did. No one bothers
to ask how it could be possible that Bush lied. How
could he have known there were no WMDs? No one bothers
to wonder why Tony Blair isn't a liar. Indeed, no one
bothers to ask whether the Great Diplomat and Alliance
Builder believes our oldest and truest allies Great
Britain and Australia are lead by equally contemptible
liars. Of course, they can't be liars — they are
merely part of the coalition of the bribed. In John
Kerry's world, it's a defense to say your oldest
friends aren't dishonest, they're merely whores. 

Oh, one more thing no one asks. How could Bush think
he could pull this thing off? I mean, knowing as he
did that there were no WMDs in Iraq, how could he
invade the country and think no one would notice? And
if he's capable of lying to send Americans to their
deaths for some nebulous petro-oedipal conspiracy no
intelligent person has bothered to make even credible,
why on earth didn't he just plant some WMDs on the
victim after the fact? If you're willing to kill
Americans for a lie, surely you'd be willing to plant
some anthrax to keep your job. 

And speaking of the victim, if it's in fact true that
Bush offered no rationale for the war other than WMDs,
why shouldn't we simply let Saddam out of his cage and
put him back in office? We can even use some of the
extra money from the Oil-for-Food program to
compensate him for the damage to his palaces and
prisons. Heck, if John Edwards weren't busy, he could
represent him. 

I'm serious. If this whole war was such a mistake,
such a colossal blunder, based on a lie and all that,
not only should John Kerry show the courage to ask
once again "How do you tell the last man to die for a
mistake?" but he should also promise to rectify the
error. And what better, or more logically consistent,
way to solve the problem Bush created? Kerry insists
it was wrong to topple Saddam. Well, let's make him a
Weeble instead. Bush and Saddam can walk out to the
podiums and explain that his good friend merely
wobbled, he didn't fall down. That would end the chaos
John Kerry considers so much worse than the status quo
ante. And if the murderer needs help getting back in
the game, maybe the Marines can cut off a few tongues
and slaughter a couple thousand Shia and Kurds until
Saddam's ready for the big league again. That will
calm the chaos; that will erase the crime. 

Yes, yes, these are all cheap shots, low blows, unfair
criticisms. I know. Good and nice liberals don't want
Saddam back in power. Sweet and decent Democrats shed
no tears for Uday and Qusay. These folks just care
about the troops who were sent to die based on a lie.
I care about the troops too. But despite John Kerry's
insistence that he speaks for the American Fighting
Man, some of you might consider that a sizable
majority of Americans in uniform will vote for Bush,
according to surveys and polls. And since the Kedwards
campaign continues to tell us that men who fight and
serve cannot have their judgment questioned, that
should mean something. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I forgot.
Only fighting men who served for four months on the
same boat with John Kerry are above reproach or
recrimination. Even if you served in the next boat
over, you're just a liar. 

Damn, that was another cheap shot, another low blow —
one more Dick Cheneyesque distortion. We soulless
warmongers sometimes forget ourselves. I realize now
that you forces of truth and light are nothing like
me. If only Bush had justified this war in the
high-flown language of liberty and justice he uses
now, then you better angels of the American nature
would have supported the toppling of Saddam. 

Of course, Bush did exactly that. He spoke of the
lantern of liberty lighting the Middle East long
before the Iraqi Statue of Tyranny fell down in that
Baghdad square. But he was lying then, of course. He
only said that stuff to please those bloodlusting
neocons who didn't care about Bush's vendetta to
avenge his father and were too rich from their access
to Zionist coffers to care about the Texas oil man's
plot to capture the Iraqi oil fields and earn
Halliburton the worst publicity any corporation has
received in American history. Of course these neocons
knew Bush was lying about democracy and WMDs alike,
but they too didn't care that they would be found out.
After all, that's a small price to pay for Mother
Israel, where Jewish-American loyalties check in but
don't check out. 

Damn. Once again the gravity of Bush's villainy has
pulled me off the trajectory of honest debate. I'm not
making any sense. I'm not consistent in my
"rationales." Indeed, John Kerry said it so eloquently
when he noted that George W. Bush has offered 23
rationales for the war. Heaven forbid the
International Grandmaster of Nuance contemplate that
there could be more than a single reason to do
something so simple as go to war. Let's not even
contemplate that the ticket that says this
administration hasn't "leveled" with the American
people should have to grasp that sometimes leveling
with the public requires offering more than one
dumbed-down reason to do something very difficult and
important. 

Ah, I know. The problem isn't that Bush has offered
more than one reason, it's that he's changed his
reasons. That is the complaint of those who would
otherwise support the war. Alas, that's not true, he's
merely changed the emphasis. After all, what is he to
do when he discovers there are no WMDs? Violate the
"Pottery Barn rule" and simply leave a broken Iraq to
fester? But let's imagine for a moment that he has
"changed the rationale." Isn't that what Lincoln did
when he changed the war to preserve the Union into the
war to free the slaves? Isn't that what the Cold War
liberals did when they changed a value-neutral
stand-off into a twilight struggle between the human
bondage and the last best hope of mankind? 

Ah, but in the Cold War we never fought the Soviets,
we merely leveled sanctions. Couldn't we have done the
same to Iraq, since Saddam was no threat to America?
I'm sure all of the people asking this asked it
already of Bill Clinton when we toppled Slobodan
Milosevic, a man who killed fewer people, threatened
America less, and violated fewer U.N. sanctions than
Saddam ever did. 

I'm tired now. But the sad news is I could go on. 

I'm not saying there are no good arguments against the
war. I am saying that many of you don't care about the
war. If Bill Clinton or Al Gore had conducted this
war, you would be weeping joyously about Iraqi
children going to school and women registering to
vote. If this war had been successful rather than
hard, John Kerry would be boasting today about how he
supported it — much as he did every time it looked
like the polls were moving in that direction. You may
have forgotten Kerry's anti-Dean gloating when Saddam
was captured, but many of us haven't. He would be
saying the lack of WMDs are irrelevant and that Bush's
lies were mistakes. And that's the point. I don't care
if you hate George W. Bush; it's not like I love the
guy. And I don't care if you opposed the war from day
one. What disgusts me are those people who say
toppling Saddam and fighting the terror war on their
turf rather than ours is a mistake, not because these
are bad ideas, but merely because your vanity cannot
tolerate the notion that George W. Bush is right or
that George W. Bush's rightness might cost John Kerry
the election. 

I get e-mails from you people every day and I see your
candidate on TV every night. Shame on you all.
    
          

 
 
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http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200410080941.asp
       






		
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