Hug A Republican! - Democratic Underground

nostamj

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Tue Feb-10-04 11:53 AM
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Hug A Republican!

from Bob Herbert's NYT column (2/9/04):

The credibility that he enjoyed during that campaign, and which reached a peak in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, has steadily eroded since then. He said he was a compassionate conservative, but he has hammered programs designed to assist the poorest and most vulnerable among us. His administration has taken a blowtorch to the environment. And his fiscal policies are so outlandish that liberals, moderates and conservatives are asking if he's taken leave of his senses.

During the run-up to war, the public heard ominous references to mushroom clouds and was encouraged to believe there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11. It's time to put an end to the fantasies and the deceit, which have landed us in a quagmire overseas and the equivalent of fiscal quicksand at home.

It's not too much to ask that the president of the United States speak the clear truth about his policies and their implications. Mr. Bush would do himself and his country a favor by establishing a closer relationship with reality and a more intense commitment to the truth.

more

And what is that truth?

First, two failed wars.

The long-forgotten Afghanistan can hardly be called a success. While bush* claims to have captured 2/3rds of the al-Qaeda leadership, is there any reason to believe this claim? The fragmentary nature of their cells and their international scope make hard numbers impossible to know. The Taliban is back. Warlords control the roads. Women are subjugated. Opium production flourishes. And the puppet Karzai clings tenuously to a fraction of Kabul.

The Iraq "war" is a fraud and a failure. Overwhelming firepower guaranteed a successful invasion and occupation. Now, increasingly sophisticated attacks by 'insurgents' (who would be called 'patriots' had the occupying force been the Chinese and the invaded country the USA) pick off our soldiers and Iraqis working with the occupying army daily. (Today, 2/10 at least fifty were killed in a car bomb targeting yet another Iraqi police station.) The numbers of the wounded are hidden. The numbers of Iraqi dead and wounded are uncounted.

And now, the rationale for this 'war' has finally been exposed as an utter sham. There was no threat to Main Street USA. There were no terrifying weapons other than the dangerous rhetoric of neocon warmongers. The sacrifices made by dead and wounded have not made us safer. If anything, fundamentalist Islamic terrorism is on the rise and the blunders of the Bush Administration have given this growing guerilla army a shooting gallery all across Iraq.

Saddam was a bad man. That does not automatically infer that Bush (or anyone on his team) is a good one. If one ‘regime change’ was good, a second one will be even better. Saddam never threatened the world, GW Bush does.

Second, the economy has been destroyed for all but those at the very top of the economic foodchain.

Corporations and their greedy CEOs are making more money with less workers and the bleeding of US jobs has becoming an outright hemorrhaging. What will happen when the bled-out workforce can now longer afford to be consumers?

In a sane world with a functioning free press, bush* would have nothing, absolutely nothing, to use as the basis for an argument for his re-election. (I know, he didn't really win the first time but this is long enough. I didn't get into environmental rape, health care scams or a dozen other festering wounds inflicted by this administration.)

But it isn't a sane world and we don't have a functioning free press due to the 24/7 propaganda/distraction pumped out by the corporate/cable media.

If only the republican base (not the .1% who continue to invest--very profitably--in the bush occupation) could be made to understand how deeply they are despised and used. The margin of defeat for bush* and all his cabal stand for would make vote manipulation impossible.

It's time for our preachers and our choirs to leave the sanctuary and form new alliances. We may not agree on everything, but we can agree that bush* has done nothing for us. Nothing for the US.

Failure to oust bush and his enablers guarantees expanding quagmires abroad and deepening economic quicksand at home.

If you're not already a millionaire, you have no reason to vote for bush* and little hope of becoming one if you do.

One would think that the theft of the "American Dream" would resonate with everyone who has not reached that plateau...

So, hug a republican, they’re suffering too. It isn’t only Democratic jobs that are vanishing. It isn’t only Democratic saving that are evaporating. And it isn’t only Democratic servicemen and women that are being killed and maimed.

Then remind them why they’re suffering. And invite them to join you in ending it.

(this post appeared--briefly--in a different form yesterday)