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Good article
Forgiving the Bush-Haters
Barry Farber
Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2004
America was a Christian country. And nobody got rattled when you said that. There was no backtalk. America was stomp-down, flat-out, plainly and simply a Christian country. Not OFFICIALLY, mind you; just actually.
And as a Jew growing up happy, unmolested, and well-protected in this Christian America I seized upon one figment of Christianity that really impressed me. It was the image of Jesus nailed to the cross lifting his eyes upward and saying, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do!”
envied that, like a baseball club owner might envy another team’s possession of a star pitcher. I wanted something like that for us Jews. I never found anything quite like it inside the Jewish religion, so I borrowed that line from Christianity. Spiritual shoplifting!
Folks still argue on the relative merits of religion versus psychiatry. Don’t bring that argument anywhere near me. That little bit of religion IS my psychiatry; even though it’s somebody else’s religion!
Did you ever see the old movies in which the innocent victim about to be punctured, drained and destroyed by Dracula whips out a simple cross and holds it up to his face – whereupon the evil vampire shrinks and moans and melts?
My own life-force would be sucked dry by all the political wrong-thinkers, wrong-sayers and wrong-doers of today if I couldn’t escape into myself and silently incant that little one-liner: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do!”
It’s cleansing. It’s soothing. That one phrase makes all those political vampires dissolve before me, leaving me unbothered, standing, and sometimes even smiling.
Adolf Hitler hated Jews more than he loved Germans. The proof? When the Soviet Red Army really started rolling westward after victory at Stalingrad, Hitler arranged the Nazi logistical priority – boxcars and trucks – NOT to take much-needed supplies eastward to German units at the front but rather to herd up their captive Jews and move them westward so they couldn’t be liberated by the advancing Russians.
Today it’s equally obvious to me that many enemies of President Bush hate Bush more than they love America. If Saddam Hussein were still holding onto a corner of Iraq today with a short-wave radio station broadcasting his propaganda worldwide, his rhetoric would often be a direct translation of what John Kerry and his supporters are saying.
Listen to the Bush-haters’ arguments.
“You see – there were NO weapons of mass destruction!”
That’s supposed to make President Bush look like a fool and a bully who invades and overthrows a shady-but-innocent bystander on unfounded su ion.
Let’s see. If police corner a suspect they want to question and the uncooperating suspect pulls a metal object abruptly out of his pocket, causing police bullets to fly, it will not help the multiply pierced suspect when the object turns out to have been merely a flashlight. Having what is obviously a flashlight in your hand when police call you over is another matter. That will not excuse a hail of police bullets. DRAWING a flashlight in a menacing manner while refusing to cooperate will.
And Saddam Hussein had a well-established history of “drawing” more than flashlights. He “drew” and used chemical weapons against Iran and his own Kurds. He attacked Iran and swallowed Kuwait. He shot at our planes in the No-Fly Zone he had agreed to respect. He had a (French-built) facility working on nuclear weapons at Osirak before Israeli planes turned it into a smoking crater in 1981. He was beyond bad.
Given Saddam’s history, whosoever did NOT conclude that his Iraq was bristling with WMD would be ignoring Saddam’s proven history of the appe e and ap ude to acquire them. Hate Bush all you please, but he was right to assume Saddam had WMD and wanted nothing more than to see them used someday, somehow, by somebody against America.
And we hear “There’s no connection between Saddam and al-Qaida!”
Prior to 9/11 that would have been a great argument. But President Bush did not nvade Iraq prior to 9/11. “No connection” doesn’t hack it POST 9/11.
A president who doesn’t consider the likelihood of an EVENTUAL collaboration between Osama bin Laden and the richest, best-armed, and by far most America-hating Islamic dictator is not fit to lead this nation. Saddam had much more reason (Desert Storm) to hate America than did bin Laden (who we helped in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union).
Then we hear “Iraq presented no threat to the United States.”
Iceland presented no threat to America in March 1941, but we occupied Iceland nonetheless to keep it out of the hands of the Nazis, and everybody thought it was a great idea. If Hitler had beat us to Iceland, his already catastrophic submarine success against us in the Atlantic would have escalated and he could have bombed America’s East Coast cities and industries with World War II aircraft.
Other malicious mantras that drive my eyes upward include “America is paying 90 percent of the cost of the war in treasure and lives.” (Strange that Sen. Kerry always seems to put “treasure” before “lives” in that complaint. Someone should whisper to him.)
I lived every day of World War II and never heard anybody say pea-turkey about the cost of the war or what percentage of that cost America was paying. Defending ourselves after being brutally attacked was the objective then, an objective I fail to find dissimilar to our legitimate objective of today.
So far no Democrats have actually stood up and cheered when American troops fall in battle. Give them credit for that modi of discipline. It’s a poorly kept secret, however, that rising American casualties are entered into Democratic political accounting ledgers as “good news.”
If GOP presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey had had that at ude when he ran against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944, he would have had tens of thousands MORE bits of “good news” to chortle about on his bloody ledger. Such a mindset was beyond unspeakable in American politics then; even beyond unthinkable.
It’s perfectly understandable that Kerry supporters would try to prevent the TV showing of anti-Kerry do entaries on broadcast TV this close to the election. What is unconscionable, however, are Democratic Party efforts to play down the evils of Saddam Hussein.
They’re trying, and they’re having a strange kind of success. Are you aware of the recent uncovering of new and more extensive mass graves in Iraq – Holocaust-clear testimony to the evil of Saddam Hussein? These shocking findings are getting about as much attention in pre-election American mass media as would the uncovering of a new cache of Indian arrowheads near Gaffney, S.C.
Does anybody miss the point? The more Americans learn about the full measure of Saddam’s evil, the more justifiable becomes America’s “unilateralist” thrust to take him out.
Meanwhile I have to endure the rave reviews of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” and what a swell case it makes against the Bush administration! With all of its lying defects, if “Fahrenheit 9/11” were an airplane, the FAA would never permit takeoff. But it’s NOT an airplane. It’s part of free-speech America and it sells and sails, soars and roars.
The U.N. – the Parliament of Mankind, no less – passes 17 resolutions aimed at the worst dictator on Earth. Saddam returns them all unopened. Nobody in the Parliament of Mankind gets upset. Then America goes in, throws him out, liberates his people and makes sure that no matter what weapons he has, they will not be used to harm others. Thereupon the U.N. and Hollywood and the faculty and the clergy and the Democrats and the major media accuse AMERICA of being the troublemaker!
It’s time again to look skyward and repeat after me.
There’s a roiling abscess of bitterness embedded in me by the anti-Bush campaign that not even a Bush landslide will wash away.
In boxing a fighter will occasionally mutter “Good punch” to his opponent. In football an occasional safety man who fails to prevent an opposing receiver from bringing in a long pass will say, “Great catch.” A chess master in tournament play will occasionally say to his opponent, “Good move.”
That’s not elegance. That’s not nobility. It’s just what I call “jungle etiquette,” a code of manners that operates even in the severest of head-on personal and political collisions. But even such minimal etiquette seems beyond the abilities of the Bush-hating crowd.
Have you yet heard one of them say: “Hey. I oppose this illegal and immoral war for oil, ego and glory, but I gotta tell you, Mr. President, deposing the Taliban AND the worst dictator on Earth AND making Libya fold its nuclear hand AND surrounding Iran and Syria with American might AND pulling off the first democratic election in Afghanistan’s history, including women voters, AND preparing to repeat that miracle in Iraq – not bad, Mr. President. Good blow. Good catch. Good move!”
A prisoner of the Japanese in World War II was beaten senseless by a Japanese guard on Java toward the end of the war for no reason except that the prisoner happened to be near the guard when the guard, owing to Japan’s certain impending defeat, happened to get angry. As he was passing out from the bashing he remembers thinking, “If this guard were one-fourth as brutal, I’d be four times angrier at him.”
That’s fascinating. That’s PHILOSOPHY! A guard only one-fourth as brutal would be a human being hauling off and deciding to inflict pain for no reason. As brutal as that Japanese guard was, however, that prisoner viewed him not as a human at all but as a wild animal out of control.
You can lament that the lion is about to devour you. But you don’t HATE the lion.
Likewise, if the Bush-haters were only ONE-FOURTH as outrageous as they are, I’d be four times angrier at them. As it is, my anger flies off into space when I roll my eyes upward and incant: “Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do!”
When I was a boy, the world was afraid a dictatorship would haul off and enslave democracies.
Today the world is afraid a democracy will haul off and liberate dictatorships.
I like today better.
Good article
That is ridiculous.
And your le insinuating that liberals are pro-terrorists is pretty low.
It's pretty typical, though. Anyone who dares question the merits of a second term Bush presidency is immediately castigated by the right as being anti-American or stupid, whichever term they've chosen to rely on for the moment.
I believe it is common practice now a days to label your opponent everything that is not in line with what the majority follows. I think some people don't necessarily follow Bush blindly as much as they believe he is simply the better choice in this election. In a mirror, your right is your left.
It's pathetic.
I never question a conservative republicans patriotism or love for their country.
That just really ticks me off.
He is not the better choice in my eyes and I'm looking right in the mirror.
FWDT and Squint, my sincerest apologies...please don't behead me.
And I will question the patriotism of many liberals for the simple reason that they like to go around burning the flag...just like the terrorists do.
I challenge you to go drive around and look at the people who have elections signs in their yards...find one Kerry supporter that's got a flag in their yard.
Seriously, there is an anti-American element in the democratic party these days...I don't know when it happened...but it has happened...and it's as ugly as anything associated with the Republican Party.
And furthermore...the attacks and politicizing of this war done by those that sit on the left, are a disgrace...Michael Moore is a ing disgrace to this country, he does hate, he hates it citizens, he has said so, and he has done more to undermine this country than just about any enemy this nation has ever had.
The accusations made of this sitting President of the United States of America, during a war and one of the great threats in our nations history, are reprehensible, and I will judge the Patriotism of those that do so.
It's pretty typical, though. Anyone who dares question the merits of a second term Bush presidency is immediately castigated by the right as being anti-American or stupid, whichever term they've chosen to rely on for the moment.
Ever stop to think that might be due to the fact that for the past couple of years that Bush (and anyone who supports him) was labelled a Nazi, warmonger, racist, moron, theocrat, etc...? Lest we forget the not too incon uous claims that Bush had foreknowledge of 9/11. It goes both ways, man. The Left has gone off the reservation. I thought conservatives were nuts about Clinton in the 90s but what I've seen over the last 4 years takes the yellowcake.
I respect your choice. But while you're looking in the mirror wave your right hand. Notice the guy that's looking back at you waves his left hand.
Strange, I don't see anything when I look in the mirror... I can't even see the spot where that strange girl at the club bit me in the neck last night... hope Ruth doesn't spot that...
And I respect your right to do so.
However, I am what you would call a liberal democrat.
I'm a veteran and have served my country proudly.
I fly my American Flag at my house.
I still get a lump in my throat everytime I hear the National Anthem.
I NEVER question another persons patriotism.
I feel it is our right to question our government.
I would never burn the American flag but I will fight for the freedoms of every American, not just those who agree with my views.
I support our troops 100% and this is indisputable.
You may call me unpatriotic, a traitor and any other name but it will not change the fact that I am a very proud American who is excersing his right to make his own decisions based on his own beliefs and convictions and I will not bow down to others who have a different view but will always respect their right to do as they feel.
And that's all I have to say about that.
That's great Joe. I respect your service immensely. And based on your words I know that you will defend my right to call liberals "pro-terrorist" as much as you do their right to burn the flag our troops are dying for in Iraq. I mean I have to assume that since you are part of the political party that engages in flag burning while our young men are dying in the name of that flag.
When did I say that I was a flag burner?
Just because I belong to the democratic party don't lump me in with those on the radical left.
That is the point I'm trying to make.
I don't lump all conservatives together and think they are all pro-life or pro-war.
Though I may be a member I am still an individual with my own personal beliefs. I don't agree with everything about the democratic party but I tend to lean more that way.
I'm not a straight ticket voter either.
I didn't accuse you of being a flagburner Joe, only of being a member of the political party that does so. You are.
In my eyes, generalizing liberals as pro-terrorist, is certainly no worse than burning the American Flag while our troops are over there dying for it. Is it ty of me to do that? Perhaps...but not as ty as burning that flag. And there are pro-terrorist individuals that do support Kerry.
I know if I was a terrorist I'd get a big wide grin on my face every time I saw Americans burning that flag...and if I was a soldier fighting in the name of that flag..I don't think it would bring a smile to my face.
Not only that but burning a flag is wasteful and it pollutes the atmosphere which should be against the credo of any liberal.
If the pro-terror comment makes being a liberal a tad bit more uncomfortable...try being a Bush supporter and getting a big sweet dose of liberals exercising their right of free speech...or better yet...try being Bush.
Nothing wrong with that Joe. Thats why you are respected here. I might add that I respect Clint as well. We don't have to agree ro get along. However, that said, there are some that trash you if you don't conform to their views. They call you ignorant, stupid, and anything else they can concoct.
It's all good. Sorry, I do get riled up sometimes.
I do get where Whottt is coming from though because there are some who I would call "radical" to the left or right.
I don't agree with flag burning at all and I sure as don't support terrorism.
The democratic party is made up of moderate and liberal and even, yes indeed, conservatives too.
But I do like a person who is strong in their beliefs.
Now I'll get off my soapbox and get back to talkin' smack.
Joe, I don't know if you go into the other forums very often but...I'm pretty much a provocative asshole. However, I pride myself on being a provocative asshole who has a certain amount of legitimacy behind his provocations.
I seldom launch a personal attack directly at an individual unless it is done so against me first. And pretty much I am just talking and the pro-terrorist comment was intended to get a rise out of some people.
I remain surprised at my success in getting FWDT to take the bait though...I have a pretty good streak going against him now. Something I'd have never thought possible last year.
Look, I think rampant generalizations about either side are unwarranted. All conservatives aren't oil-hungry warmongers and all liberals aren't flagburning terrorsupporters. Are there elements of each side that would fit such description? Sure. Are they widespread elements? Absolutely not.
To try to paint any groups with such a broadbrush is, to me, a shortcut to real discussion -- to actually trying to establish that your viewpoint should prevail for intellectual, logical, or even moral reasons.
I disagree with George Bush about a lot of things. I don't think the war in Iraq was a particularly good idea -- regardless of the merits of the WMD intelligence -- because I truly felt that we were in the midst of a justified campaign in Afghanistan that warranted completion before addressing other threats. You might think my military a en to be suspect, and if you do, so be it. But, to me, on September 12, 2001, the largest problem this country faced (aside from rebuilding broken hearts and repairing an injured psyche) was directly addressing the very group from which the militants who undertook the 9/11 attacks got their start. To me (and again, it's solely my opinion) the war that needed to be fought immediately was the war that continues even today in Afghanistan. You can posit your justifications for a war in Iraq, and I'll assure you that I've heard and considered all of them. But, given where we were on 9/12/01, I still can't buy that we as a country faced any immediate threat directly from Iraq. And I would certainly argue that subsequent intelligence certainly suggests that there is merit to my position.
But even with that matter in the mix, this election is about addressing security AND addressing the homeland beyond the issue of security. Frankly, this election will likely prove to be a vital point in the history of civil rights in this country, because whomever wins the Presidency will probably be able to nominate 3 or 4 justices to the United States Supreme Court. I personally cannot countenance the measures that conservatives have proposed or undertaken recently on civil rights issues, and, frankly, that's why I'm a fairly liberal person. I'm aware of it, and I'm very comfortable with it. I don't think George Bush is a demon or an overt threat to the American way of life, but I do vehemently disagree with him on numerous issues that are likely to percolate to the Supreme Court in the coming years. In large part, my reluctance to support the President in this election is tied signficantly to that disagreement.
That I disagree with the President on those and other matters does not mean that I support terrorists; it does not mean that I don't love my country. It doesn't mean that I demonize George W. Bush, or the party that he represents. It simply means that I disagree. That's all. If whottt or anyone else feels like that disagreement, standing alone, is sufficient to suggest that I'm sympathetic to the ideals of a group of Islamic zealots who misapprehend their own religion and bas ize that misapprehension into a rationalization for murder, then so be it. I'd like to think the discourse could rise above that.
That's nice, Whottt. Let me know when GW stops running our country into the financial distress.
That's what really scares me about liberal voters...They don't see the Kerry economic program for the Socialism that it is....the same system that is failing all over Europe right now.
I think because Clinton was such an excellent economic president(with a lot of help from laws passed and federal appointments under the Reagan and Bush administrations)....there is a tendency to view Kerry as the same time of economic brain as Clinton. Well, the truth is Clinton's economic policies were largely conservative...and Kerry is a lot more like Jimmy Carter than Bill Clinton. Kerry is the absolute worst type of candidate to have when you are trying to get the economy going.
I'll put it in simple terms...how in the do you expect new jobs to be created in America when Kerry is going to tax the out of the rich?
Who do you think creates the most jobs in America? The best jobs? Who employs most of America? It aint the ing government...it's the rich. So why do you want to elect a guy that's going to take money out of the pockets of the job creators and give it to the government?
It may be PC caviar to bash the rich and act like they are evil...but they create the jobs. You either work for the government or you work for the rich. And Kerry aint going to use that money to create government jobs.
It scares me, too. The liberal economic plan makes less sense than anything Bush can come up with.
But don't pretend that Bush is good for rich people or middle class people. Bush spends money like he has an unlimited supply. That money can come from two places: taxes and borrowing. He's chosen to borrow the money. That's a strategy that will eventually bankrupt the nation and lead to financial distress.
If Bush is really for the rich, why doesn't he spend less money and let the rich keep more of it? If he's for the middle class, why does he come up with policies that will make the tax burden on their children unbearable?
The financial health of the nation is just as important as defeating the terrorists.
Bush is a failure. I won't be voting for him.
I think it's fairly funny (or terribly sad) that during the second debate, Bush accused Kerry of being a tax-and-spend liberal shortly after telling the world that he intends to spend whatever it takes to accomplish the goals of his administration. If Kerry is a tax-and-spend liberal, does that make Bush a spend-and-spend conservative?Bush spends money like he has an unlimited supply. That money can come from two places: taxes and borrowing. He's chosen to borrow the money. That's a strategy that will eventually bankrupt the nation and lead to financial distress.
I don't think you guys realize why we have been spending....We had a total government overhaul afte 911. We had a catastrophe hit our airline and travel industries...not to mention the economic recession we were entering before Bush even came into office. Not to mention we are involved in a necessary war in which we are footing most of the bill.
You guys can spin it anyway you want...like Bush's plans or not...he has done pretty much what he said he was going to do when he went into office. Unlike Kerry who is merely telling people what they want to hear. Even before the war, he said he was going to cut taxes to stimulate the economy and spend on defense....he's done it and he's had to deal with a lot of stuff he wasn't planning on dealing with. Stuff, no president in history has had to deal with. A huge attack and potential war on our own soil.
And his harping about a missle defense shield makes sounds a lot more realistic to me now than it did 4 years ago...especially with N Korea and Iran having nukes.
Bush got a lot thrown at him...no President has ever had the challenges he has had...and I think he's been very strong in the role of the President.
Those terrorists were getting their pilot licenses while Clinton was in office you know...not Bush.
911, had a tremendous impact on our economy, in addition to the techbust, in addition to the wars, in addition to the fact that people spend less in times of uncertainty. The fact that it is already recovering is pretty amazing.
Bush is better for this environment then Kerry...
Replacing Bush with Kerry would be like....um...it's like replacing Larry Brown with Jerry Tarkanian.
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