But Don’t You Dare Call Them Unpatriotic Anti-Troop
By Mitch Berg
Paul Schmelzer, at the Minnesoros Independent – the site that joked about John McCain’s teeth (although to be fair, they didn’t know he’d been tortured in Vietnam) writing on the new Al Franken ad.
He starts by quoting Franken – who, to give credit where it’s due, has spent a lot of time in Iraq entertaining the troops – in his latest spot (emphasis added by me):
“We’re building 810 schools, 4800 water and sewage projects and 1047 roads and bridges.” But there’s a kicker: We’re building them not in the land of I-35W and Winona’s Highway 43 bridge, but in Iraq.
The message could come off as harsh—running the risk of seeming anti-troop or, for that matter, anti-Iraqi (who, bombed to kingdom come by coalition troops, might rightfully expect a little rebuilding)
Uh, Paul?
Since about April of 2003, most of the “bombing to kingdom come” has been done by the insurgents.
You know – the “other” bad guys?
But the ads, which will run in the Twin Cities, Duluth, Rochester and Mankato, might not satisfy supporters of Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, who could read into it a less-than-immediate pullout of troops in Iraq.
To be fair, to win over the Nelson-Pallmeyer supporters, he’d have to claim that we’d murdered a million Iraqis.
Franken’s not depraved enough get most of Nelson-Pallmeyer’s supporters.
June 17th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Jonathan Chait has a piece in TNR, “irregular joe”, about Joe Lieberman’s support for the Iraq War and hawkish attitude towards Iraq. At the end he writes this revealing sentence (emphasis mine): Democrats started questioning the war because the war was going badlywhile Lieberman remained–to borrow a phrase–in a spider hole of denial.
They didn’t start questioning the war because no active WMD programs were found, or because they belatedly realized that Saddam was not responsible for 9/11, it was “because the war was going badly”. And they didn’t question the war’s conduct, its goals, strategies and tactics, they “started questioning the war” itself.
Up until about 1968 the Democrats knew that a war was not something you could just . . . stop when it didn’t work out the way you had hoped, not without losing it.
The Chait piece is here: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=8e5f757e-7c24-4ff1-81ff-0902b35ab3ef&p=2
He portrays Lieberman as a sort of cross between Judas Iscariot and General Jack T. Ripper from Doctor Strangelove
June 17th, 2008 at 8:05 am
A fine point, Mitch. Insurgents have wreaked havoc there, but they didn’t coin the term “shock and awe.”
June 17th, 2008 at 9:06 am
I can only suggest the last line of the movie Charlie Wilson’s War.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Insurgents have wreaked havoc there, but they didn’t coin the term “shock and awe.”
Not that fine a point, Paul. “Shock and Awe” attacked the military and government infrastructure, and largely avoided civil infrastructure.
There was no campaign to bomb bridges, schools and roads (unlike in 1991, of course, where certain strategic bridges were targeted), power plants, switchgear, railroads, or the other artifacts of post-stone-age life.
Blaming the coalition for Iraq’s “stone-age” life is a tad disingenuous or, at least, myopic.