Tall tales

Yesterday, echoing the ridiculous contentions made by the President just a few weeks before, Dick Cheney told a captive audience of Marines who'd just gotten back from Iraq that... uhhhhhh... well, basically... it's all Clinton's fault. Aren't we wise to this Tinker to Evers to Chance medicine show yet, this twisted rationale of Democratic Weakness = 9/11 Attacks = Iraqi Invasion? I think if we have to listen to this same disingenuous line of reasoning for three more years, I'll go stark raving mad.

President Clinton's stance against global terror is well documented, and he strove throughout his tenure to appoint qualified and knowledgeable people to address the task. His response to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was to hunt down, prosecute, and punish the individuals responsible. In fact, one of the other "weaknesses" cited by Mr. Cheney, retaliatory missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, was applauded by Republican idol Newt Gingrich as "the right thing to do."

It is true, however, that Mr. Clinton, despite his public stance and good intentions, didn't always get it right either, though I would still contend that his very lack of belligerence was a smarter long-term road to follow than the abrasive "course" of nation building. He apparently wasted four distinct opportunities to eliminate bin Laden, deciding instead that operational intelligence was uncertain, and that civilians might be killed in the proposed strikes. In other words, he decided to "err on the side of life." Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, said correctly to the 9/11 Commission,

"We certainly recognized the threat posed by the terrorist groups. (But) things looked very different before 9/11. We were mostly accused of overreacting, not underreacting."

That statement would seem to be borne out by several of the things said at the time by Conservative leaders about Mr. Clinton's intervention in Bosnia, a far more justifiable military response to an immediate crisis than was George's Baghdad Adventure:

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." --Governor George W. Bush

"You can support the troops but not the President." --Rep. Tom DeLay

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?" --Sean Hannity

"(The) President... is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home" --Sen. Rick Santorum

(research by Lyn Davis Lear, 08.15.05)

Yeah, guys. Sounds real macho to me.

The other thing that really annoys me about the Veep's stirring little message is the implication that this Administration is doing so much better by comparison, when evidence abounds that the polar opposite is true. Six months ago, the State Department concluded that there has been an appalling increase in global terrorism since Georgie took the reins, a fact which the Administration officially decided not to make public. And for a thorough (if admittedly left-leaning) comparison of the Clinton and Bush Administrations' attitudes and actions concerning global terrorism, check out this site which I stumbled on one afternoon. Some of the older links, sadly, no longer work, but the conclusions are crystal clear.

The most insidious aspect of the canned talking points regurgitated by Mr. Cheney is his blatant repetition of "THE BIG LIE" that Iraq and the war on terror have anything to do with one another. In spite of considerable evidence and public exposure that refutes this fairy tale, the Bush Administration is still allowed to spout its drivel unchallenged by the mainstream media. It's not enough to just report anymore, boys. If Americans proved anything during the last election, it is that they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the truth or they'll overlook it completely. And it's past time for our Fourth Estate to point out the factual errors routinely quoted by the Bushies on a much more regular, and vigorous, basis.

I guarantee you that if things were going well in Iraq we'd never hear Bill Clinton's name invoked at all. OK, maybe in conjunction with Katrina relief. But there surely wouldn't be this orchestrated message of "we inherited a real mess and none of this ever would've happened if our predecessor had been strong and Saddam and 9/11 and remember the Alamo" nonsense, which is intended solely to divert attention from, and avoid accountability for, one annoying little fact:

You guys f#%ked up big time! All by yourselves.

We're fighting a war of aggression in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, and things are only getting worse. It's time to let Messrs. Cheney and Bush know once and for all that we just don't buy the snake-oil they're peddlin' - and it's time to get serious about ending our involvement in Iraq, instead of spinning more tall tales of why we should stay.