I’m not a big fan of the Democratic Party, as anyone who reads my articles and postings knows. I thought one of the non-opposition’s party’s lowest points came in 2002, when Democratic War Hawks like John Murtha (D-Pa.) voted for Bush’s illegal and immoral war on Iraq. I think that many if not most of the few Democrats who now openly oppose the war don’t get the full extent of what’s wrong with the occupation of Iraq. They’re opposing it as a mistake more because it isn’t working (for unjust purposes) for American empire than because it’s a crime that has murdered tens of thousands Iraqis….ctd
Still, I want to thank Big John for what he had to say yeserday about the troops in Iraq: “It’s time to bring them home.”
Yes it is.
Big John added: “Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in an illusion.”
There’s some problems here in my opinion. It’s not an “insurgency;” it’s a resistance movement that has been going on since March 19, 2003. We are not simply “a catalyst for violence;” we are the “leading purveyor of violence in the world” — as Martin Luther King, Jr. noted in 1967 — and in Iraq. The policy is “flawed,” but more than that it is monumentally criminal. And it’s a war ON Iraq.
Still, it was good of big John to note (in however flawed a fashion) that, basically, we are the main problem over there.
But the really good part when Big John told those miserable corporate war criminals and uber-chickenhawks Dick Cheney and George W. Bush to go fuck themselves.
He called them out, big time.
Earlier this week, you may recall, the first chickenhawk said that Democrats were spouting “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges” ever made by pointing out that the Bush administration had manipulated military intelligence before the occupation of Iraq. Imagine!
During his Veterans Day speech before yet another military audience, “Bring-Em On” Bush argued that Democrats who critcized his Iraq policy were essentially weakening America.
Asked about these comments from the world’s top two war ciminals, Murtha said the following: “I like guys who’ve never been there who criticize us who’ve been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don’t like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.” Referring to Bush, Murtha said that as a veteran, he resented a chickenhawk president who used Veterans Day to “criticize Democrats for criticizing them.”
Back in the Sixties, apparently, Big John wasn’t a “Fortunate Son” like Bush or Cheney, who had had other priorities than fighting in a war they both supported. Big John, it turns out, is “a former Marine drill instructor who did a combat tour in Vietnam and retired as a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve after 37 years of service” (New York Times, 18 November 2005).
“In the Vietnam era,” the New York Times reports today, “Mr. Cheney had five deferments and did not serve in the military.”
Bush added the following, speaking from South Korea yesterday, on Murtha’s comments: “I think people ought to be allowed to ask questions.”
Can we answer our questions too?
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