TPMtv has a clip from Sunday's GOP debate, in which Ron Paul makes the point that the same people who are warning of genocide if we end the occupation of Iraq are the same people who warned of massive loss of life if we failed to invade in the first place.
Josh Marshall calls it the best line of the debate. It might have been. I didn't see the debate, so I am willing to take Josh's word for it.
What really caught my ear in the clip, though, was Mitt Romney's interjection.
- Has he forgot about 9/11?
Why did we invade Iraq? 9/11.
Why are we torturing people? 9/11.
Why does the Bush administration need to eavesdrop without getting a warrant first? 9/11.
Why must the occupation of Iraq continue indefinitely? Why, the answer is as obvious as the nose on your face. 9/11.
The fact that six years after the attacks, 9/11 is still being invoked to justify the excesses and blunders of George W. Bush proves just how intellectually and morally bankrupt the administration and its allies really are. The fact that, with the exception of Ron Paul, each of the contenders for the GOP nomination would give the exact same response to the question Why are we in Iraq? proves how indefensible it is that we are into the fifth year of an occupation that should never have happened in the first place.
And the fact that an empty suit like Mitt Romney is a top contender for the GOP presidential nomination proves how absolutely irrelevant the Republican Party has become with regard to America's national security strategy.
The real tragedy, however, is that as bereft of ideas as the Republicans are, congressional Democrats are still afraid stand up to them and to 28-percent Bush on matters of national security. As incompetently as he has managed America's international affairs, the Democrats remain unwilling to offer anything but the most token resistance to Bush's overreaching, such as the abominable surveillance bill they sent to him last week. How weak and inept do the Republicans have to be before the Democrats are willing to take them on? Apparently, weaker than they are right now, because the Dems continue to cave in to them at every opportunity.
As a matter of fact, maybe Slick Dancin' isn't as empty-headed as I think he is. After all, if it ain't broke don't fix it. The Democrats still flinch every time George W. Bush says "9/11." Why should the Men Who Would Be Bush tinker with such a winning formula?
1 comments:
You won't find resistance from the Democratic party because they are as much a part of the problem as the Republican party.
The last thing the Dems want to do is dismantle the power that Bush has amassed in the Executive. They're practically drooling over it with anticipation.
All they want to do is put up a candidate that can show she has the balls to run the machine as well as the Republicans and the sense to use "softer" terms to describe it. It's still the same machine the Dems are after, though.
Hoping the party would disassemble the machine is like wishing Santa were real. There are individuals on both sides that act in good faith but any true reform will always be bent to the will of the party(ies) through "middle of the isle" compromises.
Ron Paul 2008! A man of the people not of the machine.
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