In his remarkably ugly keynote speech, Democratic (in name only) Senator Zell Miller wistfully recalled the good old days of the 1940 election, when Wendell Wilkie refused to campaign effectively against FDR on security issues, then harshly attacked today's Democrats for not having the same willingness to roll over and play dead.
"While young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan," Miller thundered righteously, "our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our Commander in Chief."
No, it's being torn apart because a lot of people are rather unhappy that our Commander in Chief sent young Americans to die in the sands of Iraq under false pretenses and with no postwar planning other than wishful thinking. It's being made weaker because the rest of the world is isolating us to stew in our own juices, seeing us as a power-mad bully who would rather push other countries around than work with them to fight al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups.
The Democrats don't have to do all that. President Bush is doing it very nicely all by himself.
Referring to (unspecified) comments from Democratic leaders, Miller growled that "nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators." Heck, he doesn't have to hear that from Democrats, or even from Americans. All he has to do is listen to the officially liberated people of Iraq, who see us very much as occupiers and want us out. For that matter, he can listen to none other than George W. Bush himself, who said in April that Iraqis are "not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either."
Oh yes, and John Kerry "can only encourage our enemies" by actually thinking about various possible courses of action instead of seizing on one and never deviating from it no matter how disastrous the results.
(This came after President Bush of all people caused a minor stir by saying the War on Terror can never be won, only to be smacked around by his handlers and sent to grovel on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, saying that he didn't really mean it.)
He all but accused the Democrats of treason. How dare they field a candidate for President? Don't they know there's a war on? (He seems to have forgotten that we have a little thing in America called democracy.)
All in all, it was one of the most repulsive speeches in recent convention history, threatening to outdo even Pat Buchanan's 1992 "culture war" rant.
Then Vice President Cheney took the stage.
After talking about how "businesses are creating jobs, people are returning to work" without mentioning that newly-created jobs pay far less than those that were lost, he got down to business.
Tearing into Kerry, he sneered about his "more sensitive war on terror," conveniently forgetting that Bush himself aired the same sentiments just last month. He also attacked Kerry for voting against pouring more money into the Iraq occupation, saying "he does not seem to understand the first obligation of a commander in chief and that is to support American troops in combat." As opposed to sending them into combat in the first place based on lies, wishful thinking, and political obsessions, of course.
Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else see something wrong with the logic of throwing soldiers into harm's way as cannon fodder and then attacking anyone who doesn't fall into line?
Cheney went on to use the very same rhetoric that has been proven wrong time and time again. It's like nothing has changed in all the months since we invaded Iraq.
- "In the global war on terror, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, President Bush has brought many allies to our side." He forgot to mention that most of the allies who supported us in Afghanistan refused to do so in Iraq, correctly seeing that one had nothing to do with the other and that invading Iraq was being pursued for all the wrong reasons.
- "As the President has made very clear, there is a difference between leading a coalition of many, and submitting to the objections of a few." Opposition to the Iraq war was not about the "objections of a few," it was about the objections of most of the world. With very few exceptions, while some governments may have joined the much-flogged Coalition of the Willing via foreign-aid bribes or threats of diplomatic retaliation, the civilian populations of these countries were fiercely opposed to the invasion.
- "George W. Bush will never seek a permission slip to defend the American people." Of course, the root of the opposition to attacking Iraq was that it had nothing to do with defending America; it was about picking a political fight with a country that most definitely was not a threat.
Cheney also repeated the standard GOP attack on Kerry for reconsidering his position upon realizing that his original viewpoint was wrong. Republicans call this flip-flopping. Others call it maturity and intelligence. (In a sign of the doublethink for which this Administration is justly notorious, Bush himself is thus guilty of flip-flopping in the first degree for having changed his mind quite a few times, only in his case it's called "being Presidential.")
In all, in terms of words used, Cheney spent fully twenty-five percent of his speech attacking Kerry (that's 671 words out of a total of 2,658) while barely mentioning the real issues facing America. Our economic problems merited 92 words. Health care gathered only 50 words. And Iraq, the great obsession of the Bush Administration, warranted a grand total of 34 words.
With 976 American soldiers killed in Iraq so far, that's almost 29 dead per word.
One would think they would rate more in an Administration which claims to love them so much.
Still, the convention's grand finale is coming up tonight. President Bush's speech has been publicized in advance as laying out his second-term agenda. Given the fact that he has yet to present a first-term agenda apart from a principle of endless war against anyone who looks at us sideways, I'll believe it when I see it.
No comments:
Post a Comment