Category Archives: War

Rewarding unreasonable behavior.

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On the anniversary of 9/11, Republican spokesperson and renowned liar, Rush Limbaugh, chastised President Obama for trying to turn 9/11 into a day of public service.  Wow!  How dare the President want to commemorate the attacks on U.S. soil with something positive!  How dare the President try to encourage Americans to serve their nation! 

Certainly, the past President never encouraged public service and sacrifice.  In the wake of 9/11, Bush asked us to go shopping.  And while our young people were serving and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq, he pushed for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.  (I guess he believed that only the middle class and poor should sacrifice for their country.)  Bush refused to allow press coverage and photographs of the true cost of war.  Indeed, Republicans treated war much as the Wizard of Oz would.  “Pay no attention to what’s behind that curtain.”

But, in reality, Republican criticism has nothing to do with President Obama’s statements and actions.  He’ll be criticized by Republican pundits no matter what he says or does.   That’s not surprising.  After all, we’re talking about the same people who accused then-First Lady Hillary Clinton with murder relating to the so-called Travel-gate.  They’re the people who spent $60 million of taxpayers’ money to investigate Clinton’s investment loss in Whitewater.  They’re the same people who called Democrats “whack jobs” and “conspiracy nuts” for crying foul over the 2000 Florida election.   (Never mind the findings of an independent group of journalists who stated, “It’s clear that a significant majority of Floridians intended to vote for Al Gore.”)  And these are the same people who attacked the patriotism of a Vietnam War hero while supporting a candidate who got his powerful daddy to help him avoid the draft by getting him into the Air National Guard. 

Republicans are good at attacking.  In fact, they’re great at it.  Many of today’s Republican strategists learned at the knee of the masters; Tricky Dick Nixon and Spiro Agnew.  Republican attacks and tricks should not come as a surprise to anyone – least of all Democrats.

What is surprising is that Democrats continue to try to reason with them.  And, by doing so, they continue to encourage their bad behavior.  It’s astounding that Representative Joe Wilson can bellow “You lie” to President Obama in an address to a joint session of Congress.  It’s even more astounding that Democratic Senators reword the health care reform bill because of Wilson’s outburst.  (Despite the fact that the bill already clearly stated that health care coverage will be denied to illegal aliens, the wording was strengthened in response to Wilson.) 

The message to Republican extremists is that their extreme accusations and tactics work. 

So Republicans and their media supporters will continue to scare citizens with fabricated issues like “Death Panels”.  They’ll continue to raise fears that a Presidential speech to school children is an attempt to indoctrinate them.  And they’ll continue to compare a centrist African-American President who continues to search for bipartisanship to Adolph Hitler.  (How can anyone actually believe this stuff?) 

Someone once said, “You can’t reason with unreasonable people.”  Yet Democrats continue to try to reason with Republicans.  Why? 

Suffering through the Bush administration was torture enough.

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There’s a long-standing tradition in the U.S. surrounding a change in administration.  Typically, the former president simply fades away.  If he’s public service minded, he occupies his time with large scale charities (ala Jimmy Carter), relief efforts (ala George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton) and occasional foreign relations issues (ala Bill Clinton’s recent trip to N. Korea).  And with rare exceptions (Al Gore), the former vice-president simply fades into obscurity.  When’s the last time you heard anything about Dan Quayle?

How I wish that were the case with Richard (the Dick) Cheney!

Instead, the former vice-president and his daughter regularly deem it necessary to come out of their badger dens to eviscerate any who have dared to examine the former administration’s failings, of which there were many.

It’s bad enough to read accounts of Cheney’s torture programs from the past 8 years.  But it’s darn near unbearable to listen to Cheney’s tortured logic in his attempts to justify it.  Even if the program did yield information that couldn’t have been gathered any other way (and, despite Cheney’s insistence, it’s uncertain that it did), it was patently illegal and immoral for torture to have been authorized. 

However, the fact that Cheney would encourage and authorize such a program should have come as no surprise to anyone.  His hunting accident was indication enough of the Dick’s moral and ethical standards.  I’m not referring to the fact that he mistook a friend’s face for a bird, or that he waited hours to inform authorities (probably until he sobered up).  What was most revealing about the incident was the reality that he was “hunting” for captive birds that had been raised to become fodder for fat cats too lazy and too impatient to hunt in the wild.  Indeed, the game farm had provided Cheney and his friend with a “menu” of available birds, along with a hunting dog to flush them out of the areas where game farm employees “hid” them moments earlier.

How on Earth can it be considered “sport” to kill creatures in such circumstances?  That’s no more hunting than ordering chicken from the menu in a restaurant.  And it’s an indication of someone almost totally devoid of character.

I believe that Attorney General Holder was correct to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Dick’s torture program.  But I think the investigation is much too limited in scope.  In my opinion, President Obama should live up to his campaign pledge that he will ask his Attorney General to examine the legality of every Bush administration directive.  And, if I were president, I would subject Cheney to the same interrogation methods he so gleefully defends.

But since I’m not president, all I can hope for is that the Dick and Liz will decide to go hunting together.   May the best shot win.

Democrats can’t compare to Republicans.

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The continuing revelations of unethical, illegal and unconstitutional actions by the George W. Bush administration caused me to revisit the scandals of previous administrations during my lifetime.  I’m not talking about prurient sexual affairs.  I’m talking about the abuse of power by the Executive Branch and attempts to subvert our Constitution.

Let’s examine the record.  President Richard Nixon was forced out of office when it was discovered that he ordered his operatives to break into the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee.  He also authorized illegal wiretaps, improper tax audits, campaign fraud, and a variety of dirty tricks.  Then, when the actions of his operatives became public, he authorized an illegal slush fund to buy the operatives’ silence. 

In other words, Nixon not only tried to subvert our electoral process.  He obstructed justice.

Lost in the Watergate scandal is the fact that Nixon’s Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, pleaded no contest to charges of tax evasion and money-laundering.  His replacement, Gerald Ford, assumed the office of the Presidency after Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and became embroiled in controversy when he pardoned Nixon. 

Under President Ronald Reagan, the administration sold weapons to the Iranian government in order to finance Nicaraguan rebels (Contras) in violation of U.S. law.  The entire affair was kept secret from Congressional oversight committees, and when the affair was investigated, it was found that large volumes of documents had been destroyed by administration officials.  Although it was never proven that Reagan was directly involved in the scandal, it’s difficult to believe that he had no knowledge of the program.   

President George H.W. Bush not only pardoned most of those involved in the Iran-Contra affair.  On his watch, Savings & Loan institutions collapsed as the result of deregulation and overzealous lending as part of the real estate boom.  (Can it be possible that a near identical collapse of financial institutions during his son’s administration is just some sort of an eerie coincidence?)

Under President George W. Bush, the scandals were so numerous that Wikipedia has been forced to divide them into nine subcategories.  And Wikipedia doesn’t even list what may be the biggest failing of his presidency – ignoring clear warning of 9/11.  It has been well-documented that Bush ignored an August 2001 memo titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.”  It even mentioned the possibility of hijackings.

Neither does Wikipedia list Tom Ridge’s assertions that Bush officials asked him to raise the terrorist alert levels to help manipulate voters leading up to the 2004 election. 

Wikipedia does, however, list the abuses at Abu Grahib, the false statements made during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, false claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the outing of a CIA operative as payback for her husband exposing one of the claims used to sell the Iraq invasion, the politicization of the Justice Department through the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys for political reasons, the extraordinary renditions (read torture) of political prisoners, possible war crimes in Afghanistan, the imprisonment of detainees in Guantanamo without trial and without the right to know the charges against them, and the use of recess appointments to circumvent the Senate’s confirmation process.

Of course, there were also the no-bid contracts in Iraq for Halliburton and others, the out-sourcing of many of our military ops to Blackwater (aka Xe), the secret “hit squad” created by the CIA and Blackwater, the supposed legal foundation for torture, and many other issues which would be considered scandalous in more respectable administrations.

I can think of no equivalent scandals for Democratic administrations.  No attempts to subvert the Constitution.  No shadow governments.  No wars of convenience. 

Yet one of the true ironies of our current political climate is that conservatives have the unmitigated gall to accuse President Obama of perverting the Constitution by trying to rescue our economy and attempting to provide health care for all U.S. citizens.  They want to manufacture a scandal out of his birth certificate.  And they want to compare him to Hitler. 

Are conservatives so angry they lost the election that they can’t see the utter nonsense of their statements?  Or are they simply so gullible they’ll repeat anything Fox Noise, Rush Limbaugh and the NRA tell them to?  Whatever their reasons, the real question is this:  Given past performance, why would anyone vote for a Republican President ever again?