Pride goeth before a fall, I hope.
This whole story is a perfect illustration of the kind of political arrogance and swagger that just annoys me to my last nerve. It's smug posturing on a grand stage. Rove is affectionately known as "Turd Blossom" by Gee Dubya. I think they should drop the "Blossom" from that, to make it more fitting, you understand. With any luck, while not the whelp of a beaten cur, this is the sniping and whining and strutting of one who sees the unraveling of an agenda. The Bush Administration has ridden on the wings of this kind of crap for years. Now perhaps the wings are beginning to melt in the heat of a continuous stream of bad news. There will never be an apology from this vile scumbag, as there will never be any public owning up to reality by Dick Cheney, et. al. Still, I remain hopeful for some kind of payback for this kind of thing and the lies and double dealing these swine have troweled out for the last five years.
posted by Harry at 3:44 PM
5 Comments:
Sorry, dude, but what Rove said was small potatoes and perfectly in line with the same old bickering the two parties have been at for years. Indeed I see nothing offensive whatsoever in his commentsas quoted, certainly nothing that holds a candle to Durbin's ridiculous comparisons. I note all these loud calls for an apology but look who they are coming from. And for the Demos to shed alligator tears over politicization of 9/11 makes me sick. Just by this article alone, I have less regard for Dems and more for Repubs. Not much, mind you. But on a very sensitive scale that is how it would tip.
Durbin's comparisons were inflammatory only because he utterd the words "Nazi" and "Gulag." I wonder what the reaction would've been if the shoe had been on the other foot. Indeed, the only reason people are spinning out about this is because republicans jumped on Durbin's comments and spun the hell out of them. Admittedly, he used bad judgement, but his comments were no worse than, sya, Tom DeLay's comments about the "out of control judiciary" or Falwell's accusing people like abortion supporters of being responsible for 9/11. Read what caused Durbin to say such things, then think about the point he was trying to make.
As for Dems and their alligator tears, its far, far less than the kind of things Karl Rove does for a living. See Max Cleland's senate campaign, or Bush's campaign against McCain for the nomination in 2000. In fact, see Bush's campaign ad from 2004 with the WTC ruins. How could Dems being upset about Rove's comments cause you to respect republicans more? The Republicans used 9/11 shamelessly to get us into a war. How is the democrat politicization worse than that?
The tip of the balance I referred to was from this article alone - in the context of course of what else I know, but I don't keep so much on hand, I guess.
But Rove is right. The people in the Mid East who have dedicated themselves to the destruction of the West are hugely encouraged when an American Senator calls his own soldiers Nazis. They are hugely encouraged when Amnesty International compares Gitmo to the Gulags. They don't care that both statements were retracted. They know the retractions were political, and the statements evidence of a deep weakness.
They know we are weak because we are afraid to be strong. They will never stop fighting us, for that reason alone. The war (that Bush did not start) will not end in our lifetimes to a large measure because we are afraid to do what it takes to win it, as evidenced by the very prattling and hand-wringing that Rove refers to as helping terrorism. Guess what: It does.
Rove didn't say anything in the service of winning the war on terror, he said it clearly in the service of promoting his boss's political agenda.
As for the war that liberals mostly object to, it isn't the war on terror, it's the war in Iraq which Bush did start. In doing so, he opened the door into Iraq for Al Qaeda. Had the war not started, Al Qaeda would have no foothold, the insurgency would not have developed as it did, and we could've focused our resources on the war on terrorism. As I;ve said many times, Bush should've kept an eye and a hand on the Afghan effort and kept Saddam in his bottle. But nooooo...
Rove is a liar, as well as wrong. We are weaker still if we become a nation that condones torture. It's widely known to be a rather less than effective means of interrogation, just to start with. We are heading dowen the wrong road with that, and it isn't handwringing over whether we should be less mean to terrorists, it's head shaking questioning of the wisdom of becoming more like them, more authoritarian, and less able to stand behind claims of beaing a bastion of freedom and liberty and democracy. I'm not concerned about the welfare of terrorists, I'm concerned about the future of our nation, and what will happen when our guys get captured.
Dissent does not indicate weakness. Let others think it does, but its what makes us strong in the end. To be dissenting is to be practicing the essence of what our country was intended to be. It doesn't indicate a lack of support for the insturments of policy. To say that it does is just to repeat a tired right wing claim used to distract attention from the failure of the policy that put the troops in harm's way in the first place. Durbin was practicing his constutionally guaranteed dissent. Republican's and general whores like Rove are using his comments to keep the public distracted from the developing national carbuncle in Iraq. This kind of thing comes most loudly from people who have no experience with being under fire.
To dissent is not to be afraid of being strong, it IS being strong.
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