| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Get Over Vietnam Already
“I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in 17
months and can report real progress there. More work needs to
be done . . . but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed
transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam
to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood -- unless
the great American military that has given them and us this
unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.”
Is this just more baseless neocon rhetoric from yet another
diehard partisan Republican who refuses to admit that the war
in Iraq is, as Al Gore put it, the greatest foreign policy blunder
in American history? Actually, no, those are the words of Al
Gore’s 2000 running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, in an
opinion piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
Rave reviews haven’t exactly poured in from Al or other of
Lieberman’s fellow Democrats, but one wouldn’t have expected
it for an article about the war in Iraq entitled “Our Troops Must
Stay.” On the other hand, if we were in the umpteenth year of a
“humanitarian” military action -- say, for the preservation of
Haitian “democracy” -- and it had been initiated by a certain
articulate and fabulously empathetic president, and neither
our national security nor any sort of regional stability were at
stake, then an article entitled “Our Troops Must Stay” would
have been nominated for a Pulitzer, a Peabody and a National
Journalism Award.
Oddly enough, rather than blatant criticism of Lieberman’s
piece by Democrats, there has just been mostly stony silence,
but then, what could they have said? It’s not like, say, the
movie “Gigli” where critics were able to give very specific and
indisputable reasons why the J-Lo/Bennifer vehicle stunk to
high heaven. In the case of “Our Troops Must Stay,” Senator
Lieberman presented a logical and moral argument for why the
United States should avoid prematurely pulling out and
instead see the mission through for the sake of Iraqis, the
Middle East in general and our own national security.
However one feels about the original need or justification for
the war, it is hard to argue that the cut-and-run strategy would
be anything other than a disastrous hand-over of power to the
terrorists. But cut-and-run isn’t really cut-and-run according
to Howard Dean, the Democratic National Chairman. Rather, it
is a “strategic redeployment.” Somehow, that’s not particularly
comforting terminology, especially when you consider that that
twisted euphemistic nugget of classic Dean-speak came in the
same interview in which he proclaimed that the war in Iraq is
simply unwinnable:
“The idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea
that is just plain wrong. I’ve seen this before in my life. This is
the same situation we had in Vietnam.”
Uh, no, not really. Not unless by “same situation” he meant
any generic armed conflict. Beyond that, there’s nothing
similar about it. But there’s no point in reciting all the
differences here because it’s been in all the papers for years
now. Maybe Dean missed it. Or more likely he is simply
congenitally incapable of viewing any armed struggle involving
U.S. forces through anything other than the twisted prism of
Vietnam.
And it’s no wonder that he and so many other antiwar types
who came of age in the ’60s are afflicted by this reality-
distorting pathology. It was an intoxicatingly heady time back
then when everyone marched and rebelled and listened to
trippy music and turned their brains into pharmacological
experiments and condemned capitalism and lived in
communes and burned their draft cards and ridiculed any
notion of patriotism and didn’t trust anyone over the age of
thirty.
Yep, it was a far out and very groovy time, but the problem is,
now that they’re all decades beyond the age of thirty
themselves, it is unseemly, not to mention destructive, to keep
themselves wrapped up in a warm and fuzzy cocoon of
anachronistic ‘60s liberalism instead of growing up and facing
the harsh realities of the world.
One of those harsh realities is what happened on 9/11 and
the possibility that something far more catastrophic could be
in the offing if we don’t aggressively hunt down, capture and /or
kill terrorists in their own part of the world. We tried the
reactive law enforcement method of dealing with terrorism
after the first World Trade Center bombing and look what it got
us.
So, to say that credibility is a serious problem for the
Democratic Party when it comes to matters of national defense
is a rather whopping understatement. But there are some
Democrats out there who appreciate the problem. Commenting
on a Republican ad that takes advantage of that weakness,
according to the Drudge Report, one Democratic strategist had
this to say: “This is way over the top, but we have no one to
blame but Dean, Kerry and others who continue to pander to
the antiwar activists within our party.”
Yes, and speaking of Kerry, everybody knows how he came
back from his tour of duty in Vietnam and branded every
soldier who ever served there a raping, pillaging war criminal.
Well, he’s sort of at it again, though he’s updated the
vernacular a bit for the times. In a recent interview on “Face
the Nation” he intoned the following:
“And there is no reason . . . that young American soldiers
need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night,
terrorizing kids and children, you know, women . . .”
See, they’re not war criminals anymore. Kerry’s updated his
denigrations of American soldiers to people who terrorize
women and children. And people who terrorize are terrorizers,
or, dare we say it, terrorists. Which makes our troops no better
than those they’re fighting. Which makes the whole thing an
exercise in immorality and futility. And anyway, the war is
unwinnable, so why not cut our losses and get out? End of
Democratic talking points.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had two political parties in this
country that could be taken seriously on matters of national
defense? Wouldn’t it be nice if the opposition party could be
counted on to make reasonable suggestions in grave matters
such as war and military action? No one can say the Bush
administration hasn’t made mistakes in its handling of the war
in Iraq, but all the opposition party offers as an alternative is a
perverse sort of un-American, self-loathing defeatism.
Regardless of their discontent with this war, most Americans
simply won’t get on board with that.
“I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in 17
months and can report real progress there. More work needs to
be done . . . but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed
transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam
to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood -- unless
the great American military that has given them and us this
unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.”
Is this just more baseless neocon rhetoric from yet another
diehard partisan Republican who refuses to admit that the war
in Iraq is, as Al Gore put it, the greatest foreign policy blunder
in American history? Actually, no, those are the words of Al
Gore’s 2000 running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, in an
opinion piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
Rave reviews haven’t exactly poured in from Al or other of
Lieberman’s fellow Democrats, but one wouldn’t have expected
it for an article about the war in Iraq entitled “Our Troops Must
Stay.” On the other hand, if we were in the umpteenth year of a
“humanitarian” military action -- say, for the preservation of
Haitian “democracy” -- and it had been initiated by a certain
articulate and fabulously empathetic president, and neither
our national security nor any sort of regional stability were at
stake, then an article entitled “Our Troops Must Stay” would
have been nominated for a Pulitzer, a Peabody and a National
Journalism Award.
Oddly enough, rather than blatant criticism of Lieberman’s
piece by Democrats, there has just been mostly stony silence,
but then, what could they have said? It’s not like, say, the
movie “Gigli” where critics were able to give very specific and
indisputable reasons why the J-Lo/Bennifer vehicle stunk to
high heaven. In the case of “Our Troops Must Stay,” Senator
Lieberman presented a logical and moral argument for why the
United States should avoid prematurely pulling out and
instead see the mission through for the sake of Iraqis, the
Middle East in general and our own national security.
However one feels about the original need or justification for
the war, it is hard to argue that the cut-and-run strategy would
be anything other than a disastrous hand-over of power to the
terrorists. But cut-and-run isn’t really cut-and-run according
to Howard Dean, the Democratic National Chairman. Rather, it
is a “strategic redeployment.” Somehow, that’s not particularly
comforting terminology, especially when you consider that that
twisted euphemistic nugget of classic Dean-speak came in the
same interview in which he proclaimed that the war in Iraq is
simply unwinnable:
“The idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea
that is just plain wrong. I’ve seen this before in my life. This is
the same situation we had in Vietnam.”
Uh, no, not really. Not unless by “same situation” he meant
any generic armed conflict. Beyond that, there’s nothing
similar about it. But there’s no point in reciting all the
differences here because it’s been in all the papers for years
now. Maybe Dean missed it. Or more likely he is simply
congenitally incapable of viewing any armed struggle involving
U.S. forces through anything other than the twisted prism of
Vietnam.
And it’s no wonder that he and so many other antiwar types
who came of age in the ’60s are afflicted by this reality-
distorting pathology. It was an intoxicatingly heady time back
then when everyone marched and rebelled and listened to
trippy music and turned their brains into pharmacological
experiments and condemned capitalism and lived in
communes and burned their draft cards and ridiculed any
notion of patriotism and didn’t trust anyone over the age of
thirty.
Yep, it was a far out and very groovy time, but the problem is,
now that they’re all decades beyond the age of thirty
themselves, it is unseemly, not to mention destructive, to keep
themselves wrapped up in a warm and fuzzy cocoon of
anachronistic ‘60s liberalism instead of growing up and facing
the harsh realities of the world.
One of those harsh realities is what happened on 9/11 and
the possibility that something far more catastrophic could be
in the offing if we don’t aggressively hunt down, capture and /or
kill terrorists in their own part of the world. We tried the
reactive law enforcement method of dealing with terrorism
after the first World Trade Center bombing and look what it got
us.
So, to say that credibility is a serious problem for the
Democratic Party when it comes to matters of national defense
is a rather whopping understatement. But there are some
Democrats out there who appreciate the problem. Commenting
on a Republican ad that takes advantage of that weakness,
according to the Drudge Report, one Democratic strategist had
this to say: “This is way over the top, but we have no one to
blame but Dean, Kerry and others who continue to pander to
the antiwar activists within our party.”
Yes, and speaking of Kerry, everybody knows how he came
back from his tour of duty in Vietnam and branded every
soldier who ever served there a raping, pillaging war criminal.
Well, he’s sort of at it again, though he’s updated the
vernacular a bit for the times. In a recent interview on “Face
the Nation” he intoned the following:
“And there is no reason . . . that young American soldiers
need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night,
terrorizing kids and children, you know, women . . .”
See, they’re not war criminals anymore. Kerry’s updated his
denigrations of American soldiers to people who terrorize
women and children. And people who terrorize are terrorizers,
or, dare we say it, terrorists. Which makes our troops no better
than those they’re fighting. Which makes the whole thing an
exercise in immorality and futility. And anyway, the war is
unwinnable, so why not cut our losses and get out? End of
Democratic talking points.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had two political parties in this
country that could be taken seriously on matters of national
defense? Wouldn’t it be nice if the opposition party could be
counted on to make reasonable suggestions in grave matters
such as war and military action? No one can say the Bush
administration hasn’t made mistakes in its handling of the war
in Iraq, but all the opposition party offers as an alternative is a
perverse sort of un-American, self-loathing defeatism.
Regardless of their discontent with this war, most Americans
simply won’t get on board with that.