Leave it to the Democrats to screw up a royal straight flush. George Bush has led us into a preventive war of aggression in Iraq. The voters are beginning to understand what has happened and are demanding an end to it. How do our friends, the Democrats respond? By taking a hard left turn in front of a host of speeding eighteen wheelers. A mixed metaphor it is, but you get what I mean.
Howard Dean: “We can’t win!” Of course we can win! It depends on how you define the term. Obviously, the Republicans baited the Vermont Bad Boy with a poor term, `win' instead of `succeed', but Dean walked into the haymaker. Whether we can win has never been the point. Now Howard and company put me in a position where I have to defend Bush; how bad is that? Success can be defined as the point at which we have a relatively stable government in Iraq that is capable of defending itself against enemies foreign and domestic and that at least respects some reasonable rights for all of its citizens. Come on Howard!
All opponents - and even the supporters - of the war want the troops out as soon as possible. But the House Minority Leader beats the drums for sending in the troop ships – now! Come on Nancy!
None of us, supporters and opponents, want atrocities committed in our name. By saying that American troops are terrorizing Iraqi civilians by breaking down doors in the night, John Kerry provides ammunition to those on the right who say opponents of the war are against our troops and against a strong national defense.
Bush is on the ropes and his principal opponent – the Democratic Party – drops its guard and juts out its chin daring him to bop it. Come on Democrats!
After a long war in which the United States and its allies demanded unconditional surrender, Harry Truman defined victory in W.W.II as not necessitating the overthrow of the Emperor of Japan; that was a condition. Of, course we can win! Get with the program Democrats!
I am a Democrat – now! I paid my dues and answered my questionnaire. Unfortunately, my answers seem to have ended up in the trash can as statistical anomalies. Keep a light on for me my friends in the GOP, the prodigal will have to return someday.
Odds and ends. The hard right is at war with the 9/11 Commission. Vicious Ad hominem attacks on Richard Ben-Veniste and, especially, former deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, combined with unrelenting attacks on the American Civil Liberties Union are herrings trying to draw public attention away from Bush administration and Republican Congressional failures to make the nation as secure as possible against future terrorist attacks. I heard a local (Washington, DC Area) right wing talk show host blame the ACLU for the government’s failures in aircraft security. I guess blaming judges legislating from the bench is too mild in this case.
I can’t tell you how much I admire Ramsey Clark. I watched him being interviewed last night. He came across to me as the most idealistic person I have ever seen. He did not defend any of Saddam’s crimes – he’s a consultant to the defense team – but he dared to accuse Bush of international crimes for starting a war of aggression against Iraq. The poor fellow seems to have believed all the pap about ideals and justice that must flashed across the dinner table in a house headed by a Supreme Court Justice. Now he travels the planet telling the absolute truth as he sees it and prophesizing like a Cassandra and, like her, he is doomed to be ignored and reviled.
Over the past two decades, I had established myself with family and friends as an Edmund Burke Conservative, but George W. Bush has damaged that image and many readers now put me in the company of Dean and Pelosi. These folks make it very difficult to say we should be voting for them in ’06 and ’08, but remember we are punishing the atrocious behavior of taking this nation into an unjust war and losing sight of the war on terror that we were fighting so effectively in Afghanistan before we invaded Iraq. We are not saying that we want the Democrats; we are turning out the Republicans.
P.S. Remember Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
