Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind."
-- Al Gore
Recently, C-SPAN aired the actor Sam Waterson's re-enactment of Abraham Lincoln's 1860 speech at the Cooper Union concerning congressional power over slavery in the territories and the Republican Party. It's not quite the same, lol, but I must say after hearing it (via the C-SPAN website), Al Gore's latest effort is a damn good speech. [The transcript provided in the link above is slightly different than the live version.] It not only is a brief against President Bush, but provided a vision of what we should stand for, and threw in a few good words about John Kerry as well. It had some good advice and was a partial answer to critics who feel he is too vague:
Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over. [sounds like what FDR did in 1932]
[I plan to expand on some of his religious imagery at a later date, so omitted some quotes I originally planned to include.]
And the ultimate final solution ...
During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name back?
The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are.
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And then there is the other side. It isn't totally fair, since he is plainly a moron,* but Charles Krauthammer's column today is just one reason why I find reading him (without screaming) nearly impossible. Krauthammer reminds us that the end of WWII did not end bloodshed. After all, look at places like Greece, China, and India. Oh, and there was political unrest in France. Hell, why stop there? Why not toss in Klan violence in the U.S.?
One might suggest it wasn't quite relevant, but then, is bringing up long standing colonial struggles? Or even resulting aftershocks in areas largely sideshows to the main events? We needn't even worry about subsidiary aftershocks, since the violence and unrest is in Iraq ... was there comparable violence in Germany, Italy, and Japan? Well, no ... if Krauthammer wants to use history as a judge, the trouble has only just begun, and it has in a fashion begun worse. Anyway, don't worry about the Vietnam War ... just a necessary side effect of defeating Hitler.
The editorial next jumps to the present, perhaps tiring of somewhat misleading historical analogy. The new government is tying together fairly nicely. Perhaps it is (partly from ignorance, I remain agnostic), though let's see how good it does ... Afghanistan arguably has a decent central government (for what good it is). Anyhow, the fact the prime minister has ties to the CIA really shouldn't be upsetting, since where else would Iraqi exiles get assistance in the honorable mission to overturn Saddam? (True, alas, they did bungle things "terribly.") Sure. And who else, but exiles, would be the best to lead them? Krauthammer, surely an oversight, strangely didn't mention a certain someone, unless his comment that "some" of the exiles were heroic was a veiled reference.
Oh, he does say "Iraq is a mess," but then, "[p]ostwar settlements almost invariably are." It is always nice when cynical* sorts like Charles Krauthammer look on the rosy side of things, it really is. Set the bar low, twist history, and view things in an almost cluelessly optimistic way, and the future is yours!
* or cynical bastard ... but that would be crude