General Betray Us - Move-On Ad

I guess since the right-wing Kulturkampf has been calling anybody who disagrees with them traitors as well as every other name in the book since before this war started, the move-on ad didn’t even strike me as being all that unusual. I took it to mean that the general’s testimony was not going to be entirely straightforward because he had been put in an impossible situation.

What I was thinking about was the army’s new counterinsurgency manual. As I have said countless times, it calls for as many troops to occupy Baghdad as are in the entire country. And General Petraeus was in charge of writing it.

The so-called religious right has joined forces in an Unholy Alliance with an extremist-leaning sort in the mold of a backwoods militia, not exactly your Sunday school crowd, and they just stand mute while the likes of Ann Coulter say that all liberals are “godless.” They can question your faith but you can’t question a general?

It is unpatriotic to question the president, the premise of this war or its execution? Bush has unequivocally stated that we will still be at war in Iraq when his presidency is over. Karl Rove has no regrets, Cheney would do it all over again and Bush is looking forward to raking in the dough making speeches and not one of them has the decency to acknowledge the lives that will be lost.

The right-wingers are livid if you should mention the strain on the military, lagging enlistments, a draft. It is unpatriotic to question why more of them are not willing to fight this war they started? The surge is purportedly tamping down violence in Baghdad, but it is treasonous to question why the commander-in-chief did not take any steps to prolong the surge, if necessary?

Nobody wants this war to have been “in vain.” But, if you are going to start a war you had better make damn sure you know what you are doing and you had better make damn sure, every step of the way, that the troops are getting the support they need, for real. Refusing to acknowledge the real cost of this war and refusing to address obvious problems reeks of politics, not patriotism.