James Lileks, who continues to cement himself as one of the best writer in the blogosphere has an excellent Bleat on Iraq that explores what was said by the media in 1998 (with Clinton’s Desert Fox attacks on Iraq) and in the aftermath of Saddam’s downfall. There’s a wealth of great bits in the piece, enough that I could nearly quote it verbatim just to get the highlights. But this particular section truly caught my eye:
Let us go back to that editorial from 1998.
"There is one sound conclusion to be drawn from the confluence of events in Washington and Iraq: The conduct of foreign policy is a weighty responsibility that at times requires the undivided attention of a whole, unencumbered president. It is a sad commentary that some voices in Washington are complaint that momentous world events have interrupted their sideshow. . . . Events in Iraq make it clear that there is a world out there which requires the attention of the US Government. It’s time to shift focus away from the neighborhood farce and back to the world stage."
This was a reference to the impeachment proceedings, of course. The editorialists were appalled that Congress was impeaching the president when the threat of Iraq loomed so large. Now the threat has been dispatched – and does this count for anything? No. The terrorist training campes are closed down, the torture barracks padlocked, the mass gravesare opened to the wailings of the families, the official hospitals of Baghdad no longer welcome cancerous terrorists, the Kurds no longer watch the skies for the helicopters and their bitter gusts, the citizens no longer wonder whether the government men will rip out the eyes of their infant children to produce the proper confession –
Irrelevant.
You know what really bothers some people?
That yellowcake story still looks shaky.
Let’s compare the attitude then to the attitude now. "There is one sound conclusion to be drawn from the confluence of events in Washington and Iraq: The conduct of foreign policy is a weighty responsibility that at times requires the undivided attention of a whole, unencumbered president. It is a sad commentary that some voices in Washington are complaint that momentous world events have interrupted their sideshow. . . . "
Compare that to Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, the other Ten Little Idiotarians and the rest of the rabid anti-Bush crowd. By their treatment of national affairs, one would think that George W. Bush was the power-mad dictator and Saddam Hussein was just some horrible victim of Evil Amerika(tm). It’s a testament to the blind partisanship of the left that in the middle of a global war on a bunch of fanatics who have no compunction about blowing up ER doctors and their children that the most important thing in their minds is putting themselves in power.
With the multi-billion dollar occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan going so horribly wrong, it’s now more important than ever for the GOP to use the American flag as a sledgehammer against dissent. The chorus of dissenting voices is growing larger by the day, and the ferocity with which the GOP swings that sledgehammer is also growing stronger. Every indication is that the rules the GOP would like us to play by just aren’t working anymore. We won’t simply submit ourselves to the will of a bellicose administration killing our sons and daughters needlessly.
By all means, however, keep calling the growing number of Americans who disagree with Bush’s foreign policies traitors. I’ll be very pleased to see the results next November.