Just received this e-mail from Repug. I need help responding!

[HoosierClarkie]

Why Bush Stays Away
> -- During War, a President Cannot Be Mourner in Chief
>By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, TIME
>
>President Bush's secret visit to Baghdad dramatized his commitment to the
>war
>and the troops. But it has not put to rest criticism that he has been
>unwilling to pay the proper respect to those who fought and died. "It's
>absolutely
>appropriate to be honoring our soldiers overseas in battle on a day like
>Thanksgiving," said Chris Lehane, a top adviser to presidential candidate
>Wesley
>Clark. But that's not sufficient. "It is more important to honor them every
>day,"
>including "to appropriately honor the heroes coming back in caskets."
>
>As dead American soldiers have come back from Iraq, Bush has been heavily
>criticized for not attending a single funeral and not once going to Dover
>Air
>Force Base to receive the coffins. One columnist wrote acidly that Bush has
>time
>to go around the country to do fund raisers but no time to receive the
>dead,
>cynically keeping election-season distance from the terrible consequences
>of
>his Iraq policy.
>
>When 19 Italians were killed in Nasiriyah, they returned home to a dramatic
>public ceremony attended by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. If Italy, why
>not
>America?
>
>Because Italy is not America. The U.S. is carrying the fight at the
>epicenter
>of the war, the Sunni triangle. Italy is not. Loss for Italy has been (thus
>far) but a single event. American losses are daily, constant.
>
>To be fair to the fallen, the President would have to be at Dover nearly
>every day. Why this soldier, why this patrol, why the crew of this
>shot-down
>helicopter and not another?
>
>But it is more than a question of arbitrariness. It is a question of
>strategy. There is a war going on. The insurgents represent the remnants of
>a regime
>of torture and repression. They have no chance whatsoever of engendering a
>popular uprising. They have only one way of winning: by making U.S.
>casualties so
>painful that America decides to give up and go home.
>
>That is the enemy's entire war objective: to inflict pain. And that is why
>it
>would be a strategic error to amplify and broadcast that pain by making
>great
>public shows of sorrow presided over by the President himself. In the midst
>of an ongoing war, a guerrilla war, a war that will be won and lost as a
>contest of wills, the Commander in Chief — despite what he feels in his
>heart —
>must not permit himself to show that he bleeds. He is required to show,
>yes, a
>certain callousness. He must appear that way to the insurgents, who will
>otherwise be encouraged to think their strategy is succeeding and therefore
>have yet
>more incentive to keep killing Americans until it does. And he must appear
>that way to ordinary Iraqis, who will not help us in this fight unless they
>are
>sure that the pain of our losses will not drive us out and leave them to
>the
>tender mercies of the Saddamites.
>
>Of course the President cares. Presidents always care. But they can care
>too
>much. President Reagan cared desperately, obsessively about the American
>hostages in Beirut. He sold weapons to Iran, undermined his own war on
>terrorism
>and almost destroyed his presidency trying to get the hostages back. It was
>a
>terrible mistake. He should have instead adopted a steely callousness and
>refused to bargain.
>
>Of course this President cares. Bush has met privately with families and
>has
>written a letter to every one. And during his Thanksgiving Day address to
>the
>troops in Baghdad, he paid tribute to their fallen comrades. In the middle
>of
>a war, that is how the Commander in Chief can best honor the dead — in
>the
>context not of mourning but of resolve; with acknowledgment of loss, but
>within a
>larger demonstration of defiance.
>
>Bush's critics charge he is avoiding any public identification with the
>returning dead so as not to jeopardize his re-election. It is a scurrilous
>charge,
>and demonstrably false. Do the following thought experiment: imagine the
>election is not a year from now but was held a week ago. The President is
>re-elected. He is a lame duck and will never run for office again. Is there
>any doubt
>that he would continue precisely the same policy of not making public shows
>of
>grief?
>
>No doubt whatsoever. The reasons have everything to do with winning the
>war.
>The enemy knows America's weakness — a general aversion to war, stemming
>largely from a profound concern for the individual. The enemy knows our
>aversion to
>casualties led us to withdraw not just from Vietnam but from Somalia and
>Beirut, where our losses were infinitely smaller.
>
>In the end, the best way to honor the dead is to vindicate their sacrifice
>by
>winning the war so they will not have died in vain. And this war will be
>won
>only when Iraqis are convinced that America, while grieving, will not
>retreat.
>This requires — and the paradox is cruel — muting public presidential
>displays of grief until the war is done.

I need someone who is articulate and not so pissed off as me to write this family member back!

[ComerPerro]

1. Fuck it, you don't need to be articulate

Tell your family member this:

If this is truly a "time of war" and we don't have time to honor the dead who are constantly coming home, then where the hell did Bush find time to take a month of vacation?

[jackemoe]

2. Tell them

they need to lay off:

Faux
Coulter
Rush
Hannity
Newsmax

and they'll be just fine.

[wtmusic]

3. And once the war is 'done'

* can have a big boo-hoo blubberfest on the White House Lawn.

:nopity:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. You c ould tell him

That you understand that Bush doesn't have time to honor every fallen soldier, but that you feel it is indecent for him to go to places and do fundraising and to ignore wounded soldiers and soldier's funerals taking place in the same area. Since he's obviously a Repug, you might want to remind him of another Republican president who really WAS in danger and peril and yet visited the wounded troops-Abraham Lincoln. Say that Honest Abe is rolling in his grave knowing that a person like Shrub is in the White House and is calling himself a Republican.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

5. First things first......

This is not a war. We have not declared war on anybody. The fact so-called journalists call it such is lost on many, but don't fall for it. We are not in a war, we are an occupying force that unilaterally (very nearly so) invaded another country without that country provoking us.
Our withdrawals from Somalia? That'a a bit of reach given the missions nature and the political climate of that country.
The insurgents represent a regime created, fostered, supported and nutured by our Government. It isn't as if we woke up one day and found out Saddam was an asshole. We created the conditions that allowed him to flourish.
Anyhow, the columnist is a known conservative with strong ties to that way of thinking. We could go through the whole articlea nd rebut it point by point. My advise is to ask the person who sent it, "where are the weapons of mass destruction"?

[karlschneider]

6. "...there is a war going on...", well, no shit. What about "mission

accomplished"?

Yes I realize this is a Krauthammer article (could that be translated to "cabbage fucker", perhaps?
:grr:

[TolstoyAndy]

7. Poor, deluded Mr. Kraut Hammer

I'll take a swing.


- "Italy is not" ... "carrying the fight":
True, and nobody would have to have been carrying this war if weren't for the neo-con lies. Remember: there were no WMD, there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq.

- "Of course the President cares"
Bullshit. He dances on their graves, because he lied to send them there and refuses to bring them home. Unless Charles Nazihammer meant "Of course the President cares" about his re-election numbers, in which case I stand corrected.

- "this war will be won only when Iraqis are convinced that America, while grieving, will not retreat."

True enough. What he means, is that it won't be won until we've beaten into Halliburton-Slavery-Submission every man, woman and future man/woman. He means we won't stop killing until they all agree to hand over the wealth of a 5000 year old culture (oil, today) to the new Mongol invaders.

Trouble for Krautie is, they'll never give up. We can't kill 20 million people, and we can't even kill 1 million and pay off the other 19+. Chuckie the neo-con forgot, they've seen worse than us in their history, and they are still there, and the others are gone, leaving only scars.

He doesn't realize, we've already lost.

[Narraback]

8. Send them to this site....

http://www.awolbush.com/

[littlejoe]

9. Tell him

that he's a pompus fucking windbag.

[ComerPerro]

10. Slow down, there, littlejoe

You don't win friends by telling people that they are pompous fucking windbags.

But I agree.

[HoosierClarkie]

11. I would like to call him a moronic @#!

Unfortunately my inlaws are not going away anytime soon. I wish there was an unsubscribe list I could write to!
Thanks for the thoughts everyone. I will sit down tonight and respond. I just might skip the holidays!

[karlschneider]

12. You're a pompous fucking windbag. Are we still friends?

:D

[CityZen-X]

13. Let He, Or She Know......

That they must be citizens of the "Mushroom Nation." Where people are kept in the dark and fed massive quantities of Bu$h*t!!

[Oilwellian]

17. If it's ok...

I'm going to steal this for future fun. :D

[Warren Stuart]

14. Part of the burden of Leadershio

Is to acknowledge the sacrifices of heroes, Lincoln understood this, he didn't dash off to every funeral or memorial. He did find time to attend one, at which time he gave one of the most important speeches in the history of the United States. The Gettysburg Address.

George W. Bush is a failure in so many ways (a liar, a drunken driving, drug using, draft dodging coward), his failure to properly honor the sacrifices of our servicepeople is just another indignity heaped upon the pile of shame he is accumulating.

[HoosierClarkie]

15. Thank you. n/t

[proud patriot]

16. Respond like this

So sorry to hear that you support bush
above common sense and logic , above the
Constitution and the rule of Law .

Keep trying to find excuses to justify
your support of a President who has done
more to endanger it's citizenry than any
before him .

Excuses excuses that's all republicans have to offer
one excuse after another .

It's looking rather silly

[T Roosevelt]

18. Keep it literate and clean

And REPLY ALL - you have an audience to impress. Screw the sender - this person's a lost cause, but everybody else who received the email is a possible recruit.