THE BRAINS OF A “CLARK” BAR

General “Dugout” Wesley Clark is an asshole.

Appearing on Fox and Friends this morning, Clark said the following:

“If George Bush had grasped the reins of government, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened.”

Clark, who’s press briefings during the war in Kosovo were legendary exercises in self-promotion and hubris, has finally come out and said in plain English what John Kerry has been only hinting at for 6 months: George Bush is to blame for 9/11.

Forget that the major plotters of 9/11 all came in and out this country during the Clinton Administration as if the nation’s borders were a revolving door.

Forget that the Clinton Administration failed to penetrate the plot and, in fact, made it impossible for the CIA and FBI to share information thus insuring the success of the strike.

Forget that the Clinton Administration had Osama Bin Laden in their sights on at least two occasions and failed to pull the trigger (not to mention refusing the offer from Sudan to have OBL turned over to the US in chains).

Forget that BOTH the 9/11 Commission AND the Senate Intelligence Committee report cleared the Bush Administration of just such a baseless, partisan, charge.

We have less than 48 hours before people start going to the polls and this…this…self-aggrandizing, self-important, lickspittle of a political HACK says something so outrageous, so untrue, so UNAMERICAN (didn’t Osama just say that less than 48 hours ago?) that it makes one wonder how this worthless piece of human waste got to be an important cog in the Kerry campaign.

After all…didn’t Michael Moore endorse him for President?

WHY SO CLOSE?

Ron Brownstein of the LA Times, while being pretty much of a Kerry partisan, has a thoughtful article in Sunday’s Times about the polarization of the country.

He attributes the rabid partisanship to the way George Bush has governed:

“With his repeated tax cuts, his support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and the war in Iraq, Bush has consistently pursued goals that generate strong support among Republicans and conservatives, but at the price of provoking antipathy among Democrats and liberals.”

While giving Bush his just due for his leadership following 9/11, Brownstein takes Bush to task for his political strategy:

“In his political strategy, he has sought more to deepen his support among groups that lean in his direction than to broaden his appeal among groups that have resisted him.”

This may be true…but why? Brownstein makes a stab at it:

“The war in Iraq blew away the last fragments of post-9/11 unity. Indeed, in its political effect, the war has functioned like a social issue such as abortion. It has divided the country most profoundly along cultural, not economic, lines — thus reinforcing and even intensifying the divisions evident in 2000.”

That’s only part of it.

The reason this country is divided happened BEFORE the war in Iraq even started. In fact, the Iraq conflict is a SYMPTOM of what’s really eating at Democrats:

GEORGE BUSH IS NOT THE LEGITIMATELY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Although 9/11 temporarily lessened the anger Democrat’s felt over the 2000 election, their actions and rhetoric leading up to 9/11 and prior to the 2002 election proves that whatever unity was demonstrated following the attacks it was but a temporary respite from the most virulent and personal assaults on a sitting President in living memory. (BTW, did the far left EVER recognize the President as legitimate?)

The “instant” myth making of the MSM that somehow, before the Iraq war, we were a united country is belied by the facts. This from “Common Dreams,” a liberal magazine, in 2002:

“The Harken-Halliburton attack on Iraq is Stage Two of the coup d’etat that began with the installation of an unelected president. It could be completed November 5 with the final capture of the House and Senate.”

This is BEFORE the invasion and subsequent problems of reconstruction. At the time, Americans were behind the invasion by a 2-1 margin.

What’s a President to do when there IS no loyal opposition?

Lincoln faced a very similar problem in 1864. With the Democrats at that time opposed to his war policies as well as his proposed reconstruction policies, Lincoln was forced by circumstance to rely on the Republican “bitter enders” who helped him drive the war to its successful, bloody conclusion. Bush, faced with a situation where 40% of the electorate thinks him illegitimate, must rely on HIS conservative base to win a second term.

Pray God whoever wins gets some kind of mandate to govern.


WHY WE FIGHT (PART IV)

Why is it that the Bush-Cheney team has to rely so much on others to make the best case for the war in Iraq?

John McCain’s speech at the Republican Convention was a strong, straightforward, point by point annunciation of the Administrtaion’s rationale for going to war:

“The years of keeping Saddam in a box were coming to a close. The international consensus that he be kept isolated and unarmed had eroded to the point that many critics of military action had decided the time had come again to do business with Saddam, despite his near daily attacks on our pilots, and his refusal, until his last day in power, to allow the unrestricted inspection of his arsenal.”

“Our choice wasn’t between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not our critics abroad. Not our political opponents.”

And Norman Podhoretz’s outstanding piece in “Commentary Magazine” puts the Iraq War in the context of the GWOT…and in the context of historical forces at work in Iraq and the middle east:

“For today, no less than in those titanic conflicts, we are up against a truly malignant force in radical Islamism and in the states breeding, sheltering, or financing its terrorist armory. This new enemy has already attacked us on our own soil—a feat neither Nazi Germany nor Soviet Russia ever managed to pull off—and openly announces his intention to hit us again, only this time with weapons of infinitely greater and deadlier power than those used on 9/11. His objective is not merely to murder as many of us as possible and to conquer our land. Like the Nazis and Communists before him, he is dedicated to the destruction of everything good for which America stands. It is this, then, that (to paraphrase George W. Bush and a long string of his predecessors, Republican and Democratic alike) we in our turn, no less than the “greatest generation” of the 1940’s and its spiritual progeny of the 1950’s and after, have a responsibility to uphold and are privileged to defend.”

And now, Bill at INDC has made another sterling case for fighting in Iraq and linking it to the broader GWOT. He does so in the context of the re-election campaign, making the point that this inability of the Bush Administration to communicate the underlying strategic rationale for the war is not only hampering its re-election efforts, but putting the US in grave danger”

“In this sense, the difficulty of the task renders me far more forgiving than the author regarding the Bush Administration’s failure to adequately communicate rationale and setbacks during the war. I’d rather have flawed leadership that takes action and unfortunately risks flagging political will than an Administration that does the opposite. But make no mistake – if we return to a never-never-land that embraces diplomatic processes that have been exposed time and time again as failures, through a corrupt multilateral organization that’s merits are not adequately adjusted for the self-interest of its member states, we greatly increase the chances of decline and ultimate catastrophe for the United States, within a generation.”

Bill links to an article in “Esquire” by Walter Russell Meade, whose book “Power, Terror, Peace and War: America’s Grand Strategy in a World at Risk” was the best birthday present I received this year. Mr. Meade examines the Bush Administration’s efforts in Iraq and compares their efforts to Lincoln (note: see my post above for more Lincoln comparisons).

“Lincoln made a lot of mistakes in that war. There were times when things looked very bleak for the United States. International public opinion was on the side of the South. Enormous scandals rocked the government, analysts and pundits blasted Lincoln’s administration, and even his allies sometimes despaired.
But Lincoln knew that he had to hold on, to fight the war through thick and thin, to engage the enemy and grind him down with the North’s superior numbers and wealth. In Grant he found the general who could fight this kind of warfare: ugly, costly, and at times ruinously unpopular.”

Read Bill’s entire post.