In the eye of the beholder
Luck has been with President George W. Bush over the past several days. His chief political thug, Karl Rove, has escaped prosecution for the role he likely played in leaking the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame to a conservative newspaper columnist; an even more loathsome thug, terrorist Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, was killed by an American air strike in Iraq; the dazed and disorganized US-sponsored Iraqi government has finally formed a cabinet; and Bush himself captured international headlines with his dramatic surprise visit to the secure Green Zone that sits in the midst of the violent anarchy that is plaguing Baghdad.
While we believe that, on balance, special prosecutors have done more harm than good, we’ll risk the charge of intellectual inconsistency to say we’re disappointed that Rove evaded the reaper of justice. Still, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s principal butt boy, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, has been indicted, and half a loaf of bad guys is better than none. We look forward to the prospect, which appears to be growing by the day, that Cheney himself will be called to testify in this sordid affair.
We are sad to say that, as welcome as Zarqawi’s death is, we don’t hold out any hope that it is going to make much — if any — difference to the safety or well-being of the American men and women fighting in our name in Bush’s criminally conceived and poorly prosecuted war.
Still, the Republican-controlled Congress, clutching at the straws it has at hand, is trying to turn this week’s debate on the Iraq war into another vote on terrorism. They hope that Zarqawi’s death, the formation of an Iraqi government, and Bush’s visit will change public perceptions about the war. And maybe it will — for a few days, a week, maybe even a few weeks. But the nation has been there and done that. As the steady return of American bodies continues, and as the horrific death toll among Iraqi civilians continues to climb, not even an American public once gullible enough to believe Bush and his cronies will change its mind that it was misled into supporting the gross mistake the world knows as the Iraq war. Senator John Kerry, who initially supported the war, has introduced a clear-cut resolution calling for troops to be out of Iraq by the end of this year. Already the GOP attack machine is trying to tar Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, with the same brush it used to smear Democratic congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania, another Vietnam vet who earlier called for an end to Bush’s Iraq adventure. Men like Kerry and Murtha, say the Republicans, are soft on terror, unlike tough guys Bush and Cheney, who avoided Vietnam service. At this moment, the question on many minds is this: when will Democratic senator Hillary Clinton of New York change her position and join the courageous members of her party willing to face down Bush?
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Op-Ed for theHill.com by the Future of Music Coalition's Jenny Toomey and Michael Bracey: http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/OpEd/061306_oped1.html
