They done him wrong

It was the deep thinkers who did George in. Obviously, heavy ponderers have been telling men of action what’s wrong since the newcomers moved into the cave next door and ruined the neighborhood. Plato had a fascist solution and Marx a commie one. None of these catchall means to enlightenment and progress was too terrible until doers decided that the thinkers were right and moved to implement programs for mutual betterment.

Most utopian solutions aren’t very dangerous and go away without having harmed too many folks in the process. The small ones such as Brook Farm and the Amana Community just withered away, but occasionally, as in the case of the Bolsheviks, the efforts to save the rest of us from ourselves can get downright frightening and vast nations and their neighbors can be devastated in the name of good, or at least their version of it.

So it was with our friends the neoconservatives. Like Marx, the neocons read history carefully and, like Karl, saw an inevitability in their reading of the past that would lead to a new nirvana. Much like one of their heroes, Ronald Reagan, they saw before them a city on a hill and the certain spread of democracy, capitalism, and globalism to the unwashed of the world. But aside from flag waving and sloganeering, their view of history wasn’t very important and certainly not harmful until their man in the White House – George - had a real problem.

Obviously, September 11, 2001, was one of the defining days in our history. The attacks on New York and Washington and the downed plane in Pennsylvania galvanized the American people like nothing since Pearl Harbor. Retribution was demanded, and George Bush was open to suggestion on how to act decisively.

The first steps for the U.S. were very simple: follow the trail to those who had conspired with the perpetrators of the attack, kill or capture them, topple governments that were aiding and abetting those who had attacked us, and call upon all of our contacts in the world to otherwise undermine this group of killers. Virtually all Americans were on board with these and any other reasonable actions.

But there were men and women about with bigger and better ideas on how to deal with this world wide conspiracy of Islamic fundamentalist killers and at the same time advance the interests of the United States by spreading the neocon world view. While the military and security forces of America went about their tasks of justice and retribution, the neocons saw an opportunity to spread democracy and prosperity to the heart of Islam from whence the attacks had sprung.

This is not to say that the neocon view of history is invalid but just because they might have been right in their analysis that doesn’t mean that by applying outside pressure the tipping point could be achieved and the inevitable creation of free, independent, and prosperous nations across the great swath of Islam would be the fruits of America’s labor.

While I won’t argue that things don’t look good for capitalism and democracy, it’s my view that by buying into this neocon dream, George Bush created a hornets’ nest of problems for us. Instead of encouraging the acceleration of history with carrots, he was happy to apply the birch switch and therein lay his doom as a successful president.

From all that I have read and the little I’ve seen, Mr. Bush has a messianic personality and it took little prodding for him to buy into this solution to many of the problems he faced. In retrospect, the invasion of Iraq is seen clearly as a blunder without peer in American history, but the confluence of so many needs and opportunities for so many sectors of society was almost irresistible to a person of Bush’s type and tens of millions of his followers.

It’s Bush’s war and Bush’s blunder, but he was tempted by so many interests: military efficiency, energy independence, Middle East pressures, the pleas of Iraqi expatriates, the need for national vengeance, and many more. But he needed a rationale for the attack on Iraq that answered a higher calling, especially after the WMD and the Iraq/al Qaeda conspiracy fell through, and the neocons with their offer of a chance to tip history in favor of the president’s messianic view provided it.

So, while George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld will get the most of the ink when the histories of this failed presidency are written, the neocons will get very few column inches on their fateful role in this blunder. Too bad, they deserved far more.

One week to go. Turn out the enablers of this fiasco. Be sure to vote; the enablers will be out in force.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Words to Ponder

There are just fourteen days, a fortnight, two weeks, until judgment day. I’ll be running silent for a few days as I’ll be spending time in the land of liberals, capital of the Left Coast, the stomping ground of John Kerry and Ted Kennedy - as el Rushbo names it – with a smile.

This morning a word association game popped into mind:

WORDS - REPUBLICANS - DEMOCRATS

Iraq - Progress - Disaster

Schiavo - Life - Exploitation

Stem cells - Living Beings - Cure

Congress - Values - Losers

Katrina - Tragic - Incompetent

Estate - Death Tax - Fair

Rumsfeld - Incompetent - Bingo

Leaks - Levees - Woodward

Gays - Bash - Tolerance

Flag - Protect - Huh?

WMD - Fear - Lies

Stay the course - Flexible - Flip Flop

Enough already. It looked a lot funnier when it was laid out in my mind, but when the rubber hit the road - words in the columns - I'd struck out. But you get the picture. It's something you might try at your next party.

Had enough? Vote Democrat!

Get your friends to the polls: fourteen; 14; fortnight; two weeks, right around the corner.

VOTE!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Social Security Redux

The Bush administration has openly signaled that it intends to revisit Social Security when the new Congress convenes in January 2007; this is both welcome and frightening.

Given demographic trends, there can be no doubt that Social Security and Medicare are not completely sound for the long term. That the president is willing to tackle this thorny process again says something positive about his resiliency, if not his judgment.

Since the point at which benefits as defined in the Social Security program will be unable to be paid in full is a generation in the future, this is a difficult problem for sitting legislators to face. Sadly, the president’s rigidity in his unwillingness to consider options that much of the population favors makes negotiations between the parties extraordinarily difficult. For example, you may recall that during the last debate on the subject, Mr. Bush would not entertain any option involving greater contributions by the most affluent in the workforce.

Social Security shortfalls should be addressed as soon as possible since the costs of making the trust fund sound for still another generation only grow with each day the problem is put off. But it is clear that if there is going to be a reform package passed in the next two years, all options must be on the table and that both parties are going to have to put themselves on the line.

If the president is serious about this debate, he must have a Congress that represents a broader spectrum of the population. Entitlement reforms undertaken by the Republicans, the party that has wielded most power since the nineteen-seventies, have generally favored the affluent at the expense of the middle and lower economic classes. Mr. Bush’s proposals to reform Social Security last time around also favored higher income workers capable of making greater contributions to their individual SS accounts, this is another good reason to turn out the vote among lower and middle income segments of society and for electing Democrats.

There should be no doubt that the Republicans have a great capacity for turning out their base supporters. Sadly, many among that base will be voting against their own interests when they vote for the Social Security reform favored by the GOP.

It is absolutely essential that those with positive ideas on how Social Security should be reformed which are different from those of George W. Bush and his Wall Street cronies work hard to get out their voting block too. It is also essential to attempt to engage anyone in the Republican base damaged by the administration’s program for SS reform and to make an effort must to debate them on the points of their personal interests.

Had enough? Vote Democrat! Only two weeks to go: VOTE!

It’s definitely time for change!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

White House Beautification

As you regulars know, Wild Bill is a resident of the Washington area so an occasional word or two about what’s happening in the capital should not be surprising.

I’m beginning to think that the Iraq War, tax cuts and budget deficits are having an effect on our fair city. In walking past the White House the other day, I noted a very unusual sight: maintenance of the beautiful and historic grounds just isn’t what it has been historically. Any of you who have been in the mansion and on the grounds knows that it has traditionally maintained to the highest possible standards.

As I strolled along the fence line of the gorgeous estate, I noted a hole that had been dug on the inside by an animal. Since it appeared freshly dug, I thought little of it and assumed that the damage would soon be repaired by the large crew always on duty. But as I continued along the perimeter, it became obvious that there was a significant infestation of the grounds by badgers or other digging animals, and I became truly concerned.

With less than half of the fence line walked, it was apparent that the holes and digging were happening at intervals of perhaps only ten feet. Some of the sites had been recently filled but it was obvious that there was a race on between the animals and the grounds crew. There could be no doubt; a creature was attempting to dig out and the crew was working overtime to repair the damage and prevent the escape.

I made up mind to write the White House Foundation and call for a stepped up program of eradication of the pest. But at almost that instance I came upon a docent just saying goodbye to her tour group as they looked upon the south front of the grounds. I stopped her and asked if she’d noted the damage to the grounds? “Oh, that’s just Barney trying to get out. He’s withdrawn his support for the president’s Iraq War and just wants out.”

I’m not going downtown again until after election; I’m afraid I’ll see a sign in the bedroom window indicating that Laura is looking beyond the fence.

If you come to Washington, please don’t be too critical of the level of care being given the White House. This will all be taken care of in the near future.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Saving Face

As a youngster - long long ago - I learned that when China or Japan committed grave errors of policy requiring significant correction, they did everything in their power to save face while retreating from their errors. If one of these nations made a disastrous misstep and was forced to back down from the blunder before face could be saved, the Gods would be outraged. Neither of these great cultures and powers could be seen as having created a fiasco before they could withdraw from the field of diplomacy – or battle. There was no way that the error could be admitted; there had been no mistake; surely those observing the situation were wrong. My world history teachers snickered at this primitive requirement of the oriental mind. How backward could a mindset be?

Today, the great nation of the United States of America is caught in a trap of its own making. It attacked a smaller weaker nation for reasons that did not pan out. American citizens were told that that Iraq posed a mortal danger to them, that the national leader, Saddam Hussein, had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use it against our personnel or facilities or those of our allies in the region, or, just as importantly, he would sell or transfer these weapons to our deadly enemies, al Qaeda or its surrogates, with which he had been working against the U.S.

If anything, the war went far better than expected and the government of Iraq was overthrown within a few short weeks, but the basis for the invasion, WMD and conspiracy with al Qaeda, was never proved. Great shuffling of reasons was undertaken and it was determined that we hadn’t just attacked to disarm Iraq but, more importantly, we would deposit upon them an almost carbon copy of Western democracy which would deliver Iraq into the family of free and prosperous nations. This was good since the citizens had been suffering under the painful yoke of Saddam and his henchmen and they yearned to be free and were prepared to welcome our troops as liberators.

I won’t go on with this baloney. We’re occupiers; they hate us and, while terrified of the possibilities, want us gone. We’ve tried many different strategies to set up a democratic regime to deliver peace and prosperity to Iraq but no matter how hard we’ve worked it simply hasn’t happened as anticipated.

The vast majority of the American people have wised up; the Republican leadership which enabled this fiasco is rising from its slumber, and even George Bush is acknowledging that the adventure is not going as planned or as it was recast a dozen or more times. Our Iraq adventure is the greatest foreign policy blunder in American history.

The Republican majority has quietly determined that it no longer has confidence in the president of the United States and his administration. Signals are everywhere. U.S. Senator John Warner, Chair of the Armed Services Committee, returned from Iraq with a message that the situation was not going as advertised and quickly had to be changed. The U.S. Army flat out stated that its pacification program for Baghdad was not successful, even Virginia Senator George Allen, one of Bush’s great sycophants, admitted that a change of tactics was needed.

It’s a mess and a failure.

We’re now in a great waltz to the exit. But we just can’t admit we were wrong and get the hell out. If we did that, our great rivals, China, Russia and the European Union and our enemies in the Axis of Evil, Iran and North Korea, might get the idea that we failed and were just rushing for the egress, weaklings dragging our tails. We couldn’t let that happen because we’d lose face.

But we have failed, and if you think that China, Russia, France, Germany, Iran and North Korea aren’t completely aware of our predicament, there’s a bridge over the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan in which you need shares. We’re in the process of changing our strategy at warp speed. There is a commission preparing options for the administration to disentangle us from this fiasco. But the report won’t be available until well after the elections that are coming up in less than three weeks. The bottom line – take it to the bank – we’re going to begin disengaging from Iraq in a New York minute starting in early 2007.

All of this commission b.s., all of this waltzing, all of the options will be designed to get the neoconservatives and evangelicals who encouraged these incompetent fools who got us into this quagmire to get through the election with some semblance of their dignity – and a minimum of lost seats in Congress.

Hundreds of additional soldiers and thousands of innocent Iraqis will die or be maimed so that we can get out in a face saving manner. More billions of dollars will be squandered and our military forces will be weakened so that a small coterie of fools and a large number of their enablers can save face. And our real war on terrorists will continue to be operated at half speed while it happens.

How quaint that these backward oriental civilizations that I studied as an adolescent had such profound influence on modern America. Whatever, we must endure what we must to get out of this mess. We’ve got to save face!

Vote Democrat! The Republicans in Congress have walked in lock step with these fools who have taken us down the awful path; they must be punished for their folly.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

State Of Denial

State of Denial, Bob Woodward’s new best selling book, will be the fodder of historians for generations. This is not due to its examination of sources but because everybody who has had anything to do with Iraq needs a confessor and Bob’s the man. As the fullness of the folly becomes part of the consciousness of the vast majority of the citizenry, those with even tangential connection to the massive blunder feel the need to thumb through the rolodex to `W’ and explain how they were the only ones who saw the freight train bearing down and tried to warn the president not to gun it through the crossing.

Sadly, bad people stood in the way of all these good folks. Naturally, we all know by now that the Darth Vader of this unhappy galaxy is Don Rumsfeld, but there are lots of other incompetents who stepped forward to assist the great man in bringing ruin to the presidency. Dick Cheney – who delivered Darth in a basket to the back doorstep of the White House, Scooter Libby, Gerry Bremer, George Tenet, and Condoleezza Rice get key speaking roles on the dark side.

But there are good folks who did their damnedest, too; Jay Garner, Richard Armitage, Andy Card, NATO Military Commander James Jones and many others net out positively, but they didn’t stand a chance when matched with Dick and Darth.

On the balance point, the tragic figure of Colin Powell who saw the train but still helped gun the truck through the flashing lights shares that side of the stage with lesser performers like Steve Hadley.

This is a book that will have no legs, most of the names and whisperings will be forgotten in short order when this sad chapter of history ends leaving only George, the ever in the shadows Dick, and the ever hovering Darth to share space in the history books as the villains.

While we won’t be talking about State of Denial ten minutes after the polls close in November 2008, what a tasty read it is. I loved it. Woodward, as other reviewers have noted, pounds away with endless delicious details. His writing style is plain and he never loses control over the long complex narrative, and only because I’m old was I able to put it down to get my beauty rest.

As Woodward drops the whispered bonbons that prove that what the bad guys said in public was more the anxious wishes of a single man in deep denial and the lamentations of a Greek chorus of his lackeys trying to support him.

But this is journalism – what, where, when, how and why. Woodward does very little editorializing for a man with sufficient facts to make solid judgments. He leaves it to Arthur Schlesinger to condemn the president for leading the nation in a preventive war. And he lets the other characters do the opining. As late as this summer he catches the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace connecting the dots between 9/11 and our attack in Iraq.

Rumsfeld comes off as the arch villain. He emasculates the officer corps and hides behind his second to none debating style. The president and even Cheney come off as being unable to deal with the bureaucratic infighter nonpareil.

In the end, this is a sad book that does little other than to condemn the Bush administration for gross incompetence and not being square with America. It lets the president off by deflecting its laser onto Rumsfeld. To me this is a tragic error. The person responsible for this historic blunder is George W. Bush. In the book he comes across as uninquisitive and messianic as he does in most of the books pouring into the market. He operates on will power and it is not enough.

George Bush made the fatal error that sank his presidency when he took the advice of the head of his vice presidential search committee who could find no one better than himself to run with Bush. George Bush placed Dick Cheney on the ticket. Almost at that moment Bush came under the spell of a stronger intellect and personality. Cheney brought Rumsfeld along and the rest is tragic history.

Both opponents and supporters of Bush should read this book; there are cautions and opportunities for both. If the Democrats win the Congress next month and do not act responsibly, they may lose the prize on ’08.

Republicans can take heart from this mess and this book about it. Woodward can be read to see this not as a great policy blunder but rather a comedy of errors by the Keystone Kops. The kops will be gone on January 20, 2009, and with careful packaging, the GOP can claim to have done the right thing but with incompetent people. Both parties had better beware for the next two years and three weeks.

Read this book before it gets too old.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Mark Warner for President

Draft Mark Warner! Yesterday former Virginia Governor Mark Warmer dropped out of the race to become the 2008 Democratic nominee for president. This cannot stand.

Warner’s reasons for ceasing to run like a madman were that the effort was too taxing on his family and that he wanted a real life. A real life – really?

It is very clear that this contemptible person is claiming normalcy as an excuse for his inability to maintain the heroic façade necessary to pose as General Washington in the Oval Office. Obviously, as George Bush would say, “This is unacceptable.”

Those of us who have long observed politics, especially at the presidential level, are used to candidates willing to push their mothers under the wheels of busses and to have their children deprived of drugs and teen sex just so they can puff up as their wives gaze adoringly on their magnificence.

Only two presidents in my lifetime had the audacity to claim authentic and normal personas, Harry Truman and Gerry Ford. Goodness gracious, neither of these men sought the White House. That makes Mark the first person in modern history to begin a run and to abort it because he’s too normal and wants to be a real person.

While I’ll support the Democrat nominee, no matter whom, in ’08, the very idea that a flesh and blood human being might have actually had an outside chance at the dubious honor is too much to fathom. Clearly, this glitch demonstrates just how dysfunctional the Democrats are.

Be that as it may, those of us who say we’re for normalcy and authenticity in our own lives – hypocritical as we may be in our humility – have no choice but to demand a Mark Warner for President Campaign, starting this minute.

I’m okay. Are you okay?

Whatever. Charge!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Strike Three

Three strikes and you’re out. Both Houses of Congress have been controlled by the Republicans for more than a decade. George Bush has been president for almost six years. Early in his tenure Mr. Bush identified Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the Axis of Evil. It has been more than five years since 9/11 and, sadly, his record in dealing with the Axis is abysmal.

Iraq’s government was toppled in 2003 and it was discovered that the stated reason for the U.S. attack could not be supported. There were no WMD and no connection could be made between Saddam’s government and al Qaeda. We are now going on four years of occupying the country and even the Republican Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, views the situation on the ground as dire and approaching civil war.

Iran is alleged to have supported Hezbollah in its attack on Israel and is perceived to have been the big winner in the Middle East situation. The Iranians are thumbing their noses at President Bush and our European allies as Tehran marches toward the development of what the U.S. alleges are nuclear weapons.

North Korea is reported to have set off a nuclear weapon test last night. This is stated by the president to be unacceptable to the U.S. He’s writing a strong letter to them telling them they can’t do this. Better post date it!

We have 140,000 troops bogged down in Iraq. The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated over the past six months. We are 3,000 American deaths into these two conflicts with more than 20,000 wounded. We are spending $2 billion per week in these wars and have a long term obligation of $2 trillion as a result. Almost 50,000 innocent Iraqis are dead and countless thousands are homeless.

We now face a national referendum on Bush and the Republicans and their control of both the Executive and Legislative Branches of the federal government. The position of the Republicans is that they are the party of national security.

Have I missed something? Vote Democrat! They have to be able to do better than the sorry job the Republicans have done over these past six years.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

My Garden Jungle

There’s a bright cardinal knocking on my window. I’m sitting less than three feet from him; still he bangs away. He’s been at this drumming for about a week now, and I’m both sick of his antics and intrigued by his persistence.

Thirty or more years ago, this fellow’s great grandfather used to tap away each day in similar fashion at another of my houses just up the road from here. I began to think that he was trying to call me, and I’d rush madly to our nearby feeder with a fresh supply of sunflower seeds. There seemed almost to be a direct correlation between the tapping and feeding, but I found out from fellow birders that he was simply challenging his image in the looking glass. No Pavlovian response here, at least by the bird. Brilliant Bill!

Last year we installed new windows in this house that are far more reflective than most, and now I have a daily show by this bird brain demonstrating to his image just who’s boss in this territory. At this moment he’s perched in a nandina bush about six inches from the glass. I rose from my chair and only when I got within a foot from the window did he sense my presence and hop to another nearby bush waiting for his buddy to appear again. Never have I been so close to a wild animal without startling it.

One winter – again about a generation ago – a mocking bird took up residence in a small pear tree on the sidewalk strip in front of my house. Emerging each morning to await my carpool, I would strike up a conversation with this very tough little fellow. We got so we’d shout back and forth from a distance of about five or six feet. This time I was even more certain that I’d struck up interspecies communication and only gave up on the idea when I saw that he was just defending the tiny fruit from other feathered friends and probably from humans fools like me walking too close by. Brilliant Bill!

On more than one occasion, flocks of starlings descended on the pear tree, but even fifty or more of these tough, aggressive and nasty little beasts had to back down in the face of the screaming and enraged little mocker. All of this took place in the winter, and as with those ancient events, I thought it strange that my new cardinal resident was becoming as aggressive as we head for the colder weather. Strictly counter intuitive as far as I was concerned, as I thought they’d defend territories only in breeding season, forgetting they have to eat. Brilliant Bill!

Last week, I opened the door to my patio and a middling sized Black Rat Snake exploded in panic. My trash barrel stands just to the left of the entrance, and I was startled by the gong as the poor beast banged its head in a panic on the empty plastic container drum. He froze and recovered to quickly coil for a strike as I emerged. Not to worry, he was a good four feet long and twice as thick as my thumb, so it had little to fear from me, the fraidie cat of the neighborhood. After a moment to collect wits and dignity, it slithered slowly away under my fence.

A couple of months ago, my wife took some great photos of a small garter snake trying make a living by moseying around the garden and sliding through some prostrate junipers that line the front of our largest bed. She’s petrified of snakes but was able to force herself to get very close and to compose some great shots.

Even tiny gardens are teeming with wildlife. Henry Thoreau would be pleased at our observations but perhaps not at my hasty conclusions.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Remove Denny Hastert

Hey! They’re politicians; what do you expect? Politicians at the highest levels – congress, president, governors, etc. – are the best in the business at what they do: compromise and pretend to lead. They’re our champions, so like football players and rock stars we turn them into celebrities. But their business isn’t catching passes from star quarterbacks or making them at our surrogates, it’s compromising on legislation, pretending to be outraged and waving the flag.

There are no compromises in zero sum games. The running back flies through the hole, runs for hundred yards every week and streaks into the end zone at least once per game: standing `O’ every time he comes out. The wide receiver loses a step or develops short arms and no longer makes the big plays. Boo! Gone!

The star, slim, sleek and sexy, sings directly to us: two albums, please. A little flab here, a tiny sag there: hey, who’s she kidding? Off to the trailer park with her butt. Get me a newbie.

But with big time pols there are two tracks: big enough – committee chair, and up or out – to the Senate, the State capital, and – ultimately – La Casa Blanca.

While that halfback’s scoring touchdowns or the rockette’s a rocking, we don’t care what they’re doing on the side. More than a few of us rather enjoy reading about their escapades, jetting to exotic getaways with glamorous consorts.

But pols are celebrities of a different sort. They’re us as we’d like to be – with nice suits and great hair – even if it's not their own. They’re us as our idealized notion of ourselves: Jimmy Stewart off to Washington. To be big time pols, they must play the role, and whenever they’re being observed – which is a lot of the time – they’ve got to be on stage and in costume. In effect, they’ve given up their humanity to succeed in their chosen field.

As you well know, everybody’s up in arms about the Mark Foley scandal. It seems that Foley was known to many on the Hill and in his home state of Florida to be gay. That was no big deal, but he also liked to over-communicate with under age Congressional Pages in a less than proper manner. It eventually caught up with him and he was gone within twenty-four hours.

The question is rightly turning out to be about the action of the Republican leaders rather than about the disgraced former congressman. It is very clear that more than a few very important House Republican leaders knew about the activities of Foley for a long time and did less than the American people expect in such cases.

In today’s Washington Post, Joe Califano describes how he – a Dem – and Rudy Giuliani – a Republican – were called upon by the late Speaker Tip O’Neill to investigate a not dissimilar page scandal a generation ago. Joe righteously calls on the Republicans of today to get with the program and out the damned spot as they did.

But it’s not as easy as it appears. Tip had it made. The Dems don’t and didn’t represent the goody goodies of the country who know how we should all behave and want it enforced by the government. Poor Denny Hastert and his minion represent God. While O’Neill and his sidekicks may well have been God fearing men, they really didn’t see that they were his representatives on the Hill, so they let the chips fall where they may and went on after the mess was cleaned up.

But the poor Republicans are doing God’s work. They don’t condone gay marriage, abortion, gay bishops, stem cell research, euthanasia, congressmen writing hot letters to kids and host of other issues entrusted to their care by the Christian right. Sure, it’s easy for the Dems to get past peccadilloes; everybody knows they’re human – sex fiends and wastrels all. They’re pigs; so what can you expect?

But despite the fact the Denny and his boys knew they had a problem with Foley, they had another even bigger tsunami bearing down on them, the fall election – which they knew was going to be close even without their bad boy perp. What were poor humans masquerading as heroes to God’s children to do? They had no damn clue, so they did nothing.

Now a humungous posse of God’s other representatives is out for the scalps of Hastert and everyone else who covered up this outrageous scandal. Never mind that the leaders of this pack are simply other humans with a long history of having similar outings from within their own group – Jimmy Swaggert, Jim Baker, and the fictional Elmer Gantry just to name a few.

I’ve got compromise. I want Denny out too. How about we just un-elect his hypocritical butt and those of the other poor slobs pretending to be what they ain’t? The fault of the Republicans in Congress lies in this scandal and a lot more. They’ve had too much power for far too long, and they’ve been corrupted by it.

Let’s get some people who know how to be corrupted without all this guilt. We don’t want people to check themselves into rehab when they’re caught; we want extensive medieval discussions hanging on the conjugation of the verb `to be.’ Then when they’re fully vested in their corruption, we’ll send them packing too.

Vote for Democrats; they’re not quite such hypocrites!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Don, We Hardly Knew Ya

Even I’m beginning to feel sorry for Don Rumsfeld. It appears that every Republican politician in the country has always known that Don was the guy who screwed up Iraq. Little did I know when I was asking for his head on a platter some months ago that the insiders of the Bush administration were way ahead of me in calling for his scalp.

Andy Card - everybody’s nicest guy in Washington candidate after Don? Say it ain’t so, Andy? Laura Bush – who’d o’ thunk it? Condy Rice, Colin Powell, and Joe Lieberman – oops he’s a Dem, er independent – all of ‘em knew all along that Don would screw up anything he touched. Wow!

The Republican strategy is becoming very clear. Don’s the incompetent moron who screwed up Iraq. It was the right thing to do but we turned it over to Don. How could we have known he’d goof it? He had a nice record under Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush 41, so you can’t blame the president for thinking he could do the job.

Mistakes were made – Don said the aluminum tubes were for centrifuges; al Qaeda and Saddam weren’t playing footsie – that was Don; the museum looting – Don; over de-Baathifying – again, Rummy; on and on Rumsfeld did it all. Now Bob Woodward says he’s really indecisive and makes sure that he leaves no finger prints on bad moves; the Republicans knew that all along. It’s even rumored that he ordered the firing on Fort Sumter.

But attacking Iraq was really the right thing to do if only Rumsfeld hadn’t been incompetent; just ask any Republican. It was the right policy but the wrong guy was in charge.

It looks like Don’s going to have to come up with health problems some time in mid-November. Sad, he still looks good for the old man who screwed up Iraq, Hewlett Packard, Sony batteries, the war on terror, and Hurricane Katrina.

So long, Don; even Wild Bill had no idea just how incompetent you were. And if Bill didn’t know, how can we hold George accountable? Impeach Wild Bill!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Standing in History's Dock

The fat’s in the fire. Those of us opposed to the Iraq War, the newly passed bill on the treatment of enemy combatants or who took the side of Bill Clinton in his interview with FOX last week are naïve fools. Imagine if you will the horror that the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run.

While it is true that FDR and HST stayed their courses, might it be prudent to remember that the Empire of Japan attacked the United States and that Germany declared war on us before we fired a shot at them? Would it also help to recall that North Korea invaded the South?

Dare we mention that the party of George W. Bush was doing its damnedest to stop FDR from preparing to assist England as Hitler moved to overrun the continent? Would not history support the notion that the Republicans in Congress did their very best to undermine Harry as he tried to stop the communist onslaught in Korea? You’re damned right!

Now the president has bullied his party and a few sheepish Democrats into supporting legislation that protects American agents who treated detainees worse than permitted by the Geneva Convention, permits the holding of enemy combatants without charge indefinitely and which would allow detainees to be subject to treatment unprecedented in American history, what's left to say?

The president called for the legislation on enemy combatants to show that we’re all in this together. Well we’re not. The vast majority of Democrats and a few Republicans would not sign on. While I’m far from a liberal, my civil libertarian instincts demand that I cite Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch who was quoted in today’s Washington Post with saying of President Bush, “He’s been accused of authorizing criminal torture in a way that has hurt America and could come back to haunt our troops. One of his purposes is to have Congress stand with him in the dock.” That has to be the most damning statement ever made about an American leader and those in Congress who supported the measure.

Back to Japan and Germany for a moment, Mr. Bush’s tortured logic on Iraq v. the charges he makes against those of the party of FDR and HST implies that Iraq is the equivalent of W.W. II for staying the course. What? We stayed the course against enemies the forties because they started it. While the facts now show that Iraq clearly never posed a threat to us or our allies and certainly didn’t start anything more than a series of tauntings – which is a foul in the National Football League but not in international relations.

Perhaps if I put it this way, when attacked by Japan and with Germany having declared war on us, we should have minimally held them off and put the brunt of our forces into attacking Spain and Portugal that did nothing to us but did in fact share ideology with Germany and were governed by fascist dictators. After toppling Salazar and Franco, we might have turned our attention to those who really had it in for us.

As I said in a recent blog, nobody’s afraid of the big bad wolf. He’s huffed and puffed and blown no one’s house down. But he’s covering his butt and dragging others in to share the blame. Those in Congress who stand with him on Iraq and on the treatment of detainees will have the rest of their lives to consider these stands.

Meanwhile those of us who aspire to be small time Tom Paine’s will just have to buck up and face the music - that is getting louder but not better.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Don't Be Distracted

The main themes about Iraq are: the Democrats have no ideas and can only propose to cut and run; and the Republicans propose to stay the course, even if that means forever. Both parties flirt with some semblance of cut and run proposals after the Iraqi military and internal security forces are trained and ready to take over. And both are so desperate to get out of that terrible land that they’re ready to deem the Iraqis good to go in the very near future – like the day after the election.

The bottom line is that the parties are fully ready to cut and run with honor (whoa!) as quickly as possible. All they want in the interim is your vote to see who’s in charge.

Bush says we’re safer now than after 9/11. He’s right; we’ve got lots of new procedures, systems and people in place to watch over us. The Dems say we’re not as safe. They’re right; our misadventure in Iraq has spawned more terrorists than we’ve killed or captured and the Muslim world is filled with rage at our obvious efforts at hegemony.


For whom should we vote? The Democrats, of course. Either way after the election, the effort to extract our forces will look pretty much the same, but there has to be an accounting for the massive blunder that is Iraq.

Iraq is hamstringing our efforts against those who would destroy us. It is galvanizing our enemies. There was no good reason to attack Iraq. We have lost nearly 3,000 troops; we’re spending billions of dollars each week and will be obligated to pay about $2 trillion before we’re done with Baghdad. And more than 40,000 innocent Iraqis are dead.

I won’t bore you with domestic policies that are aimed against the vast majority of the people.

Those who made these horrible judgments and those in the Congress who voted to support them must be driven from office. Vote Democrat in ’06 and ’08.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The Big Lie

It was close; but for the lack of a few pieces of military hardware we would be under the thumbs of a neoconservative controlled government fully vested with the power to carry out mad hegemonic schemes of world domination. The other day, I heard one of el Rushbo’s callers explain how the Saddam government, recognizing its imminent defeat, had quickly gathered up all of its weapons of mass destruction, placed them on trucks and trundled them off to Syria. Aside from the difficulty of the trick, the desire to protect the weapons rather than use them on the invaders strained my credulity. Hey, but I’m just one listener. Rush’s millions of ditto heads probably ate it up.

It is amazing that after all is said and done on WMD and the connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, about half the American people still believe that that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons at the ready and that one of his key aids was working hand in glove with one of the 9/11 plotters. Such is the power of lies.

While the president has been repeatedly forced to back down from claims of an Iraqi prewar arsenal of WMD and a conspiracy between agents of Saddam and Osama, none of this has stopped other members of the administration and, more importantly, its friends in the neocon community from continuing to pump that great lie.

The administration has been quick to complain when their actions have been equated with fascism, and I have more than once leaped to its defense in this regard. Yet they have recently taken to pointing out how those who find their actions to be in error are themselves quite like those who appeased the Nazis when they agreed to permit Germany to swallow its neighbors. Yet the opponents of Bush’s Iraq War are in no way looking to back away from confrontations with the terrorists from al Qaeda who attacked us and who are now in Iraq - because of us.

Bush and his supporters have also taken to likening the actions of the terrorists to those of fascists. While I have written that this comparison is not without merit, it should be noted that with certain major exceptions – such as Iran – these comments are directed at non-governmental entities such as al Qaeda. Clearly this charge is warranted but it as easily obtains to individuals and groups in many places, including the United States. The actions of home grown terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph and many of the militia groups that have waned in popularity since Oklahoma City and 9/11 could as correctly be charged with being fascists.

But one thing is abundantly clear about this administration, it has adopted one of the most important elements of Joseph Geobbels propaganda machine, that of the big lie. Tell the whopper over and over shamelessly. Even if the president can no longer tell it, the underlings – including the vice president - can continue to say that the last word is not in on WMD, and of course Saddam was trying to reconstitute his nuclear program, the proof being the aluminum tubes deemed by agencies of the United States government to be unsuitable for use as centrifuges to enrich weapons strength uranium. The administration knew that but it chose to push the whopper. It’s a lie; but it whispered daily as part of the big lie.

The lie even if suppressed at one point pops up elsewhere. Saddam was a menace and the only course to protect the American people was to attack Iraq and depose the government. Even if Saddam had no WMD, he was a menace to civilization. Just what the hell does that mean? Iraq had no WMD and unless name calling and idle threats were as powerful as nuclear weapons, he posed no threat beyond his borders. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Saddam could do little but shout into the wind that he was going to kick Israel’s ass.

Yet, I believed my government and had little doubt that Iraq had at least some semblance of a WMD arsenal – but not nuclear. Our government pounded that line unendingly, and I doubted not for a minute that when the dust settled on Baghdad proof positive would be available for all to see. Yet I never thought that Saddam’s supposed arsenal would be a true threat against our troops. Chemical and biological weapons are extremely limited in usefulness (the Kaiser found that gas blows back on the shooter and others have seen that germs have a way of working against the using nation) against a real modern military force, and Saddam would soon be facing the world’s best.

My complaints were and remain twofold. While I had no doubt that our troops would easily destroy and overthrow the regime, the attack would be against a sovereign nation that despite having WMD really posed no threat to the U.S. or its allies and, second, the prospect of occupying a nation divided by tribalism, ethnicity, and religion as is Iraq would be far more daunting – it would be better described as almost impossible - to subdue despite assurance from Iraqi expatriates and Dick Cheney that our troops would be welcomed with open arms as liberators.

The war opened with `shock and awe’ and ended in just weeks when the president announced victory aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The mission had been accomplished and the threat to America and its allies removed. The only thing remaining was to gather the WMD and put them on display for the world to see. A dozen canisters of gas and a couple of mobile labs for biological experiments would do even for me.

But something happened on the way toward pacification of the Iraqi nation. Nobody could find those canisters. Iraq wasn’t really a threat after all.

Not to worry; the big lie would cover their butts. Saddam was menace and even without WMD it was a good thing to remove him. Why? He had the capacity to talk big and scare George Bush. So each day the noses of the president, Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, and the host of neocon policy makers and claquers grow longer. And still almost half of all Americans believe the whopper.

“For want of nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse, the rider was lost.” Poor Richard’s Almanac

“A horse! A horse! my kingdom for a horse! Wm. Shakespeare

For want of a canister; the excuse was lost; for want of an excuse; the truth was lost; for want of the truth; the presidency was lost.

My presidency for a can of gas! Wild Bill


George Orwell and Joseph Geobbels would have little trouble understanding the techniques being used by this government.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Be Sure to Vote

It was my goal to work like a madman through the congressional elections in November to push the message that President Bush has made a strategic blunder of unprecedented proportions by attacking Iraq in the guise of furthering our struggle with terrorism. In my view, he and his administration have undermined much of what America stands for and they and those in Congress who support them must be rejected at the polls.

For more than two years, beginning as a member of a relatively small minority, I worked tirelessly to produce postings designed to divide the government; to me the single most important means of assuring our personal liberties and sane public policies. I made almost three hundred postings, most in this vein, and it was my goal to continue this work until the election when I was going to retire from the fight, exhausted.

Fortunately for me and my readers, I do not have to continue the mad pace of a blog posting almost every day. The mainstream media and tens of thousands of bloggers have picked up the gauntlet and the airwaves, blogosphere, and the print media are filled almost to overflowing with pieces that bear uncanny resemblance to what I’ve been publishing for these many months.

This administration, contrary to all its predecessors, has encouraged fear in the hearts of Americans. Instead of leading the nation and asking for sacrifice, the president has called for the people to delegate their rights to the central government and to leave the governing and protecting to George.

Now even many Republicans (of which I was one until the build up to attack Iraq) are picking up their cudgels and joining the millions in pounding on the administration for its excesses. So, unless I think of something that is fresh and creative to say about my world, I’m going to kick back and watch the electorate correct the course of the ship of state.

BE SURE TO VOTE!!! You can make a difference.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

There's Good News and Bad News

There’s bad news for the White House.

The administration and its right wing supporters had to go all out in supporting Lincoln Chaffee for U. S. Senate in the Rhode Island Republican primary. They won and they’re gagging.

They also have to support the Independent candidacy of Joe Lieberman for Senate in the general election. I don’t think he’ll win. They’ll be sick but relieved.

I heard el Rushbo describe both men as nowhere near to being moderates but rather dyed in the wool LIBERALS. The president’s right flank never eases up on him.

As soon as the president opens his mouth, the Democrats lambaste him. Nobody’s afraid of the big bad wolf any longer. Tying Iraq to the war on terror is now a non-starter among the two thirds of the population that sees through the baloney.

The troops and junior officers on the ground know that Iraq and Afghanistan are not going according to plan. They no longer believe their promotion seeking generals who see progress everywhere.

Two thirds of the electorate believes that the president was playing politics by mouthing his stay the course mantra on the fifth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11.

There’s good news for the White House.

One third of the voters still believe in George Bush, the Republican led Congress, the Tooth Fairy and in connecting Iraq to al Qaeda.

While the president cannot leave his bubble, he can work out and rest to his heart’s content. He’ll be in perfect physical condition to clear brush in Crawford come January 20, 2009.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

We are Safer than Prior to 9/11

Are we safer than we were after 9/11? Yes, much. The administration and the Congress have worked feverishly and spent huge amounts of money to make it so. The FBI and CIA coordinate far better than they did prior to the attacks, and the same obtains with all other intelligence and security agencies at all levels of government. The bureaucrats who work in these fields should be proud of their efforts. To reiterate, we are much safer from terrorist attack now than we were before 9/11.

The Bush administration has clearly taken national security very seriously and has done all that we could expect them to do. I won’t go into complaints about the administration carrying surveillance too far. The question is have they done all that could reasonably be expected and their intent is clearly our safety and security?

Are we safe? Hell no! We’ll never be completely safe from terror, foreign or domestic. There is always the possibility that another attack could succeed. My friend and golf partner, Dick O’Brien, nailed it with, “If we can’t stop all armed robbery and murder in Washington, how can we be expected to stop all terrorist activities.” It’s obvious that attacks such as that by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City and the 9/11 attack are far less likely based on far better intelligence, police, and regulatory changes. But clever madmen and determined terrorists are out there constantly plotting, so we can only work hard and smart and apply all reasonable resources to the job.

Are Bush and the Republicans better than Democrats at making us secure? That friends is a loaded question and, in my opinion, the answer is, “Hell no!” The nation is fully awake to the danger from both foreign and domestic terrorism. While the Republicans are beating up on the Democrats for being weak, there is no truth in the assertion whatsoever. You think the Gore administration would be one degree different in its response to the attacks? Of course not.

One thing Gore wouldn’t have done, however, was to attack Iraq and divert resources away from chasing down Osama. The record is clear; Al Gore spoke forcefully against invading Iraq as the run up to war became obvious. I won’t grant the administration’s constant mantra that we are better off as a result of regime change in Iraq. I think we’ve radicalized far more Islamic terrorists than we’ve killed or captured.

Iraq has ruined the presidency of George Bush and it has made it essential that we punish the Republicans for this gross blunder. The mitigation created by their feverish efforts to increase national security not withstanding, they must be turned out in November. While the homeland is almost certainly more secure than it was five years ago, our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and our interests and those of our allies all over the world are in greater danger than they should be because of the blunder in Iraq.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Two plus two makes five

Everywhere the media, Democrats and even a significant number of Republicans are challenging the latest administration onslaught against opponents of the Iraq War. The president and his gang characterize those who disagree with them as weak, appeasers, unpatriotic, stupid and worse. Since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Democrats and media questioners of the war have been beaten into reluctant retreat and submission, but this time it’s not working. Why?

There are dozens of theories but I’ll share mine - which is not unique. Simply stated, the president’s arguments on Iraq simply don’t make sense and more and more voters can no longer be swayed by Bush’s demands that he be trusted with the nation’s future. Beyond no WMD, no al Qaeda/Saddam connection, we’ll be welcomed with open arms, democracy can be imposed by us, and all of the June is busting out all over rhetoric about how good things really are in Baghdad, I won’t bore you with all of the propaganda that has proven to be false or far less than accurate.

The limp strand of spaghetti the president is currently pushing up the long steep hill boils down to: Iraq is the central stage for the world’s war on terror and we must stay the course. The course to be stayed is that we will stand down in Iraq as soon as the security forces of the Iraqi government are ready to take over.

The president proclaims that Iraqis must take over their own national security before the U.S. and its coalition allies can draw down their forces. That sounds impressive until an examination of what that simple declaration means is undertaken. The undeniable logic of Mr. Bush’s policy is that Iraq is now (sure mistakes were made but regardless of how it came about) the center of the civilized world’s battle against Islamic Fascism. Further, as soon as the less than stalwart forces of the horribly divided society and government of Iraq has enough physical clout at its disposal to stop the sectarian violence and turn its attention to the al Qaeda terrorists operating in the country, we’ll stand down.

The stated policy position of the president is that when the wobbly government in Baghdad is ready to face down Sunni and Shiite insurgents, the U.S. will stand down in the central battle ground in the war against terror and delegate the outcome of the central battle to save the United States and all civilization to the rag tag security forces that the weak Iraqi government and we are cobbling together in Baghdad. As soon as the Mahdi Army is nationalized, the world will be safe from international terrorism.

This is the logic that no longer moves America. Where’s the beef?

Had enough? Vote Democrat!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Fire Rumsfeld

The spouse and I are off to Ohio to spend time with loved ones from the heartland. We have family - a son, daughter-in-law, two grandsons and a granddaughter – and long time friends in the Columbus area, and we enjoy interacting with all of them in an effort to interpret life from the point of view of good folks outside the Beltway.

But before I go, I have to fire a couple of shots at celebrities: Don Rumsfeld and Rush Limbaugh.

I’ll begin with everybody’s pal, el Rushbo. Today, from the EIB - Excellence in Broadcasting - Headquarters, in Downtown Manhattan where he had set up to deliver his daily diatribe in the far north safety from Hurricane Ernesto that was threatening to pummel the EIB center in Miami, the Great One railed against the drive by media and the National Hurricane Center in Miami for outlandish alarmism. His attacks were unending on the fools in the media and the bureaucrats in the Weather Service for creating panic among the chickenhearted Floridians when the object of their affection was nothing more than “a rainstorm.” Can you believe it? Ernesto is nothing but rain?

To the bureaucrats and the drive byes, every piddling storm becomes a potential Katrina and the media spreads Chicken Little type fear and panic everywhere. Ernesto is nothing – not even a tropical storm, yet the drive byes and its information source, the hurricane experts of the (even the word is difficult for him to say without breaking into a sweat) government. These people have created panic causing all the fearful Florida folk to run whenever the word `h-------‘ is uttered. Can you believe it? Every girly man in Miami ran from nothing but a spot of rain.

Oh, I forgot to listen to his explanation of how he – the Great One – happened to be scared all the way to New York City by a shower. It must be disgust at the sight of bureaucrats and reporters fanning the flames of fear among the chicken hearted in Florida.

On to Don Rumsfeld! Don’s firing away with the Islamic Fascist jargon that’s catching on with the neocons and the other elements of the hard right as we approach the election. As I indicated in a posting some days ago, the label is not without some merit, and I applaud the guy or gal who thought it up. If there’s any word that’ll scare the hell out of everyone it’s `fascist’. Having found a great pre-election buzzword that will panic everyone in the Republican base, the neocons are compounding the fears of their army by charging that anyone for withdrawing from Iraq is `appeasing’ these fascists. How’s that for doubling down on your bets?

The neocons – and now Rummy – are saying that anyone not willing to stay the course in Iraq is ignorant of history and that they’ve forgotten the last time the Fascists were appeased. Great linkage, eh? For those few of you who don’t know, those are code words for letting Hitler have the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia without a fight in hopes that he wouldn’t ask for more. As all those, according to Don, who don’t know what happened then: World War II broke out then and there as a result of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Fuehrer.

I’ve never thought Rummy was likeable – I’m sure he doesn’t care in the least - nor do I think he’s above twisting words; he’s an expert at it, but I never thought he’d twist them to the point that he’d look like a fool. But in intimating that those opposed to staying the course in Iraq are appeasing somebody – whom or what I don’t know and can’t imagine – he’s shown that himself to be both a fool and a charlatan.

To appease is to pacify by buying off parties to a disagreement. The American public is not for appeasing anyone. The people recognize that a huge blunder was made by our leaders when they attacked Iraq under false conditions. There were no weapons of mass destruction threatening us or our allies in the region, and there was never any cooperation between Saddam’s government and al Qaeda in world terror. The war was an act of hubris by George Bush and his advisors, and they are twisting in the wind unable to get away from it.

More than twenty-six hundred American servicemen and women have died over a false premise. Twenty thousand troops have been wounded; among these, a huge number has been horribly maimed. $300 billion has been wasted and the long term outlook is for a total approaching $2 trillion of our national treasure. More than 40,000 Iraqis have been killed and tens of thousands more are homeless.

Question for George Bush and Don Rumsfeld – just who are we appeasing? NO ONE, that’s who. Fire Don now! This is the worst blow of the war so far. The presidency is failed and they want us to stay the course. Give me a break!

Had enough? Vote Democrat!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

P.S. I’ll be back on duty on Thursday next.

I'm a Divider Now

It’s time for a change! I don’t mean George Bush and the Republicans in Congress; well not just them. I mean it’s time to marginalize the neoconservatives and the hard Republican right wing. There is no doubt that America is a conservative country, and I place myself to the right of center, a moderate conservative if you will. As I’ve admitted before, I voted for George Bush in his race against Al Gore; I was for a moderate intent on being a uniter not a divider. Got it; yeah, right.

Recently, I asked friends to suggest reading material for me and Allan Patterson of Washington State responded with a recommendation for Barbara W. Tuchman’s The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. I read the book for altogether different reasons than the purpose of this posting. I had read her earlier work and was particularly impressed with her book about Vinegar Joe Stilwell, Stilwell and the American Experience in China.

But in The March of Folly I was unable to avoid reading Tuchman’s analysis of our Vietnam experience without reflecting on today’s crisis. It has never been my objective to compare what I consider the great blunder of Iraq with our earlier catastrophe in Vietnam. But I must say that while there are many more differences between the two follies than similarities, the old canard usually attributed to Mark Twain (who said everything Oscar Wilde and Yogi Berra didn’t) that `History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes,’ popped into mind - many times.

Since almost three and half years have passed since on May 2, 2003 President Bush landed on the desk of the USS Abraham Lincoln and under the banner `Mission Accomplished’ announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq, I intend to begin blogging in earnest on the similarities between the two calamities in the not too distant future.

But something even deeper struck me in Tuchman’s writing: the depth and virulence of the right wing reaction to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and his leadership in WW II. It is Tuchman’s view that the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy, McCarthyism, and the extreme right wing of the Republican Party as we’ve known it since WW II arose in Reaction to FDR. She does not dwell on this analysis, but I believe it is an accurate portrait.

Her principal early point on Vietnam is that John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under President Eisenhower, set what became the inevitable course for the nation in the conflict. This course was channeled so narrowly that no administration that followed was able to change the direction until the nation was completely humiliated. The domino theory was established by Dulles and stated by Eisenhower, and no amount of rationality was adequate to turn the ship of state sufficiently to prevent failure.

The Democrats, especially President Lyndon Johnson and the large majority in both Houses of Congress, are most responsible for the historic damage done to America in Vietnam. But it was their fear of the right wing reaction if they had not continued the madness that ultimately ruined Johnson and did much damage to Richard Nixon (who was able to find his own way to self destruction.) Despite the fact that our failure to achieve our aims in Vietnam never led to our loss of super power status as was the trumpet call of the right, no administration could get out of the war without be tarred as being weak and cowardly in the face of world wide communism. The Vietnam War was never in the vital interests of the United States. We could not prevail at any reasonable price, and the black wall near the Lincoln Memorial is the primary reminder of our folly.

Now we’re engaged in another war in which the words of the consequences of failure rhyme almost perfectly. Even George Bush has been forced finally to acknowledge that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11, yet somehow we must persist. Why? Because if we don’t the hard right will punish all connected with appeasement.

What appeasement? According to our generals, there are fewer than a thousand al Qaeda agents in Iraq. The rest of the killing is being accomplished by sectarian warriors really not intent on doing 9/11 type damage to the U.S. They just want us out of their country so they can have it out. Meanwhile, we’ve lost our focus on the world terrorist organizations that do want to kill our citizens, wreck our infrastructure, and destroy us as a world power. Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, among others, are well beneath our radar screen as we waste time, lives and resources on a conflict which we started for no valid reason and that we can terminate in a reasonable time period, although not without impact on those we tried to help.

It’s time we turned our attention to these neoconservatives and evangelicals who bludgeon our politicians. We must challenge them, not from the positions of the supporters of the likes of Cindy Sheehan and other `crazy leftists’ such as Michael Moore but from the perspective of cloth coat Republicans and independents. These neocons and hard right Christians are the ones who must be beaten back. Republican administrations have been unable to stand up to them, and certainly the Democrats who are tarred daily by the talk show handlers who sic their baying hounds on the cowardly `liberals’ must know that the middle is standing with those demanding reason in the war on terror.

We must have divided government and backbone implants for our politicians. Vote Democrat – this time.

Blog on!

Wild Bill