Thaddeus Gadfly

Rush Limbaugh recently spoke: “The left is the enemy of freedom and liberty in this country and they don’t need to be worked with.”

Rush said this in response to something McCain said, the message of which was essentially that if he is elected president, he does not see Democrats as the enemy and that he will work with them.

First off, I’m not voting for McCain, but I will say this about McCain, he is, by far, a better man than Rush Limbaugh. Rush, and others like him (such as Mike Savage), are hatemongers. Hatemongers live in a strange world with an “us against them” mentality, a seige mentality, and such mentalities  spring from the same well that other hate groups spring from. Rush and his ilk spends his days and nights promulgating only one idea, the left is bad, and all of our world’s ills come from leftist idealogy.

Let me ask Rush this question: Do you, Mr. Limbaugh, support anarchy?

Yes or no? If you answer “yes”, it would be safe to label you as a nutjob. If you answer “no”, if I were to use the same bizarre logic you apply to the left, you are “against freedom and democracy”.

How many Republicans voted against the minimum wage? Why? This is seen as an affront on the “liberty” of business to pay what they see fit to pay. This is but one small example in a litany of examples I could think of.

Yes, Mr. Limbaugh, sometimes, in the interest of social justice and common decency, lefties like myself support an idea which infringes on the freedom of one group, it’s called “regulation”. Republicans hate regulation. Let big Pharma gouge the public, let the oil companies gouge the public, let corporations pollute our rivers, air, and oceans and destroy natural habitats, all in the name of “freedom”, right?

Total freedom is anarchy. Total absense of freedom is slavery. The most ethical place to be is in the center, moderated freedom to correct the natural deficiencies in the system and human chararacter, and the center is where you will NEVER find a Republican, but you will OFTEN find a Democrat.

I do not hate Republicans, and my attitude towards them is the same as McCains healthy attitude towards Democrats. I only hate HATE, which is the only thing on earth worthy of that attitude.

Rush, you might think you are hot stuff because you have a national forum, but lesser men than you have a national forum, and it doesn’t mean much, it just means there are a lot of people who are like minded. Numbers don’t prove a thing, Hitler had a large following, as well (no, I did not compare you to Hitler).

Fortunately for Democracy, the people close to the center are often the key voters who determine who wins the elections. But, on the other hand, sometimes they can be hoodwinked. That being said, Democracy will never elect someone like Mike Savage, or Rush Limbaugh, both of whom appeal to the extreme right in the country. Yes, there are whackos on the left, just as there are buffoons on the right. You won’t find them in the center, and, as Jimmy Carter once spoke, “There are no road apples in the center of the road”.

McCain does not deserve to be president just because he has had military experience, or was a war hero. Wisdom & Judgement is a quality of greater importance than experience.

One might argue that experience garners wisdom, and it should, but not always. What is clear to me is that, in McCain, we have a man who has had direct experience with one of the collosal blunders of all time regarding US Foreign policy (outside of Iraq) and that was Vietnam. If anyone should understand and have learned from our history clearly it would be him.

But no, McCain wants us there “until we are victorious”, whatever that means.

He tells us that the surge is “working”. Or is it? Violence is down, that is evident. But simple math could have predicted that if you greatly increase our presence, violence would diminish, and, apparently it has. But one could easily assert, and I think quite correctly, that if we leave ten years from now, violence will return to previous levels, or if we leave tommorrow, violence will return to previous levels. If that is the probable outcome, why not leave sooner than later?

Therein lies the debate. The argument rises or falls on that one premise. And the premise is an assumption, i.e, the assumption that if we hang around long enough, spend a trillion bucks, go further and further into debt, Iraq will get its act together.

McCain, et al. , argue that all hell will break loose if we leave, and that if we stay long enough, Iraq will get it’s political act together. Well, they said that five years ago, they said it four years ago, they said it three years ago, and so on, and they keep telling us this, but what is becoming evident is that they, McCain, Bush, and all of the neocons, don’t have a clue.

Just as they didn’t have a clue when they got us into this grandiose and tragic quagmire in the first place.

Another point McCain raises is that we need to stay and leave when the time is right in order to protect our “honor”.

Excuse me? What honor? We zero’ed out that account with the rest of the world quite a few years. So, we are going to kill more Americans because McCain wants to cling to some vague notion of honor?

“We need to go there so they won’t come here”. He, Bush, and their ilk, say.

But, they don’t get it, they are here because we are there. We are the intruders.

If someone is intruding in your house, and you want them to leave, on what moral ground do they stand if they claim that they must stay otherwise you will “win”. What kind of bizarre and twisted logic is that?

How can anyone trust the judgement of these people?

The war is ruining our country on many levels, diverting resources that could be used at home, and it is costing lives, Americans and allies who are being needlessly killed; it is destroying the very fabric of this nation, putting it to decline. All imperialistic empires that did not cease being imperialistic vanished, and that is the path we are on, the path of “nation building”, which is euphemism for imperialism.

Obama is the only candidate who has been pure on the war. He was against it when very few politicians had the courgage to speak against it. The others candidates that did, Kucinich and Paul, they didn’t have a chance to get elected.

I don’t care what his pastor says or thinks, Obama is a great man, an eloquent man, and I will trust him and his reasons for not abandoning his pastor . After years of a President who could barely utter a compound sentence, let alone a simple sentence without uttering guffaws by the truckloads, a little eloquence would be just what the proverbial doctor ordered.

He is the right man in this juncture in history.

I predict Obama will be our next president.

But God help him, because America’s fiscal crisis seems to be getting progressively worse, and its ensuing nightmares are going to be one of the greatest challenges of this century.

A vote for McCain is a vote for a bankrupt foreign policy.

It’s not a war. It’s a police action.

Terrorists are not soldiers, they are thugs, criminals. The oft-touted right wing premise that leaving Iraq is equal to “losing the war” is false. If it were a war, it would be true, but it is not a war.

Wars can be one or lost, but we can only put a dent in crime. This must be understood, because if it is not understood, we are being asked to remain in a country without a foreseeable time in the future we can leave, and people are dying.

Terrorism is crime, it is not soldiers trying to achieve some cause. Thwarting terrorism is police activity, not war activity. To say the “war can be won” is not the truth. Sure, it’s a nice sound bite, and dare anyone suggest that a war cannot be one. A war can be one, but only if it is a bona fide war.

Therefore, justifying remaining in Iraq on the basis that to do otherwise is to “lose the war”, is, in fact, causing people to die in vain based on a false premise. Putting an total end to crime is not possible, it isn’t possible anywhere on the earth, though limiting it is possible, of course, and this must be done.

The whole point is that (most) Republicans are not being honest, and not just Republicans, but anyone, such as Leiberman, and anyone else suggesting that what is going on in Iraq is a “war”. That war ended with the fall of Hussein. After that, it was a police action, and it continues to be police action.

The truth is, to leave just means that it is being recognized that police forces should be taking over the police actions necessary to thwart terrorism in the region, and that it is no longer the job of the US military. To equate this with “losing the war”, is hyperbole to sway your opinion in a dishonest fashion.

Thaddeus

Giuliani has warned us of a “new 9/11″ if America elects a Democrat President.

Perhaps with such a short memory Giuliani should do the right thing and get out of the race, since I recall, even as bad as my memory is, the last 9/11, the one and only 9/11 of the magnitude of 9/11, happened under a Republican president, in a city with a Republican Mayor.

This is just more scare tactics, among the litany of scare-the-hell-out-of-US-citizens tactics which has been the mainstay of the neoconservative movement for the last six years.

But, while we are being partisan using twisted logic, Democrats can play that game, too. How about this logic: let’s have a president with a name such as Barak Hussein Obama, because such a name would be more Arab friendly than a McCain, or Giuliani, i.e., if they like our new president a lot more than they like Bush, it is not unrealistic to assert that they might want to hurt us less, right?

Actually, the truth is that both ideas are silly. The truth is that, because as long as our “enemy” sees us as the intruder on their land, it won’t matter who is president.

It doesn’t matter what the Saudi Royalty, or other Arab leaders think, all that matters is what their citizens think, the majority of Arabs. And, I think it is fair to say that they see us as intruders in their land.

Republicans love to stigmatize an otherwise meritworthy idea of total withdrawal as “cut and run”. But the idea that a complete withdrawal is tantamount to a “cut and run” is based on an assumed premise. If our presence was legitimate, then “cut and run” might be a fair characterization, but is it?

What it is, is an assumption, a grandiose, arrogant, assumption, an assumption which is needlessly killing Americans, innocent Iraqis, and our Allies.

So the right wing has found a concept which they believe is bullet proof; a cute little sound-bite called “cut and run”, because, of course, how could any intelligent person worth his self-esteem advocate ‘cut and run’ as a viable policy in the middle east? It’s a slam dunk idea, right?

Not so fast.

It all depends on the point of view.

Allow me to ask the question this way:

An intruder forces himself into your home, would it be more moral if that intruder continued to intrude than if he cut and ran?

I bet that the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East view us as the intruder.

To say that cutting and running would appease the enemy might satisfy the ‘let’s-kill-the-bums” mentality of those who can only see trees, but when you look at the forest, the idea just might be based on a false premise, i.e., an assumed premise, which when scrutinized, is demonstrably false.

If we are in an territory against the wishes of the majority of its population, we are the intruder. Despite the fact that kings and leaders of a few of those regions might approve of our presence, keeping in mind that they don’t have to answer to their population, nor does a dictator, it’s the overall desire of given country’s population, which, for me, is the correct criterion on which to base this sentiment. The moral thing to do is to cease being the intruder in those regions that see us as such.

That is the first thing we should do, because until we do, we haven’t a moral leg to stand on regarding policy in those regions.

The entirety of the neocon foreign policy flows from an assumed premise, a false premise, and they want you to believe that a “new 9/11″ is more likely with a Democrat as president, as if it would really make a difference.

What we really need is a President who has the courage to get America’s butt completely out of the region, corporations, military, everything–let’s get the hell out, period.

Then let us see what their justification for hating us is, because, in my view, our presence is the ultimate source of their hatred. All this stuff about their so-called “kill the infidels” attitude never was a motivation for terrorism against us (on the scale that we are now seeing it) until after we intruded in their territory, so such rhetoric is just rhetoric born out of hate which was ultimately caused by our acts, policies, etc., in the region, and Republicans are using it to further their false argument that “no matter what we do, they will hate us anyway, so lets bomb them”, etc., and it doesn’t work.

With regard to middle east terrorism, fighting fire with fire begets more and more fire. If that isn’t obvious, open your eyes wider.

Of course, it would be foolish of me to suggest that “fighting fire with water” as a philosophical approach, is appropriate for all types of terrorism, but, here, I’m referring to the terrorism arising out the middle east.

Republicans are fond of saying, “we need to fight them there so they won’t be fighting us here”. That’s bass-ackwards; they are here because we are there.

The foreign policy regarding the middle east of fighting fire with fire is a flawed foreign policy, and what we should do is fight fire with water, i.e., water being the moral high ground; we shouldn’t be torturing prisoners or holding prisoners in secret prisons without some level of due process, invading sovereign nations as a “preemptive strike”, or meddling in the affairs of nations whose populations do not want us there.

Unfortunately, I fear that Bush has completely destroyed whatever water we had left, except, perhaps, the one last whirlpool of H₂0 he cannot destroy: the current movement for impeachment.