False Outrage

As regular readers have pretty likely sussed out, I have few regular readers. So this space is generally a place for me to vent about anything that's bugging me, and today it's trumped up, fake outrage.

In particular, the big news story yesterday and today is about the latest Republican expression of outrage that one Democratic Party group or another has put out a television ad that shows flag draped coffins returning from Iraq.

The talking point is that it's unconscionable, disgusting, and that the speaker has never seen something so distasteful in their entire political career.

Several people have pointed out that the Bush Administration, during the 2004 election season, ran several ads showing the World Trade Center attack and in at least one case, showed coffins of those who died on that day.

The standard answer is that it's worlds different to remind the world how important it is to be vigilant and what our enemies would like to do to us again, vs politicizing the deaths of our brave service men and women who are over there fighting on our behalf.

But guess what: In both cases, it's about telling the world what the party thinks they want to hear.

The Bush campaign politicized 9/11 (and continues to do so), deficit-spending political capital in order to start wars of aggression in countries that had nothing to do with 9/11 and were no real threat to our safety and security. They believed that people would respond to a message of fear, the old "Don't change horses in mid stream" argument, and they ran with it.

The Democratic Party now believes that the majority of Americans want the Iraq war over, and are coming to believe that that war was unjustified, unnecessary, and have resulted in the deaths and permanent maiming of countless young American lives for at best no purpose, at worst (and most cynical) the purpose of driving up profits for the uber rich of the President's base.

And so they do not see showing the coffins as capitalizing on the deaths of the soldiers, they see it as reminding people of what five and a half years (and counting) of Bush Presidency and Republican rule has brought us.

The fundamental argument of the Republicans is that to bring home the troops dishonors those who have died, and to suggest that the troops come home is not to support them.

Well, if my son or daughter was over there fighting, and I felt the way I feel about this war, knew what I know about this war, I'd think the very pinnacle of support you could give my child and all of his fellow soldiers would be to get them out of harms way as soon as humanly possible.

Our troops are, by and large, great people. Brave, honorable people who just want to protect our country. To have this most noble of our country's resources squandered is what's disgusting. To talk of supporting them by letting them STOP risking their lives on a fools mission, that's true support.

And besides, I think it's time that the American public were reminded that, contrary to what Press Secretary Tony Snow says, 2500 dead soldiers is not "just a number". We SHOULD be seeing the coffins come home. We SHOULD be seeing the images of the horror of war in Iraq. If the nobility of purpose of the war will not survive public scrutiny, then we shouldn't be there in the first place.

Liam.