I can't make up my mind whether the right is living a reverse Groundhog Day or a reformulation of the "the boy who cried wolf" fairy tale. Let's start with the Bill Murray/Andi MacDowell semi-classic comedy about a weatherman who couldn't escape Punxsatowney, PA. Murray woke up every day to a rewind of yesterday in Punxsatowney until he stopped being a selfish, preening asshole, retooled his personality, and began to appreciate the town's little quirks.
In American right-wingers wake up every morning and find to their dismay that the country is still opposed to the war by a 2 to 1 margin. Nothing works. First, they believed with Dick Cheney that we would be greeted as liberators. Then that capturing Saddam would turn the tide. After that a constitution. Elections. By now the public was getting tired of optimism and turning against the war. But the right kept believing. There was also the initial success at Tel Afar, the killing of Zarqawi, President Bush announcing all his new plans for clearing, holding, and rebuilding in 2006. I feel like a Billy Joel song here.
And finally, it was Gen. Petraus and the surge.
Here's where the boy crying wolf comes in. The right-wing cried "gold" everytime the Bush administration announced a new "turning point." But everybody except Haliburton and Blackstone Security stopped listening to announcements from Bush.
Then, finally, something good happened. Sunni insurgents in Anbar province have switched sides and are now fighting with American soldiers against al-Qaida. It's definitely forward movement and there are even sharp little promotional nicknames for it like "Anbar Awakening." Perhaps there's the gold.
But Americans are waving their hands in disgust if they're responding at all. "Fool me five times/ I'm not listening anymore." And who can blame them? If they cared, people would ask why the good news in Anbar would be evidence of the surge being successful if the Sunni side switching didn't result from American military action. Wasn't the surge supposed to bring security to Baghdad? Violence has been increasing there again. The Shiite militias are still just as much a threat as before and the Iraqi government is just as incompetent. All the surge has done is move some pieces around on the board. Again! The right doesn't have answers to these questions. They just want to point to "Anbar Awakening" and should "gold" at the top of their lungs.
And that's why nobody is listening to them. The Iraq War is the same one step forward/two steps back that it's been since the capture of Saddam in 2003. The right just doesn't get it or doesn't want to get it and that's why they're waking up to the same reality of popular disgust with the war. And that's what the right will continue to get until they embrace the fact that the war's a disaster and stop being such preening assholes to boot.
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All of us should be grateful for the young men and women who are putting their lives at risk in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are serving in Bosnia and hundreds of other bases across the world. They are of all races and creeds. In Iraq and Afghanistan, their duty is hazardous and difficult. They deserve our thanks and respect. They certainly deserve better than their "Commander-in-Chief" has given them. They have served with courage and honor, but have been deeply misled by their leaders. Despite their bravery and unparalleled skill, they are stuck in a catastrophic occupation in Iraq. They are not alone in being decieved by the serpents who currently are in charge of the Executive and Judicial Branches of our national government in Washington DC. From its inception, the Bush Administration has been engaged in nothing but a series of protracted lies. Catchphrases such
as "compassionate conservative", "uniter, not a divider" and "no nation building" were just the beginning of a long list of outright falsehoods that have become the trademark of George W. Bush and his boss, Dick Cheney. To the list of falsehoods above we can also add "No Child Left Behind", "clear skies", a "tax cut for the middle and working classes", "Support the Troops" and the now infamous "weapons of mass destruction" which was supplanted by the also largely debunked notion that in Iraq to "liberate the people." Funny that we should seek to liberate a people that we helped Saddam Hussein enslave by putting him in power and arming him. Curious that we should risk our troops in an oil-rich country rather than say, Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands have also been slaughtered. Of course, the Downing Street Memos revealed last year the insidious lies and a plan to enlist then British Prime Minister Tony Blair in it. The simple truth is that our President has deceived the American people from Day One. When Bush speaks to his hand-picked crowd of zombies, you have to ask yourself, What are they thinking? Why don't they wake up? What will it take for them to realize that they are pawns on Bush's crooked chessboard? The blind loyalty shown by the leadership of the Republican party and Bush's hard core "Christian Soldiers" is frighteningly similar to the loyalty Adolph Hitler got from his storm troopers. (That's right, I just made a Nazi comparison. But unlike Senator Dick Durbin, I'm not going to apologize.) It is no wonder that the roar to consider Rep. Dennis Kucinich's proposal for impeachment hearings is growing, as recently expressed by Rep. Maxine Waters of California and others. To end where I began, let me say once more our soldiers are brave and deserve our praise but they are still very much at risk. Some still believe in Bush's stated cause. Many understand the situation is out of control. They follow their orders; they put their lives on the line. They deserve our deepest thanks for their heroism. To honor them, we must not fail to hold accountable those that misled them and us into this catastrophe. That's how we support the troops.
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