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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
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Wednesday, December 11, 2002
11:01 - The argument is obsolete. How about moving on?
http://www.moveon.org/inspections/Inspections4.pdf

(top) link

The latest move from MoveOn.org is to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times, supported by 175,000 contributors to the website's fund. This ad takes the form of a letter to President Bush, pleading with him to open the White House windows and look outside and see the birds singing and the trees dancing and Iraq cooperating in good faith with the inspections-- not to just sit in the Oval Office polishing his guns and muttering about gettin' some oil for Daddy-- Daddy will be proud!


There's only one minor problem: we already know they're lying.

The ad takes the paternalistic approach, operating under the assumption that Bush Wants War, as a foregone conclusion, just for his own petty interests (or for oil, or the gun manufacturers, or whatever evil must-be-just-like-Vietnam special-interest they think this is about today-- anything, of course, except for Saddam). It gives the impression that the White House is full of those generals from Dr. Strangelove, covered from head to toe in chicken-guts, fidgeting in their chairs for the chance to blow sump'm up. It doesn't consider even for an instant, it seems, that the administration might just have some slight inkling about what's going on in Iraq-- that we don't.

When did it become common knowledge that crowds of students and aging hippies, gathering together and waving cookie-cutter signboards with tired and/or ludicrous slogans, become better authorities upon how to fight the war on terrorism than the people whose jobs it is to actually infiltrate the Middle East, find out what the score is, and develop long-term tactics and strategy based on a thousand different scenarios and contingencies?

The longer these guys persist in their axioms of "Bush is an illiterate gun-toting clear-cutting oil-drilling chimpanzee" and "Gore rightfully won the election", and the more the events of reality fall into place to debunk their claims and prove the administration to have a brain in its head after all-- and a very capable one at that-- the sillier they're going to look. About as silly as the ones who persist in ranting that capitalism and free markets don't work, that the US is a clear example of the world's worst economic system on its decadent way straight to hell. (Never mind taking a step back and noticing just how much better we have it here than in so much else of the world, and how hard our former communist foes are trying to become like us, and how much better countries like China and Russia are already doing because of it. Never mind existence proofs. The idea is the important thing.)

The only way this NYT ad could have been a more perfect illustration of this mentality is if it were published on the day the inspectors announced Iraq completely clear of weapons, followed within hours by a report from our coalition deep operatives showing exactly where the poison-tipped nuclear SCUDs are.

No, no. On the day after that.

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© Brian Tiemann