Afghanistan spirals further and further out of control, with the Taliban resurgent, opium production at an all-time high, and neighboring nuclear-power Pakistan catching the region’s instability. So we went to war and turned a nation back into major world drug supplier, are losing much of it to the same people we won it from nearly six long years ago, and may watch as extremists either gain control of, or throw into dangerous anarchy, a nuclear government, thereby reaping our own worst nightmare.
But, the worst of all, again, is the language, the excuses, the disgusting and insulting way our government speaks to us about these disasters.
The abyss is the new Viet Nam analogy, the one that uses our last mistaken and disastrous war to support our current one. We have an administration full of people who pulled out all the stops to avoid fighting in Viet Nam arguing that we cannot make the same mistake in Iraq that we made in Nam. That mistake: not fighting Viet Nam hard enough. The people who did not deign to fight at all argued we did not fight hard enough, and now argue that we need to keep sending other people’s children (no one named Bush, that’s for sure) to keep fighting harder in Iraq. Yes, I know there are innumerable other reasons the Viet Nam analogy is the most absurd of all possible arguments to STAY in Iraq, but just the rank hypocrisy is enough to ruin my August.
This is how stupid and gullible our government really thinks we are. And that is seriously depressing.
Political Promise Broken
The Democrats have broken our hearts and turned me and other activists into liars. We worked our butts off last fall getting disenchanted Democrats to work their buts off in phone banks to get Democrats elected. We told them based on what we had been told that this time the Democrats really would be different; that once they saw they had been placed in power by a wave of progressive activists they would feel emboldened to enact and fight for progressive policies. The main goal, of course, was ending the criminal Iraq war, but we also wanted them to fight for our civil liberties and pass serious economically populist programs.
This summer brought the Democrats caving to an incredibly unpopular President to fund a wildly unpopular war with no strings attached. This summer brought Democrats caving to that same pathetic President on unpopular laws to make it easier to spy on us. And in the last, most awful betrayal, we now have Democrats who took a quick Potemkin tour of the safest parts of Baghdad coming back saying we are making military progress in Iraq and playing right into Bush’s hands by questioning whether we need to begin withdrawing. How can Hillary Clinton call for troop withdrawal after saying they are making progress, especially now that Bush has laid for Democrats the Viet Nam trap of not pulling the rug out from under troops you just admitted were making progress?
That is how gullible and/or outright dishonest and thoroughly sold-out the Democrats really are. That is the most depressing. They betrayed us and turned those of us who echoed their promise of a new direction into liars, eroding our credibility as advocates for change next election and sapping the will of others to work or vote for them again. Just this one short season, and the Democrats may have made inevitable the return of our government to the vile, regressive Republicans, who will surely destroy it for all intents and purposes given four more years in uncontested power.
If you are not curled up in a little ball by now, really, let me know what you are taking.
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