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Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence |
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George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid. Yes, they do. They think they can take a man- gled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry - a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service - and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election. Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Ker- ry, I hope you will say to yourself, "They must think I'm stupid. Be- cause they surely do. They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team's real and deadly insults to the U.S. mil- itary over the past six years by hyp- TimesSeIect: Guest Colum- nist: Principles of Uncertainty Maira Kalman paints a colorful and eclectic portrait of a Paris vacation: nytimes.com/opinion. Join the Conversation Readers can send columnists their comments: nytimes.com/timesselect. |
ing and exaggerating Mr. Kerry's mangled gibe at the president. What could possibly be more inju- rious and insulting to the U.S. mil- itary than to send it into combat in Iraq without enough men - to launch an invasion of a foreign coun- try not by the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, but by the Rumsfeld Doctrine of just enough troops to lose? What could be a big- ger insult than that? What could possibly be more inju- rious- and insulting to our men and women in uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that road- side bombs in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious and in- sulting than Don Rumsfeld's re- sponse to criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army you've got - get over it. What could possibly be more inju- rious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than to send them |
off to war in Iraq without any coher- ent postwar plan for political recon- struction there, so that the U.S. mil- itary has had to assume not only se- curity responsibilities for all of Iraq but the political rebuilding as well? The Bush team has created a verita- ble library of military histories - from "Cobra II to "Fiasco to "State of Denial - all of which contain the We're not as stupid as Bush thinks. _________ same damning conclusion offered by the very soldiers and officers who fought this war: - This administration never had a plan for the morning af- ter, and we've been making it up - and paying the price - ever since. And what could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in Iraq than to send them off to war and then go out and fi- nance the very people they're fight- ing against with our gluttonous con- |
sumption of oil? Sure, George Bush told us we're addicted to oil, but he has not done one single significant thing - demanded higher mileage standards from Detroit, imposed a gasoline tax or even used the bully pulpit of the White House to drive conservation - to end that addiction. So we continue to finance the U.S. military with our tax dollars, while we finance Iran, Syria, Wahhabi mosques and Al Qaeda madrassas with our energy purchases. Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy ciga- rettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of gen- ius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of re- newal for the 21st century - to bring out the best in us. His "genius is tak- ing some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country. And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that he could sell just enough Bush |
cigarettes, even though people knew they caused cancer. Please, please, for our country's health, prove him wrong this time. Let Karl know that you're not stu- pid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an admin- istration that has - through sheer in- competence - brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable. Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly in- competence it has exhibited in Iraq - and then get away with it by hold- ing on to the House and the Senate it means our country has become a banana republic. It means our de- mocracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by profession- al political hacks that we can no long- er hold the ruling party to account. It means we're as stupid as Karl thinks we are. I, for one, don't think we're that stupid. Next Tuesday we'll see. |
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