Ivins :: One America, two Americas, red America, blue America

[nosmokes]

original

Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
07.29.04

One America, two Americas, red America, blue America
Clinton, Obama, and Teresa lit up the crowd and burned up the airwaves; still, nobody's saying 'Iraq.'
~snip~
.
.
.
Hate to be the skunk at the garden party, but the one topic the D's, in their determined-not-to-be-negative mode, are avoiding like said skunk is Iraq. Since their candidate was in favor of going in (Howard Dean, who opposed the war, got a lot of applause Tuesday night), he's stuck with that position. Ever since poor George Romney (whose son is now governor of Massachusetts) said back in 1968 that he had been "brainwashed" -- meaning he was told a bunch of lies -- over Vietnam, politicians have been afraid of admitting they were misled for fear people will think them simpleminded. What happened to Romney was that the press turned on him mercilessly and pilloried him as though the fault were his.

The more or less official Democratic line is whether you were for the war or against it, the administration screwed up the implementation beyond recall, which I suppose works politically and has the added virtue of being true. Nonetheless, I don't think it gets us far enough: We spent at least 20 years after Vietnam arguing about what we needed to learn from that experience, and I don't want to see the lessons of Iraq confused.

It is not just a matter of Use Overwhelming Force and Have an Exit Strategy (two lessons from Vietnam), it really is much more important to understand why we should not have invaded in the first place. Not just a case of bad information on the WMD, on the supposed ties to Al Qaeda, on the nonexistent nuclear program, etc. We need to get it through our heads that the real mistake was invading in the face of almost universal opposition from the rest of the world.

There may be a time and place where we will have to act unilaterally, but this wasn't it. Painfully, clearly not. The single most important weapon we have against terrorists is international cooperation, and that's what we so stupidly blew in this case. Just threw it away in a miserable display of arrogant "diplomacy" -- a combination of threats, lies and bribes that insulted our closest allies.
~snip~
.
.
.
###
(c) 2004 Creators Syndicate

[fob]

1. I'd haven't reread the transcripts, but Edwards said "Iraq" at LEAST

6 times, out loud even.

[Dover]

2. Yeah, he was downright HAWKISH

But not really what Molly was discussing.

I believe that there was a large contingent of Dems who knew the info Bush presented to them was bogus, and yet who were in agreement with the general strategy to go into Iraq and plant ourselves there. I think this contingent caters to the current Israeli leadership and their policies, and that this invasion was encouraged by Israel.

[dand]

6. Right on the money Dover, AIPAC is the 500 pound gorilla

that everyone is too terrified to discuss. Sharon and his American minions are the reason we are knee deep in shit.

[Dudley_DUright]

3. I was just about to post this

but you beat me to it. The title reminds me of a Dr. Seuss book!

[nosmokes]

4. my apologies to ya,

brer dudley.

i had given up on ya as mia for the day. i won't be so hasty next time. you do a much better job with the blue pencil than i. and it's more fun to just pull out one of molly's snarky comments and post it, anyhow. ;)

[Dudley_DUright]

5. MIA I was

but never, ever AWOL. ;-)