4/30/2004

Just a quick note. It's amazing how quickly the Tripod people got context-appropriate advertising on this site. What a country.

14/29/2004

Some further musings on Iraq, inspired once again by Joe Scarborough. I've gotta stop watching that show. It angries up the blood. In any case, the point was made that when the President comes before Congress and requests authorization for war based upon what he characterizes as "grave, imminent threats" it patriotic to vote for war, and this vote demonstrates great loyalty to the country. I agree with that - though voting against the war is not necessarily unpatriotic or disloyal, obviously. That sentiment, that voting for war in such a situation is the right thing to do, seems predicated on the idea that the President is presenting his best judgment that going to war is necessary.

In any case, Scarborough has been pushing the argument that attacking Bush's foreign policy is out of line because it damages the morale of our troops. This is quite a clever argument, because it allows him to frame the debate as a question of whether Democrats even have the right to disagree with the President. It's a clever trick, particularly because it spares him the embarrassment of trying to argue about the issues in controversy... clever like a fox!

  Considering the argument on its face, I thought to myself that the only reason that this could possibly be bad is if the war was absolutely necessary - that is to say it was one which threatened our existence, or that of our allies. When this kind of war is thrust upon us, we must come together as a nation in order to survive. Keeping up troop morale is a national responsibility, and also a natural reaction to such a situation.

For this reason, the protest surrounding the war in Afghanistan is both muted and infrequent. Al Qaeda presented a clear and present threat to US security, and the Taliban was enabling them in their campaign. Given the proximity to nuclear-armed Pakistan, and Al Qaeda's strength in that country as well, Afghanistan struck most Americans as a necessary war, and an appropriate response to 9/11.

Iraq, of course, is a different story. Without WMDs, most Americans would have felt safe enough with Saddam in power in Iraq. Whether Bush and Co. invented evidence, or had always intended to go to war against Iraq on some pretext, or had simply suffered from a major failure in intelligence is not truly the issue. It's that an issue of credibility. The Bush administration, and the right wing, continues to sell this war as though it were a war for our survival, at least to as it relates to the continued fighting in Iraq. These current uprisings and flare-ups, a year after Bush declare principal fighting over under a 'Mission Accomplished' sign, are not a part of the war that we fought because we though Iraq had WMDs. During that war, Democrats lined up behind the President when troops were on the ground and involved in combat.

But today, we know. We know that we'd never have gone to war if we had known that there would be no WMDs in Iraq. We know that our President took us into a war which we now believe to have been unnecessary. So now, we feel that it is not our patriotic duty to trust the President's judgment about whether we should be at war. His judgment did not accurately reflect our desires, and we will not extend him the same slack as we did before. We'll evaluate his past performance to determine how much we should trust him. We'll make him earn our trust again, and live up to our hopes. That's the kind of personal responsibility even a liberal can love.

-Isaac Shalev

4/28/2004

I started this blog for serious reasons, including my anger at politics in the US, my anger at the Bush administration, and my disgust for what passes for news in this country. I want to acknowledge Sean Hannity, Joe Scarborough and Anne Coulter; without their slander, hypocrisy, and propaganda, I would never have started this blog.

I was watching Scarborough Country tonight on MSNBC, and Joe asked his panel whether Hillary Clinton's comments about the US policy in Iraq being a destabilizing influence in the Middle East and in the world were appropriate given the state of war that we're in, and particularly given the 'hot' fighting in Fallujah. While Joe Trippi and Carl Bernstein made some good arguments regarding the appropriateness of debating national policy, and drew the obvious Vietnam parallels, I thought they both neglected a more fundamental point: If the President and his policies shouldn't be publicly questioned in a time of war, doesn't that mean that all a President has to do to silence the opposition party is declare that America is in a state of war?