Once again I must congratulate the Crack Emcee. I love how he puts it all together. Short and sweet sentences, pictures that say more than a thousand words, easily digestible and easier to follow. It’s just hard to read at work, people wonder why I am checking out “Give ‘em Hell, Harry” Truman and Easy Rider pictures while I am supposed to be diligently cogging away in my cube.
The analysis of Clinton and Gore as war mongers who wanted to increase the Offense Budget, while not inhaling, and of Mini Bush (this is an age categorization, when you measure the Bushes by their fuck-ups, he outshines daddy like a stadium flood light would a candle) as the humble Foreign Policy guy, who never really wanted to fly that damn plane anyway, let alone in Vietnam really surprised me. I must have been dreaming when I saw all that “weak on FP liberal” dirt thrown at them. And I must have been dreaming when it was assumed that George Bush would be strong on National Security and proceeded to fumble his way through every international situation like only a Bush can (head in soup in China, planes shot down in front of China, non-signatory of small arms treaty).
However entertaining the above reversal of roles is, the salient point seems to be that once a President is in office, he can not afford to cater to either his hard right or hard left anymore. Real Politik sets in, and the world has to be taken seriously and with as little ideological baggage as possible. The USA is not in an easy situation, the most powerful nation on the planet, everybody wants a pie(ea)ce of her – you know this if you ever played Civilization. Mostly we seem to be running around like a schizoid teenager, who wants nothing more than to be loved for her loyalty and friendship (export of democratic freedoms), yet is painfully aware that if make-up (oil) is not secured in the short run she will loose power, and that for that reason her grand station in this high school (world) relies on dominating commerce and the procurement of certain lipsticks (metals) and mascara (resources). Morals and walking over dead bodies to get the resources you need in order to impose your will is difficult to pull off at the same time, at least not without smallish PR fallouts. Especially while remaining the good guys the USA used to be after WWII - for which I personally am hugely grateful, as I would have grown up either a Nazi Youth, or behind the Iron Curtain.
I suspect that the same situation vexed Truman and grand old Roosevelt, the difference being that not every Joe Blow was blogging their ass off about it, JFGIing every bloody comment while digging up divorce statistic and old campaign buttons. The lies don’t fly as easy anymore. And lies are part of the game. Whether you are Democrat or Republican, you need to play an international game of chess with people who are absolutely ruthless and with their backs to the wall. That’s like putting me in the ring with a rabid, wounded Doberman. I know you gave me a gun to defend myself, but most likely that bitch will be way faster than I can ever hope to be.
I think we should leave the ideology behind, leave the campaigning behind, leave all the rhetoric behind, and judge both Republicans and Democrats by their results. This gets hard when you consider that a lot of these wars stretch out over opposing administrations. But lets try: It would seem that WWII was rather well done. Korean War, was a write-off, probably quite useful though. Vietnam, a big clusterfuck. And the Gulf Wars could only be described as silly, if they wouldn’t be so expensive. What is the thin red line through all these wars? I believe it to be that the USA does better the more right she is. I am all for kicking some ass around the world, and nothing annoys me more than my Euro Friends who just yadda after their media and hate everything the USA does, BUT it seems that when the dust settles and we actually consider if we had a right to enter into a war, we can directly correlate that to our success with it. This makes me hopeful. In fact I rejoice that the USA always looses when she looses her moral compass. It makes watching all those tedious Hollywood happy endings bearable, as it seems as if really only the good guys can win in the end. And whenever even our glorious behind is wrong we fall on it, just like the Ruskies did and hopefully the Chinese will soon.
We did not have the right to invade Iraq. If you base that argument on human rights, you need to ask your congressman (the ones with the actual power to declare war) to invade China right now. And you should have done the same when every single democratically elected government in South America was overthrown with our help. If you base it on WMD, let’s go to N. Korea, and Pakistan right now. Both of which are a lot more unstable and actually HAVE some, compared to Iran for example. If you think that our current success (I measure success by not seeing white boys dying on the beaches of the Korean Peninsular) in N. Korea is based on hardass Foreign Policy you are plain wrong. It is based on what you would call lily-livered democratic “please like us” party principles, which was only initiated because we saw that kicking ass didn’t work in the Middle East, and because we ran out of money. I am not sure which reasoning I prefer.
You, the citizen, were conned into going to war in Iraq; remember Colin Powell and his little sample of whatever-the-bloody-hell scared us just so in front of the UN? Although I do believe that every citizen bears responsibility, and that in this regard you failed only a little less than Colin Powell, I will halfheartedly grant that you were conned into sending your boys to die for nothing. For this reason we need to present a bill for the huge error of judgment and arrogant group-think that was the result of a bunch of neo-cons getting together and trying to reorder the world in their image.
This is not a somehow diffuse case, with lots of competing variables to consider. Just look for the people who planned and implemented the war. They are gone. Their own party, their own President has forsaken them. This is not a liberal conspiracy. If they would have been right, they would still be dancing victory laps on The Mall. And don't tell us we didn't tell you so. We did, Obama for example. The people of the USA were tired of being conned back then, and they are pissed at being conned now, and they will present a bill to the Republican Party who is, as I write this, running for the hills (yup, an undisclosed location). The upcoming bill will be the second part of a lay-away bill, the first part of which was presented during the last mid-terms.
I think McCain’s story is absolutely fascinating. Nobody can even come close to imagining what it is like to spend 5 years at the Hanoi Hilton except for Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago. I have tried, but I gave up. I admire his politics of the past years even if most died-in-the-wool Republicans wanted to vomit in their mouths when he was driving campaign finance reform. And he was nominated exactly for these reasons. He won the Republican nomination because he is the most Democratic of all Republican candidates. So please spare me all that talk of why Republicans are better on FP. They are not; they conceded that by nominating McCain. Campaign Finance Reform? Bring it on! Marrying one hot woman who looks just like the last one he dumped? Bring it on! (I am Austrian; I have no problem with how he lives his private life. You do though, you hated Clinton's BJ, so be honest.)
But supporting the President unconditionally in regards to the failed policies of the Middle East? That is unacceptable. The Republican Party and John McCain have to learn that lying to the people will cost them dearly. It might even usher in a new Democratic Age, how ironic that would be, and so sweetly and justly making Carl Rove rotate in his little southern (yup, undisclosed as well) plantation grave.
Dude, you got me all wrong:
ReplyDeleteI'm no "anything goes" Bush supporter. My most easily identifiable disagreement would be on the subject of religion. But, that said, I will admit I respect that we're at war, and it's up to me as a citizen to not only be informed, but not to add to the burden. That means no cheap shots at my president and, when necessary, to cover his ass. That ain't hard, because I like the guy, but it ain't done blindly either.
Peter, I'm a vet, which adds a whole other dimension to this. For me, this conflict ain't 6 or 7 years old but 30 (I served in the Persian Gulf in '79) and I don't just see Bush as merely a wartime president, but as a transitional figure - in America's culture war - helping us shake off the last remnants of the dying Boomer's hippie daydream/nightmare. Unlike most civilians, I don't view American foreign policy as no treaty on Universal Peace and Love, but (as a student of history like you) I know that anyone who thinks we should chart our young nation's course by whether or not another, more ancient, nation or nations agrees with us (using their own cold-eyed, and more experienced, FP on behalf of their own hard-won interests) has, definitely, been smoking too much pot and shouldn't even be in the game. I am a product of these United States and black people didn't suffer all those years - so I could claim that - just for me to turn around and demoralize it in the name of making someplace else feel better about itself. They've got governments. Let 'em do like blacks did, here, and demand that they do better. Anyway, they already seem awful proud of their counties; my crime - inside and outside of these borders - is for doing the same. Why, I don't know.
Are Bush & Co. perfect? Hell no, but what government is? Have they made mistakes? Hell yea, but all the parachutists were dropped in the wrong places on D-Day, too, so what do we take from that? That war is hell - not another opportunity to whine - but the time to build up your resolve. Is oil involved? Sure, but not in the obsessive way you allude to, any more than strudel and baguettes were important during WWII. That may sound unrealistic to the "sophisticated" European mind but, unlike Europe, my country is built on an idea - simply put: freedom - so excuse me if I don't buy the more cynical motives we're impugned with, now, after a lifetime of hearing our cousins across the Atlantic calling us "naive," "optimistic," and "idealistic." Some of us Americans know more about "projection" than we let on, and, once Europe truly understands we're not like them, they might also one day have a better grasp of why we left.
Did we have right to invade Iraq? Of course we did. We've been involved with that country for so long we were covered in it's sand before the first soldier landed. (And, BTW, both houses of Congress gave us approval.) And none of this means - for any reason - that we have to treat all countries equally, or snuff out all fires at the same time, or in the same way. This is chess not checkers - and on a global scale. (We may have invented Superman but get real.) And you don't give us any credit: with our arsenal, all of our enemies could be mincemeat, if we so desired. We're not barbarians.
I don't think you understand my country, my president, or my Party, Peter. And I don't say that to insult you: many Americans, of a certain stripe, don't either. They see set-backs as failure. They see any change of course as an abandonment of principles. They think, because a leader isn't eloquent, that means he's stupid - even as he trounces them. They're people who are too easily fascinated by empty rhetoric, blinking lights, and shiny things. They've lost all but 3 presidential elections on the last 40 years - and they're about to lose again -- badly. A smart guy like you would do well to find out why.
And by the way: John McCain is deserving - and, within the party, it's his turn. Plus, he's not only got more substance than your remarks allow, but he's a Republican because he believes in substance. (Nobody cares about BJs. We care about the dignity of the office; lying, to co-workers and security, that a young intern is a crazy stalker who must be stopped; and to the rest of us, on national television, until semen stained dresses are produced with sordid tales of his cigars for public consumption by children. We care about extremely powerful people taking advantage of completely defenseless employees; Hillary leading cabals to discredit the women Bill abused, and a demented Alice in Wonderland attempt to make the nation ponder the meaning of "is," and on and on and on. See? You see a pithy thing like a BJ: we see the entirety of the disaster in collateral damage Bill Clinton's singular attraction to deviancy produced for the entire nation.) It's called maturity. And John McCain's got it.
Get your mind out of the gutter, Peter: you're better than that, I can tell. Abandon the bumper-sticker history lesson and enter the world of politics with a wide-angle lens. We are witnesses to the death of the Left's ideological framework, in America, in France, and in England. And, soon, the entire Western World.
I don't know about you but, as someone from a place that had to suffer with the pathologies such attitudes repeatedly engendered, I think it's a truly beautiful thing.
You stay up,
CMC