Friday, February 08, 2008
The Reverse Backstab Technique
Well, after thinking on it, I guess I might as well comment on the message hidden (and by "hidden", I mean "written in 50-foot letters crafted from blinking flourescent pink neon") in Mitt Romney's concession speech:
Mitt Romney suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Thursday, saying if he continued it would "forestall the launch of a national campaign and be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win."
"In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. This is not an easy decision. I hate to lose," the former Massachusetts governor said.
"If this were only about me, I'd go on. But it's never been only about me. I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, in this time of war I feel I have to now stand aside for our party and for our country."
Now, I could be like Jon Stewart and offer a simple, pithy, "Fuck you." But really, I feel like digging deeper into this. Because Romney's just the start of it. You think the dolchstosslegende bullshit flew thick and furious from the mouths of pundits and Congresspersons before? Because 2008 is going to be a fucking knife fight, and I promise you, the GOP is going to be pulling every dirty trick it can out of the bag.
So, I'd just like to see why Mr. Romney thinks the Republican Party is so well-suited to fighting terror, and why we pansy liberals are just going to hand over the nation to the terrorists.
Well, let's see... after 9/11, Bush sent troops into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and bring democracy to the region. That may be the only decent choice he made in this whole War on Terror imbroglio. Let's see what else the administration and its enablers did...
Well, Bush and company invaded Iraq, a country with sweet FA to do with the 9/11 attacks, under constantly shifting auspices (democracy? WMDs? "This is the guy who tried to kill my dad"?). Once they invaded, any reasonable plans to keep things stable fell by the wayside, and the country quickly fell into chaos. And in that chaos, the people we were supposed to be going after in the first place snuck in and set up shop. Random acts of ethnic cleansing, rampant terrorism, and the deaths of over 3000 soldiers ensued. After the American people proclaimed they were sick of the war, Bush came up with the idea for the troop surge which, as you can see, is having resounding effects.
Extremists who were plotting terror attacks were caught, yes, but not through the grace of the Bush administration. Richard Reid was caught because he was stupid enough to try to light a shoe on fire on a busy flight. The cases that Bush trotted before the press involved a man who was later tried on charges completely unrelated to the great danger he was originally arrested for, a plot to blow up gas tanks that never would have worked, and a group of idiots who thought they needed offical Al-Qaeda uniforms. Oh, and the London bust, the reason why we can't take bottled water on flights anymore? Guess which party wanted to move as soon as possible, despite the fact that there was no imminent threat, likely leading to the bungling up of several cases against potential terrorists? And, lest we forget, there was that one case that no one ever solved, the one where people actually died, the one that Bush tries to paint over every time he says there hasn't been a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.
Then there are the wiretaps. Oh, yes, the wiretaps. So essential to protecting us from the dire threats to democracy posed by gay servicemen and Quakers. Then again, this serve violation of our civil liberties wasn't so important that anyone bothered to pay the goddamn bills.
And torture -- oh, torture. What do those human rights fags know about torture; they've never seen 24, have they? Our administration happily endorsed a practice used by all the great villains in history and has used it on people who may not even be guilty of any crime. Which, by the way, is a great way to create insurgents; if they didn't hate you before, they do now! It's gotten to the point where foreign courts have declared that we're not safe for refugees.
But, hey-- at least they've supported the people fighting this war on the ground, right? The soldiers? I mean, if you ignore the attempts to dick soldiers out of the GI Bill, the Bankruptcy Bill, the substandard body armor, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you need or want", the attempts to dick soldiers out of medical benefits, Walter Reed, and the homeless veterans, I'd say the administration has done a pretty bang-up job of caring for our troops.
And then there's the big one -- Osama bin Laden. We've got him locked away, right? And even if we don't, at least we know that Bush really cares about capturing him, right?
I won't stand this slander any longer. I won't hear the people who just stood by while Bush and his merry band of miscreants broke the military, bungled the fight against terrorism, and threw our values in the trash bin point the finger at us liberals and say that we'll betray our nation. Because quite frankly, I don't see how we can fuck things up worse than they already have.
Mitt Romney suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Thursday, saying if he continued it would "forestall the launch of a national campaign and be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win."
"In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. This is not an easy decision. I hate to lose," the former Massachusetts governor said.
"If this were only about me, I'd go on. But it's never been only about me. I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, in this time of war I feel I have to now stand aside for our party and for our country."
Now, I could be like Jon Stewart and offer a simple, pithy, "Fuck you." But really, I feel like digging deeper into this. Because Romney's just the start of it. You think the dolchstosslegende bullshit flew thick and furious from the mouths of pundits and Congresspersons before? Because 2008 is going to be a fucking knife fight, and I promise you, the GOP is going to be pulling every dirty trick it can out of the bag.
So, I'd just like to see why Mr. Romney thinks the Republican Party is so well-suited to fighting terror, and why we pansy liberals are just going to hand over the nation to the terrorists.
Well, let's see... after 9/11, Bush sent troops into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and bring democracy to the region. That may be the only decent choice he made in this whole War on Terror imbroglio. Let's see what else the administration and its enablers did...
Well, Bush and company invaded Iraq, a country with sweet FA to do with the 9/11 attacks, under constantly shifting auspices (democracy? WMDs? "This is the guy who tried to kill my dad"?). Once they invaded, any reasonable plans to keep things stable fell by the wayside, and the country quickly fell into chaos. And in that chaos, the people we were supposed to be going after in the first place snuck in and set up shop. Random acts of ethnic cleansing, rampant terrorism, and the deaths of over 3000 soldiers ensued. After the American people proclaimed they were sick of the war, Bush came up with the idea for the troop surge which, as you can see, is having resounding effects.
Extremists who were plotting terror attacks were caught, yes, but not through the grace of the Bush administration. Richard Reid was caught because he was stupid enough to try to light a shoe on fire on a busy flight. The cases that Bush trotted before the press involved a man who was later tried on charges completely unrelated to the great danger he was originally arrested for, a plot to blow up gas tanks that never would have worked, and a group of idiots who thought they needed offical Al-Qaeda uniforms. Oh, and the London bust, the reason why we can't take bottled water on flights anymore? Guess which party wanted to move as soon as possible, despite the fact that there was no imminent threat, likely leading to the bungling up of several cases against potential terrorists? And, lest we forget, there was that one case that no one ever solved, the one where people actually died, the one that Bush tries to paint over every time he says there hasn't been a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.
Then there are the wiretaps. Oh, yes, the wiretaps. So essential to protecting us from the dire threats to democracy posed by gay servicemen and Quakers. Then again, this serve violation of our civil liberties wasn't so important that anyone bothered to pay the goddamn bills.
And torture -- oh, torture. What do those human rights fags know about torture; they've never seen 24, have they? Our administration happily endorsed a practice used by all the great villains in history and has used it on people who may not even be guilty of any crime. Which, by the way, is a great way to create insurgents; if they didn't hate you before, they do now! It's gotten to the point where foreign courts have declared that we're not safe for refugees.
But, hey-- at least they've supported the people fighting this war on the ground, right? The soldiers? I mean, if you ignore the attempts to dick soldiers out of the GI Bill, the Bankruptcy Bill, the substandard body armor, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you need or want", the attempts to dick soldiers out of medical benefits, Walter Reed, and the homeless veterans, I'd say the administration has done a pretty bang-up job of caring for our troops.
And then there's the big one -- Osama bin Laden. We've got him locked away, right? And even if we don't, at least we know that Bush really cares about capturing him, right?
I won't stand this slander any longer. I won't hear the people who just stood by while Bush and his merry band of miscreants broke the military, bungled the fight against terrorism, and threw our values in the trash bin point the finger at us liberals and say that we'll betray our nation. Because quite frankly, I don't see how we can fuck things up worse than they already have.
