Tom Friedman: Insulting Our Troops

Tom Friedman, who it must be admitted (or rather pointed out) helped more than anyone to cheerlead the Cognoscenti into this war, makes a good case for walking into the voting booth stabbing the Administration in the eye with a fork, jilted cheerleader style.

"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."

Meanwhile, on yet another GOP Day of Gay - giving at least this Monday for Daily Show hilarity, there are no apparent effects from the Kerry nonsense. The Republican site realclearpolitics.com/latestpolls averages of current polls make it real clear- the Republicans are screwed, and the question is whether it's Armageddon or not, a phrase from the latest Cook Report, which boils it down to turnout from Independents bent on revenge. It's very possible the GoPpers will pick up no Democrat seats - an unheard of possibility, and it's at least 50-50 on the Senate.

But the Laird is utterly, utterly correct. I resort here to doggerel, because I love freedom.

TO THE PENS, TO THE DIGI-PENS,
TO THE PHONE LIST LONG AND TRUE
ACROSS FREEWAYS, OVER ROUGH FENS
TO THE PENCILS NUMBER 2,

TO THE CHURCHES AND THE FIREHOUSE
TO THE DOORKNOBS, AND MAILBOX BLUE
TO THE CHADS, PUNCHED CLEAN AND OUT,
FOR OUR COUNTRY, VOTE SHALL YOU.