Friday, November 17, 2006

Today's visit from Mr. Dictionary Man

DEMENTIA de-men-tia (n) a deterioration of intellectual faculties, such as memory, concentration, and judgment, resulting from an organic disease or a disorder of the brain, often accompanied by emotional disturbance and personality changes; madness; insanity.

1) The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as "demeaning to women." (link)

2) According to the president, the lesson of Viet Nam was "We'll succeed unless we quit."

and

3) The Guardian reports that President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make `a last big push' to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration's internal deliberations.

A "last push" to "win?" Win what in this grotesque lost cause--and at what cost? This is the most base form of criminality at work here, sacrificing lives for nothing but a vainglorious attempt to subvert the already-written verdict of history.

I am reminded of two quotes concerning the horrific Civil War engagement at Cold Harbor:

Confederate Gen. Evander Law said, "it was not war; it was murder," and Union Capt. T.E. Barker said that he would "not take my regiment in another such charge if Jesus Christ himself should order it!"

Murder? Yes, and I don't see Jesus issuing any orders.

4 comments:

drmagoo said...

That statement by Bush is mind-boggling. If I have any time, I'll go into more detail, but that the thing we learned from Vietnam was that we didn't stay long enough? That's just scary.

Of course, maybe we would have won if he had served...

Anonymous said...

Obviously he's looking at Vietnam through the eyes of an 8 year old with a new set of toy soldiers. If you pull out you lose, if you all die you lose, so the only way to win is to stay and keep adding more toy soldiers.

What he needs to see is that you can't force opinions upon people with violence.

I can see his goal: freedom and stability for Iraq. What confuses me is how that goal can be accomplished by a foreign occupying force that the people hate. There's no freedom in occupation and the "stability" (which we can't quite achieve) is forced through lack of freedom which increases the hatred.

Rousing Rabble said...

It's interesting to me that noted ReThug apologist Victor Davis Hanson trumpets the same basic talking point in his op piece in today's Tribune:
In response to the idea of withdrawing/redeploying troops - "That way we could wash our hands of the SUPPOSED FIASCO in Iraq as Democrats once did when they cut off funds to Vietnam in 1974 and 1975...(or we can) stay on to train the Iraqi security forces to defend their own autonomy...something like what happened in Vietnam between 1971 and 1973...It would be hard to believe Democrats want to read someday, AS WE DO NOW OF VIETNAM, that we were close to stabilizing Iraq when the funding was cut off."

Apparently the right wing of the ReThugs is now turning its attention to revising the history of the Vietnam debacle as a way to keep us in Iraq. This is repugnant.

schmidlap said...

The "we're not fighting hard enough!" meme is enjoying a huge resurgence lately from the bedshitting chickenhawk squadron, from Chimpenführer all the way down to the apologists/mouthpieces like VDH.

None of whom have ever seen a day of military service.

It would be funny if they weren't in charge and actually getting so many people killed.