Letters to the Editor
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lie n die
The entire dialogue is about political gain. The Republicans cannot afford, having supported Bush on nearly every policy except those that threaten their votes back home; i.e. Social security reform, to not walk in lockstep to Karl Rove, our very own Goebbels.
They are circling the wagons and using their strong point, fallacy as it is, of being strong on National Security. Meanwhile the Democrats, showing their usual impotence in the face of a wounded foe cannot unify with a common theme and hence play into the Republican’s power play. How can the Democrats appear strong when they cannot even agree on a unified position?
I heard Kerry this morning and he made great points, too bad he didn’t have the stomach to be like this pre-election and now it is too late and unfortunately as much as I agreed with his points, divisive.
Hillary is towing to the middle line because she knows without doubt that she will be tarred and feathered as bleeding heart liberal should she win the nomination for President, hence her reaching out to a middle path regarding abortion and supporting the war. If the Democrats allow her to win the nomination they might as well hang up their respective hats and concede defeat. They hated Bill but they hated Hillary even more.
The Democrats need to go back to the smoky back room and work on a strategy that utilizes the growing public discontent and while they are at it, reclaim the flag, being an American and our future.
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A Terrible Calculus
Sad to say it, but given that at least half of the U.S. population opposed the Iraq war before it began and it happened anyway, it's little comfort to know that many Americans oppose our policies there today. Why would so many people continue to support this war and vote for the politicians who put us there given that all of the stated reasons were and continue to be so blatantly false? The Republicans and some Democrats remain fairly successful using the "cut and run" anti-mantra, but that can't be the sole reason for still relatively large public and political support. Rather, the support is perhaps due to the subtext of the whole war which remains largely unspoken because there's a terrible conundrum involved for those who speak the truth about it, even while it continues to be a defacto win-win for the Republican corporate base no matter how high the body count climbs. And that is, oil. More specifically, gasoline.
The Democrats should be beating the Republicans over the head with the high gasoline and energy costs which this war and the Bush Administration have engendered, but the catch-22 dirty-little-secret is that many Americans fear that our gas and energy prices would spike even higher if we don't control the oil of the Middle East. That simply can't be discounted as a major factor in the continued support for what is essentially a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq and the Middle East. The bottom line is that as much as people should point a finger at greedy oil and military-industrial companies and their political sycophants, the same finger should be pointed at the large number of Americans who are willing to trade the lives of innocent Americans and even larger numbers of innocent Iraqis in order to maintain their own comfortable standards of living for as long as they can. They may use "cut and run" defenses as a pretext or flag-waving notions of spreading democracy, but deep inside they have got to know the score.
How now to break the cycle and expose the willingness of the many, not just the few, to sacrifice the lives of others for their comfort? It's an open question, but Democrats must be the ones attempting to break the cycle. Maybe the truth could indeed set us free. (Free enough perhaps even to know what took place in Dick Cheney's secret Energy Task Force meetings.)
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A Little Accidental Honesty
"People who attended a series of high-level meetings this month between White House and Congressional officials say President Bush's aides argued that it could be a politically fatal mistake for Republicans to walk away from the war in an election year."
To paraphrase John Kerry from so long ago:
"How do you ask a someone to be the last man to die for the Republican Party?"
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Correction
Dr. Goebbels was elected in Berlin before Hitler took over in Germany. And he acted out in the open. Karl Rove? He did not even have the guts to run in an election.He fits in nicely with the other war avoiders. Neo-cons let others do the fighting even releasing confidential and secret information if its suits their policy, however crooked that may be!
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I dig that "lie 'n' die
I think the "lie 'n' die could be used effectively to counter the "cut 'n' run" sound bite. Spin away!
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Goebbels
ahh, maybe but he was Propaganda minister and hence my point if we are to split hairs.
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cut and run
Yes, the body bags will keep coming -- but they won't be on television. The civil war in Iraq will get worse -- but the media will spin it the Republican way.
As long as President Bush is in a position to declare victory (preparatory to cutting and running)and as long as he is in a position to make a few phony or cosmetic troop withdrawals sometime in mid-October, Tim Russert and all-too-many others will continue to pimp away for whatever the Bush regime is selling. That makes Iraq a weak reed for the Democrats to lean in the upcoming elections, unless we can tie it to a general repudiation of the manifest and manifold incompetence of the administration.
The Democrats should run on a platform of restoring the oversight role of Congress and promise to get at the bottom of what went wrong on 9/11, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in New Orleans. The truth is out there, and some 70 percent of Americans know it. They can be reached.
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Cut the Crap
Pardon me for being so blunt, but this is the answer Democrats need when the "cut and run" phrase comes up, as it does daily. This was suggested by a writer at Daily Kos, so I am just furthering its usefulness here:
Cut the crap and tell us you do NOT plan to keep permanent military bases in Iraq.
No one pushes on this issue, not the Democrats in Congress or the cowardly members of the press. Yet, the American people, when asked, are not in favor of making Iraq a U.S. colony. Both houses of Congress recently passed separate amendments saying that we will not fund permanent bases in Iraq. That bill went to the Congressional Conference Committee to sort out differences. There were no differences on that amendment, yet, contrary to established rules, it was pulled, killed, without consultation with the authors, without discussion, except on a couple of blogs and in one article in the SF Chronicle.
When asked about permanent bases, administrative spokespersons invariably claim they have no plans to establish them. But they have already been established, so that question can be weaseled around, like crossing your fingers behind your back, which I'm sure Bush does when signing his now infamous signing statements. So the question needs to be turned into a statement to catch the lie: Tell us that you will not keep permanent bases in Iraq, under any circumstances. And then watch the weaseling.
Until someone explains how and why these amendments were quashed, "cut and run" is irrelevant. Well, it's irrelevant, anyway. Look who's saying it. Is Senator Frist encouraging his two service-age sons to enlist?
Cut the Crap.