[Rhodes22-list] Politics: Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence

[Rob Lowe]

Bill,
Thanks for the editorial from the Times.  I routinely laugh at some of the
stuff that the Bush administration says, and ask, "do they think we are
stupid?".  Well, yes, they do.  If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny.
And then to hear people sprout the administrations lies and deceptions.
It's a shame to see so many people just regurgitate the fallacies of the
administration without even thinking about what they are saying.  Critical
thinking is dying and challenging the administration is viewed as
unpatriotic or even treasonous.  I guess PT Barnum was right, you can fool
most of the people some of the time, or at least long enough to get
elected. - rob

And Bill, keep it coming.  I appreciate the tone and intelligence of your
posts and discussions.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Effros" <bill at effros.com>
To: "R22 List" <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 10:38 AM
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] Politics: Insulting Our Troops, and Our
Intelligence


> As long as Brad has got us all reading the New York Times, let's turn to
> today's Op-Ed page:
>
> Thomas Friedman has been a strong supporter of the Iraq war from the
> outset --
>
> Bill Effros
>
> Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence
> By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
>
>
> November 3, 2006
> Op-Ed Columnist
>
> George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. Yes, they
do.
>
> They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by
> John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike
> Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get
> you to vote against all Democrats in this election.
>
> Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I
> hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.” Because
> they surely do.
>
> They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team’s real
> and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by
> hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry’s mangled gibe at the president.
>
> What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the U.S. military
> than to send it into combat in Iraq without enough men — to launch an
> invasion of a foreign country not by the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming
> force, but by the Rumsfeld Doctrine of just enough troops to lose? What
> could be a bigger insult than that?
>
> What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women
> in uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so
> that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor
> and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs
> in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could
> be more injurious and insulting than Don Rumsfeld’s response to
> criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you
> go to war with the army you’ve got — get over it.
>
> What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women
> in uniform than to send them off to war in Iraq without any coherent
> postwar plan for political reconstruction there, so that the U.S.
> military has had to assume not only security responsibilities for all of
> Iraq but the political rebuilding as well? The Bush team has created a
> veritable library of military histories — from “Cobra II” to “Fiasco” to
> “State of Denial” — all of which contain the same damning conclusion
> offered by the very soldiers and officers who fought this war: This
> administration never had a plan for the morning after, and we’ve been
> making it up — and paying the price — ever since.
>
> And what could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and
> women in Iraq than to send them off to war and then go out and finance
> the very people they’re fighting against with our gluttonous consumption
> of oil? Sure, George Bush told us we’re addicted to oil, but he has not
> done one single significant thing — demanded higher mileage standards
> from Detroit, imposed a gasoline tax or even used the bully pulpit of
> the White House to drive conservation — to end that addiction. So we
> continue to finance the U.S. military with our tax dollars, while we
> finance Iran, Syria, Wahhabi mosques and Al Qaeda madrassas with our
> energy purchases.
>
> Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette
> companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause
> cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has
> designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal
> for the 21st century — to bring out the best in us. His “genius” is
> taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out
> the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has
> visited on this country.
>
> And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that
> he could sell just enough Bush cigarettes, even though people knew they
> caused cancer. Please, please, for our country’s health, prove him wrong
> this time.
>
> Let Karl know that you’re not stupid. Let him know that you know that
> the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an
> administration that has — through sheer incompetence — brought us to a
> point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.
>
> Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you
> know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of
> deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq — and then get away with it
> by holding on to the House and the Senate — it means our country has
> become a banana republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because
> it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by
> professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party
> to account.
>
> It means we’re as stupid as Karl thinks we are.
>
> I, for one, don’t think we’re that stupid. Next Tuesday we’ll see.
>
> Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
>
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