MoveOn.org, an organization with liberal inclinations, ran a full page ad in the New York Times this morning, titled "General Petraeus or General Betray Us." For those who managed to sleep through the news somehow, General Petraeus is on Capitol Hill this morning testifying before Congress about the state of affairs in Iraq.
I'm not going to defend the ad - regardless of what one thinks about the war or about Petraeus himself, he remains a dedicated career soldier who has given his entire adult life to the service of this country. I disagree strongly with his views, but he has earned my respect. He has done nothing to betray this country, or the soldiers under his command. Insinuations to the contrary are abhorrent.
What I do not need to hear, however, are remarks such as those posted today at Arizona 8th titled "On Questioning Patriotism". If there is a party in this nation who are the absolute experts on questioning the patriotism of their opponents, it is indisputably the conservative one with an elephant logo.
Those who have expressed concerns about the need to invade Iraq, or the need to have warrentless wiretapping, or the need for torture and rendition, or whatever else, have been regularly reviled as "unpatriotic". Such slander has been freely thrown about from members of the administration, Republicans within the House and Senate, conservative talking heads, conservative periodicals such as The New Republic, and conservative blogs.
So if you're going to get up in arms about having someone's patriotism questioned, fine - but start at the fucking start. Where were your shrieks of outrage in 2002-2004? You don't get to cherry-pick. I'm perfectly happy to castigate MoveOn, but conservatives as a whole have a whole lot of catch-up work to do before they get to cry about this one and have it be taken seriously.
So just stop talking. Seriously. The outrage of Republicans over this ad is both making me sick and setting me off on gales of derisive laughter such that it makes it hard for me to finish the nasty email I am composing to MoveOn.
Come back and open your mouths on the subject when you have a leg to stand on.
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2 comments:
A patriot is a person who "loves and loyally supports his country." After the long thread at Arizona Eighth, I realized that what upsets me the most about these discussions is that Bush/Cheny and the right wing gasbags in the media have so effectively distorted the distinction between what is your country and what is your government. There is currently a government in power that I did not vote for and that I do not support. The Bush Regime is not my country. My country is the land, the people who live here, and the democratic principles upon which the nation was founded. My country is not George Bush and his failed foreign policy.
We need to get back to a place where we understand this and stop calling each other names.
Of course, why would the right wing gasbags want to do that? What they really want to do is to keep people away from real news and real information. And they do it so well.
Liza,
You are correct of course. I believe somewhere in that same thread I used the term "knee-jerk" to describe the way many conservative talking heads reflexively use terms like "unpatriotic" or "traitor" to describe anyone who dares interrupt their bloviating with contrary views.
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