Carl Levin makes me nervous. He is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and is against the war (one of the few who voted against it back in 2002). He also believes he must continue to fund the war, so that he can “support the troops.” My main concern about Levin is that if I hear him say one more time that he must continue to fund a war he is against so he won’t undermine the troops, I’m pretty sure that my hair will spontaneously catch fire and my head will explode.
On the upside, without a functioning brain, I might be able to accept his logic, which would then open the door to believing all sorts of fantastical things. I could finally live in that happy place where occupation is freedom, torture is strength, and my only responsibilities are to watch TV, spend money, and make sure my Escalade is always idling.
Since I still have a more or less functional brain, I wonder what other missions Sen. Levin would continue to fund in order to show his support for the troops:
- Mission: Burn $100 bills and throw the ashes into the Grand Canyon until it is filled to the brim. Not sending soldiers $100 bills would surely undermine them and cause them to fail.
- Mission: Invade the marshlands of Florida with tanks and cluster bombs until they are subdued. We would certainly undercut the soldiers’ ability to vanquish marshlands if we stopped giving them tanks and cluster bombs.
- Mission: Attack the sun because it causes cancer and is a source of radiation that terrorists can use against us. It would be disrespectful to the soldiers we have already sent into the sun to not keep sending more until they succeed. If you disagree, you want the sun to win and America to lose.
Sure, we can argue whether these missions are analogous to the Iraq War, but that’s not really the point. All I’m saying is that supporting the troops demands that we not fund ill-conceived missions. And that Carl Levin is crazy if he thinks he is maintaining some kind of anti-war position.
Democrats had better get their act together. They aren't as loyal as Republicans are. It isn't going to take them six years to figure out that their leaders are unfit for power.
5 comments:
Don't tell me you are one of those Democrats who does not support Democracy in Iraq.
I was a Democrat once. This kind of Democrat:
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. - John F. Kennedy
Sadly, there are not many of those kind left and they are mostly Republicans. Well excepting Joe Lieberman, who is now an independent.
Iraqis overwhelmingly want us out of Iraq.
Hundreds of thousands of occupying foreign troops with have no deadline for withdrawal is a far cry from liberty.
So, the real question is, do *you* believe in democracy and liberty for Iraq?
If the sun could be tapped for oil and there was a profit to be made from it for the John F. Kennedy type Republicans; Rush Limbaugh and the Kennedy Republican controlled media along with the well excepting Independent Joe Lieberman and the board of directors of Blackwater, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Halliburton, DynCorp and their 50,000 plus sub-contractors would be there sucking the oil from the sun's core like the Rev. Jerry Falwell gluttonly sucking on a chocolate shake from McDonald's (who he was most likely a shareholder with). Simon says that John F. Kennedy said: Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. - John F. Kennedy
I believe it should read like this today;
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes to be against, not with us,
that they shall pay a price, bear the burden of any hardship for opposing us
or supporting any of our foe's, in order to assure the survival and the success
of fascist corruption, nepotism and liberty for the elite".
We should go back even further to President Roosevelt who said; We will not tolerate as a nation war profiteering.
I usually can't stand Salon's Cary Tennis' long-winded navel-gazing soliloquies, but he got my attention last week with this brilliant point:
...why is it beyond the pale to criticize soldiers but not beyond the pale to criticize professors? If we honored knowledge as highly as we honor killing, would it not be grounds for censure in the halls of Congress for a congressman to vilify a professor...?
What else can one conclude? We do not honor knowledge. We honor killing.
When's the last time you heard a sound byte of a member of Congress saying, "We must support our teachers!" with the same fervor that they claim to support "troops"?
Incidentally, I heard a linguist on NPR complain that the term itself, "troops" is de-humanizing. There's no such thing as a single "troop", therefore you distance yourself from the actual human being when you use it. He prefered the word "soldier," which makes more sense to me.
So the next time someone says "Support our troops!" to you like some mindless mantra, ask them, "And how do you feel about our soldiers?"
Most of the money being spent, when broken down, is going to contractors. "Support the contractors"!!
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