A lot of angry noise is coming in torrents from the Left about Obama summoning ex-President George W. Bush, to work with Bush's immediate predecessor in the office, Bill Clinton, on behalf of raising funds for the Haiti earthquake victims. The anger draws from the supposition that, by Bush working in the effort, it will also work to cleanse 43 of some of the foul stench he accrued through the eight years of his presidency. This anger is exactly as inappropriate -- indeed, even as strikingly hypocritical -- as were the remarks by the misnamed Reverend Pat Robertson, when he proposed that the disaster the Haitians are suffering is part of the deal their ancestors made with the devil in the early 1800s. This anger is exactly as off base -- as thoroughly reprehensible and utterly hypocritical -- as have been the ongoing despicable sentiments by Rush Limbaugh, that Obama's rather immediate ramping up of US relief efforts and the solicitation that Americans pony up whatever they can on behalf of the quake victims are politically motivated, and solely that.
I'm going to toss in two scenarios as analogies to support my thesis that the angry sentiments from the Left are both misplaced and reprehensibly misplaced.
Before I trek onward to that objective, no one on the face of the earth despises George Bush and his entire administration more than do I.. No one. But my hatred of the fellow is not limited to just Bush and those in his administration. I feel equivalent loathing for every Republican who voted for the GOP in 2002, for the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004 and for every Republican candidate since.
What I wanted to hear from my president was the announcement that an unarmed company or a battalion of Marine volunteers were headed into the port at Wonsan, to pick up the crew and the body of Fireman Apprentice Duane Hodges, and that if one hair on one of the volunteering Marines' heads or those of the Pueblo crew was mussed, there wouldn't be an acre north of the 38th parallel left unburned to the ground; that the country simply would cease to exist, including every inhabitant in it. You just do not treat an American serviceman or woman that way.
Yet, "that way" is precisely how George Bush, those in his administration, and every man and woman who voted Republican they disrespected and abused all who had volunteered to serve in this country's military. The blood and unrelenting human misery that is on their hands, like that on the hands of Lady Mac Beth, will never, ever be washed clean. Dante had not conjured a level in hell deep enough for any of them. If there is a god, may he or she or it have mercy on their souls, because, were the decision mine, none would ever be forthcoming. Never.
So great is my bitter animus that, I know of a personal fact, if I saw an automobile accident victim lying injured in the street and knew of a certain that person was a Republican, I'd have no moral qualms driving right on by. May your agonized cries at long last reach the deaf ears of all who have preceded you, as your life passes from you, would be my genuine silent sentiments. I don't apologize, nor will I. The millions of innocents and the thousands upon thousands of American military volunteers that they nonchalantly knew or should have known they were tossing into the terrible inferno does not warrant either the receipt or issuance of an apology.
Hopefully that establishes my anti-GOP cred.
But much more than any level of loathing I might hold for all Republicans, including George Bush, is the unimaginable level of suffering and dire need of the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. None of them are Republicans. None are Democrats, or Independents, or Tea Party members Withholding any level of assistance, for any reason, by anyone capable of providing some, can never be made okay.
Let's look at it from a purely personal perspective. Your young son or daughter is suffering a malignant brain tumor, and there's only one neurosurgeon with the expertise and skill to remove it safely. Tragically, for your son or daughter, that surgeon is also is in prison, having been convicted of sexual child molestation. I now ask: Who among you will rise up in righteous indignation to assert that, no matter that it might cost your son or daughter his or her life, you simply will not accede to permitting that doctor to lay a surgical-gloved hand on your child? Or, what I am confident your response will be, will it be, "I don't care"?
That George Bush might be able to raise some desperately needed funds for those who need everything desperately, and that in the quest he might also secure to himself a modicum or more of publically perceived salvation . . . "I don't care."
