One reason the suppose that Old Media are returning to the partisan spreadsheets of yore are two stories that were barely, if at all, covered in the daily papers: Joe Lieberman’s support of the Iraq war (which went largely unreported) and Howard Dean’s statement: “[T]he idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong.” About Dean, there is nothing—nothing—remotely in American history that rivals a chairman of a major political party saying in wartime that we are not going to win the war. Democrats must really worry about the reproduction of that statement in its ugly context on Republican commercials starting soon. Dean’s statement was uncovered by The New York Times and other major establishment outlets, proof that they are working as partisans to hold down the damage to the Democratic party. Now if there were only a few more Republican papers like the Washington Times, the New York Sun, the New York Post (minus the girlie features of the last named).
Dean is more than a bomb-thrower; he expresses the views of a sizable segment of the Democratic party that wants us to lose the war in order to get even with George W. Bush. Think for a moment if this were said during the Korean War not to mention World War II. In the Korean War, Sen. Robert A. Taft questioned the legitimacy of the so-called “police action” which was the closest anyone ever came—and this was a mile away from the outburst by Dean. The Democrats can’t get rid of Dean without risking a rupture of its base. Still unreported in Chicago was the work of Rep. Rahm Emanuel who dissuaded House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi from taking a tally of the Democratic caucus on support of the war.
“[T]he idea that [the Cubs] are going to win the [2005 World Series] is an idea which is just plain wrong.”
ReplyDeleteWhy?
Because the contest is already over.
It doesn't matter what the Cubs do, they can never, ever win the 2005 World Series.
The same thing applies to our military involvement in Iraq.
In case Tom Roeser's readers missed Matthew Rothschild's commentary about Sen. Lieberman's endorsement of Bush policies, here's a link: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1208-26.htm.
ReplyDeleteDean and Lieberman are both wrong: there's no war to be won or lost. Wars declared on abstractions -- communism, drugs, terror -- cannot be "won" or "lost". Why aren't more Americans wondering how those types of "wars", wars without identifiable enemies, can even be "declared"?
Bush could have asked congress to declare war on specific identifiable terrorist groups.