We were right about Iraq when we said that a case had not been made for launching an invasion of a country which posed almost no threat to the United States or the region. They were wrong when they insisted on war, not even willing to give the weapons inspectors another couple of months to finish their work which would have precluded the war (the real reason they couldn't be allowed to finish). Now perhaps 100,000 or more people are dead to show for their little mistake.
We were right when we said that if there had to be an invasion, then the occupation should at least be done properly to minimize the grief to Iraqis. They made all the wrong decisions, sending in Paul Bremer and Halliburton to fleece the country, dismissing the Iraqi army, and trying to police a country of 25 million (minus 100,000), racked with insurgent violence and sectarian strife, with a force of 130,000 troops. No wonder conservative columnist David Brooks now describes Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks as "pathetic". But, hey David, how about other supporters of the war, like that guy in the mirror?
We were right when we said that alienating America's allies and driving world opinion of our country into the toilet through arrogant diplomacy was a grave error. They were wrong, and proceeded to tear up a half-century's worth of painstaking work by Republicans and Democrats alike. As a result, elections in countries as close to us as South Korea, Spain and Germany have turned on opposition to American foreign policies. Nobody quite undermines support for George Bush's policies like the man himself. Today in Germany, one of America's closest allies, the public is furious at learning that the former government may have been providing intelligence about Iraq to the United States during the runup to war. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out (and if by chance you are, we won't even care if you were formerly a Nazi rocket scientist). Even on the odd chance that they might be predisposed to doing so anyhow, governments are no longer going to risk their futures on providing important intelligence to the American pariah, including perhaps essential security information. Dissing the French and Germans as "Old Europe" because they were smart enough, and democratically responsive to their bodies politic enough, to oppose a patently ill-conceived war is the diplomatic equivalent of strapping on a blindfold and inviting the firing squad to do its work. Even if the war had served some other important American interest - which it decidedly did not, unless you happen to find America and Halliburton indistinguishable - this loss of allied support would have been a huge cost to incur. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
We were also right about the importance of diplomacy, multilateralism and international institutions. They were wrong when they blew off the world with the kind of headstrong unilateral tough guy tactics usually reserved for Dirty Harry films. Maybe they made our day in 2003, but now there's nobody to bail us out of our woes in Iraq, and last week the UN passed a milestone resolution creating a new human rights council over our loud but irrelevant objection. Of course, John Bolton probably sees this as a victory. Instead of the usual two countries out of 190 siding with us on General Assembly resolutions - Israel and the Marshall Islands - we are now up to three, with the addition of that major player in international politics, Palau! Not that it particularly matters, though. Within a few decades all three will probably be underwater anyhow (see below), and we'll be on our own in the UN standing tall for... um, for...
...for what? Torture? Illegal and unconstitutional wiretaps? Smashing the Geneva Conventions and imprisoning captives without rights and without end? We were right when we said that human rights matter. They were wrong when they blew off both the wisdom of the Founders and two hundred years of hard-earned reputation. Now America has gone from a beacon for human rights in the world to a hated scourge. Five short years ago, the symbol of this country was a tall woman in robes whose outstretched arm held a welcoming torch. Now it is a terrified man under a hood standing on a box with electrodes attached to his arms and genitals. Lincoln bemoaned the brave soldiers of his time who, like those throughout American history, gave their last full measure of devotion in service to preserving the Founders' great experiment in democracy on these shores. What could possibly bring more dishonor on those who made that sacrifice than the depredations of George W. Bush? How long will it take us to undo the giant grief this small man has created for us all?
We were right when we said that America should be attentive to others in the world and treat them with the same respect we would wish for ourselves. They were wrong when they acted with disdain and arrogance in global diplomacy, and now America's influence in the world has suffered accordingly. Countries near and far have begun turning in large numbers to China for global leadership and economic relations, not America. Even in Latin America this is now true, and the majority of that region has now chosen governments which are most notable for their hostility to Washington. Meanwhile, the
president and his secretary of state seem genuinely surprised when every experiment in democracy in the Middle East produces governments far more committed to anti-American policies than the existing leaders. These are our top foreign policy officials, and they couldn't see that freight train coming?
We've been right for years if not decades now as we've warned that global warming is a real danger of the highest proportions. They were not only wrong, they were wrong deceitfully, and for the most contemptible of reasons. It seems that rich oil company moguls managed to get even richer, and all we got was this lousy damaged planet. Future generations will not look kindly at all on what this one is bequeathing to them, particularly since the risk, and then later the surety, of this malady was known. Under the leadership of industry-manipulated right-wing politicians, and backed by bogus Exxon-Mobil purchased 'science' and a compliant media intimidated into 'balanced' presentations (when was the last time you saw an article on the Third Reich so devoted to balance that it noted "Some historians argue, however, that the Nazis were actually quite nice guys"?), we have pretended to wait for scientific opinion to be resolved, while each day's headlines brings yet more evidence of just how deep is the destruction we're causing. Question: What do you call one hundred people who play Russian Roulette with their lives? I call 16.67 of them cadavers, and the rest freakin' idiots. If that's the case, what do you call one president and the so-called conservative movement he leads who play Russian Roulette with a planet of 6.5 billion people and all succeeding generations? Whatever the name, it's surely unprintable in a family newspaper. And, just as assuredly, this is a grave crime against humanity (not to mention a whole lot of other species) and ought to be adjudicated as such.
We were right when we said that the massive tax cuts of Bush's first term were both unfair and incredibly reckless. In fact, so unfair are they that they're not tax cuts at all, but rather tax transfers. Middle class folks got a pittance knocked off their IRS tab, while state taxes, local taxes, government fees and college tuition all skyrocketed. Worse yet, they are inheriting the debt for this debacle in the form of a lifetime of further tax liability, since the whole Ponzi scheme was financed by borrowing. Meanwhile, the already rich got way richer. So reckless are the tax 'cuts' that the government had to raise its debt ceiling once more this week, now to nine trillion dollars. And still they want to slash taxes more.
We were right that government can be a positive (not just a military) force, and that it ought to be run competently, and for the benefit of the citizens who pay for it. Conservatives have been telling us for a quarter-century now that government is the problem, not the solution. They then sought to prove their point by stuffing it full of incompetent cronies who goofed their way through Hurricane Katrina, while we watched in horror. Er, most of us watched, that is. The president had to be brought a DVD several days into the crisis to be convinced that maybe he should do something while the Gulf Coast was drowning under America's worst natural disaster in history, even if he was on (permanent?) vacation.
We were right that stem cell research and reproductive choice and sexual orientation lifestyle choices should not be captive to the whim of the religious right and their perverse obsessions with other people's sexuality. People have suffered and even died for the policies and the hatred regressives have forced upon the rest of us, and there will be much more of that to come until we can undo their madness.
We were right that our seniors deserve to be treated with respect and receive decent health care (and so, by the way, do the rest of us). They were wrong when they fashioned a prescription drug bill which provides fantastic benefits to pharmaceutical and insurance companies, but only confusion, incompetence, donut holes and lousy coverage to those it is supposed to serve.
The list is endless. Over and over again, we were right, and they were wrong. So, who are these people? They're called conservatives, and on their best days they're just wrong. More often they're mercenary kleptocrats whose one skill is that they're well practiced at the fine arts of deception.
Anyone shocked to find out that so-called conservatives (actually, 'regressives' is nowadays the more accurate appellation) are wrong about just about everything hasn't been doing their homework for history class, and should consider staying after school. Conservatives have almost always been wrong, almost always on the wrong side of
history. When the Founders were mutually pledging their lives, fortunes and their sacred honor to each other and to their cause in the eighteenth century, Tories took the side of colonialism and monarchism. When nineteenth century progressives fought for the 'radical' notion of abolishing slavery, conservatives led the opposition. In the twentieth century the record of failure ranges from women's suffrage, to civil rights for blacks against which they staged the longest filibuster in Senate history), Native Americans, women and now gays, to environmentalism, civil liberties protections, McCarthyism, Social Security, the minimum wage, Medicare, massive federal debt and more. Nor have they done better on foreign policy questions, either. While Hitler was amassing power in Europe, conservatives forced American isolationism, creating a powerful adversary who only had to be faced down in more lethal form later. These are also the same folks who brought us Vietnam and the present war in Iraq, not to mention the toppling of democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and beyond, US-sponsored terrorism in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and winks and nods for apartheid in South Africa. And no, my Kool-Aid inebriated friends, Ronald Reagan did not 'win' the Cold War. However stunning his heroic victory in Grenada, the Soviets were neither wowed nor spent into submission - though we may yet be.)
Quite a stellar record, eh? Indeed, what I don't get about conservatives - always so big on honor and morality - is why they don't do the 'right thing' and... well, at least shut up. If I was that wrong, that often, I sure as hell would. Of course, the presumption that honor and morality and good public policy are their game went out with Goldwater in '64, to the extent it ever existed. The new breed takes their cues from Capone and Goebbels. Not to mention Moe, Larry and Curly. This president literally learned of the existence of the Shiite/Sunni divide in Islam just two months before launching the invasion of Iraq, and well after he had already green-lighted that farce turned tragedy.
That we as a society allow this abomination to govern the most powerful country on the planet is nearly unimaginable, but not quite. There was 9/11, of course, which scared a lot of people silly. Unfortunately, quite literally. People who should know better, but don't because we've (purposefully?) neglected our public education system for so long most folks can no longer distinguish a civil liberty from a bagel, nor a real statesman from a frightened imposter who doesn't even have moderately decent acting chops. People who
should know better, but don't because the administration's one great talent is for the Gestapo-like intimidation tactics which have worked masterfully against a cozy, frightened and lazy media that has allowed itself to be coopted beyond recognition as a free and independent press.
And then there's the small matter of this: Who among the 'opposition' has made clear their opposition? Which of these names - Kerry, Lieberman, Clinton, Daschle, Reid - inspire confidence? Which of these names inspire anything but boredom and contempt? Which of these names are even remotely inspirational?
We were right when we said that if there had to be an invasion, then the occupation should at least be done properly to minimize the grief to Iraqis. They made all the wrong decisions, sending in Paul Bremer and Halliburton to fleece the country, dismissing the Iraqi army, and trying to police a country of 25 million (minus 100,000), racked with insurgent violence and sectarian strife, with a force of 130,000 troops. No wonder conservative columnist David Brooks now describes Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks as "pathetic". But, hey David, how about other supporters of the war, like that guy in the mirror?
We were right when we said that alienating America's allies and driving world opinion of our country into the toilet through arrogant diplomacy was a grave error. They were wrong, and proceeded to tear up a half-century's worth of painstaking work by Republicans and Democrats alike. As a result, elections in countries as close to us as South Korea, Spain and Germany have turned on opposition to American foreign policies. Nobody quite undermines support for George Bush's policies like the man himself. Today in Germany, one of America's closest allies, the public is furious at learning that the former government may have been providing intelligence about Iraq to the United States during the runup to war. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out (and if by chance you are, we won't even care if you were formerly a Nazi rocket scientist). Even on the odd chance that they might be predisposed to doing so anyhow, governments are no longer going to risk their futures on providing important intelligence to the American pariah, including perhaps essential security information. Dissing the French and Germans as "Old Europe" because they were smart enough, and democratically responsive to their bodies politic enough, to oppose a patently ill-conceived war is the diplomatic equivalent of strapping on a blindfold and inviting the firing squad to do its work. Even if the war had served some other important American interest - which it decidedly did not, unless you happen to find America and Halliburton indistinguishable - this loss of allied support would have been a huge cost to incur. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
We were also right about the importance of diplomacy, multilateralism and international institutions. They were wrong when they blew off the world with the kind of headstrong unilateral tough guy tactics usually reserved for Dirty Harry films. Maybe they made our day in 2003, but now there's nobody to bail us out of our woes in Iraq, and last week the UN passed a milestone resolution creating a new human rights council over our loud but irrelevant objection. Of course, John Bolton probably sees this as a victory. Instead of the usual two countries out of 190 siding with us on General Assembly resolutions - Israel and the Marshall Islands - we are now up to three, with the addition of that major player in international politics, Palau! Not that it particularly matters, though. Within a few decades all three will probably be underwater anyhow (see below), and we'll be on our own in the UN standing tall for... um, for...
We were right when we said that America should be attentive to others in the world and treat them with the same respect we would wish for ourselves. They were wrong when they acted with disdain and arrogance in global diplomacy, and now America's influence in the world has suffered accordingly. Countries near and far have begun turning in large numbers to China for global leadership and economic relations, not America. Even in Latin America this is now true, and the majority of that region has now chosen governments which are most notable for their hostility to Washington. Meanwhile, the
president and his secretary of state seem genuinely surprised when every experiment in democracy in the Middle East produces governments far more committed to anti-American policies than the existing leaders. These are our top foreign policy officials, and they couldn't see that freight train coming?
We've been right for years if not decades now as we've warned that global warming is a real danger of the highest proportions. They were not only wrong, they were wrong deceitfully, and for the most contemptible of reasons. It seems that rich oil company moguls managed to get even richer, and all we got was this lousy damaged planet. Future generations will not look kindly at all on what this one is bequeathing to them, particularly since the risk, and then later the surety, of this malady was known. Under the leadership of industry-manipulated right-wing politicians, and backed by bogus Exxon-Mobil purchased 'science' and a compliant media intimidated into 'balanced' presentations (when was the last time you saw an article on the Third Reich so devoted to balance that it noted "Some historians argue, however, that the Nazis were actually quite nice guys"?), we have pretended to wait for scientific opinion to be resolved, while each day's headlines brings yet more evidence of just how deep is the destruction we're causing. Question: What do you call one hundred people who play Russian Roulette with their lives? I call 16.67 of them cadavers, and the rest freakin' idiots. If that's the case, what do you call one president and the so-called conservative movement he leads who play Russian Roulette with a planet of 6.5 billion people and all succeeding generations? Whatever the name, it's surely unprintable in a family newspaper. And, just as assuredly, this is a grave crime against humanity (not to mention a whole lot of other species) and ought to be adjudicated as such.
We were right when we said that the massive tax cuts of Bush's first term were both unfair and incredibly reckless. In fact, so unfair are they that they're not tax cuts at all, but rather tax transfers. Middle class folks got a pittance knocked off their IRS tab, while state taxes, local taxes, government fees and college tuition all skyrocketed. Worse yet, they are inheriting the debt for this debacle in the form of a lifetime of further tax liability, since the whole Ponzi scheme was financed by borrowing. Meanwhile, the already rich got way richer. So reckless are the tax 'cuts' that the government had to raise its debt ceiling once more this week, now to nine trillion dollars. And still they want to slash taxes more.
We were right that government can be a positive (not just a military) force, and that it ought to be run competently, and for the benefit of the citizens who pay for it. Conservatives have been telling us for a quarter-century now that government is the problem, not the solution. They then sought to prove their point by stuffing it full of incompetent cronies who goofed their way through Hurricane Katrina, while we watched in horror. Er, most of us watched, that is. The president had to be brought a DVD several days into the crisis to be convinced that maybe he should do something while the Gulf Coast was drowning under America's worst natural disaster in history, even if he was on (permanent?) vacation.
We were right that stem cell research and reproductive choice and sexual orientation lifestyle choices should not be captive to the whim of the religious right and their perverse obsessions with other people's sexuality. People have suffered and even died for the policies and the hatred regressives have forced upon the rest of us, and there will be much more of that to come until we can undo their madness.
We were right that our seniors deserve to be treated with respect and receive decent health care (and so, by the way, do the rest of us). They were wrong when they fashioned a prescription drug bill which provides fantastic benefits to pharmaceutical and insurance companies, but only confusion, incompetence, donut holes and lousy coverage to those it is supposed to serve.
The list is endless. Over and over again, we were right, and they were wrong. So, who are these people? They're called conservatives, and on their best days they're just wrong. More often they're mercenary kleptocrats whose one skill is that they're well practiced at the fine arts of deception.
Anyone shocked to find out that so-called conservatives (actually, 'regressives' is nowadays the more accurate appellation) are wrong about just about everything hasn't been doing their homework for history class, and should consider staying after school. Conservatives have almost always been wrong, almost always on the wrong side of
history. When the Founders were mutually pledging their lives, fortunes and their sacred honor to each other and to their cause in the eighteenth century, Tories took the side of colonialism and monarchism. When nineteenth century progressives fought for the 'radical' notion of abolishing slavery, conservatives led the opposition. In the twentieth century the record of failure ranges from women's suffrage, to civil rights for blacks against which they staged the longest filibuster in Senate history), Native Americans, women and now gays, to environmentalism, civil liberties protections, McCarthyism, Social Security, the minimum wage, Medicare, massive federal debt and more. Nor have they done better on foreign policy questions, either. While Hitler was amassing power in Europe, conservatives forced American isolationism, creating a powerful adversary who only had to be faced down in more lethal form later. These are also the same folks who brought us Vietnam and the present war in Iraq, not to mention the toppling of democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and beyond, US-sponsored terrorism in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and winks and nods for apartheid in South Africa. And no, my Kool-Aid inebriated friends, Ronald Reagan did not 'win' the Cold War. However stunning his heroic victory in Grenada, the Soviets were neither wowed nor spent into submission - though we may yet be.)
Quite a stellar record, eh? Indeed, what I don't get about conservatives - always so big on honor and morality - is why they don't do the 'right thing' and... well, at least shut up. If I was that wrong, that often, I sure as hell would. Of course, the presumption that honor and morality and good public policy are their game went out with Goldwater in '64, to the extent it ever existed. The new breed takes their cues from Capone and Goebbels. Not to mention Moe, Larry and Curly. This president literally learned of the existence of the Shiite/Sunni divide in Islam just two months before launching the invasion of Iraq, and well after he had already green-lighted that farce turned tragedy.
That we as a society allow this abomination to govern the most powerful country on the planet is nearly unimaginable, but not quite. There was 9/11, of course, which scared a lot of people silly. Unfortunately, quite literally. People who should know better, but don't because we've (purposefully?) neglected our public education system for so long most folks can no longer distinguish a civil liberty from a bagel, nor a real statesman from a frightened imposter who doesn't even have moderately decent acting chops. People who
should know better, but don't because the administration's one great talent is for the Gestapo-like intimidation tactics which have worked masterfully against a cozy, frightened and lazy media that has allowed itself to be coopted beyond recognition as a free and independent press.
And then there's the small matter of this: Who among the 'opposition' has made clear their opposition? Which of these names - Kerry, Lieberman, Clinton, Daschle, Reid - inspire confidence? Which of these names inspire anything but boredom and contempt? Which of these names are even remotely inspirational?
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