Opinion:

Failing their own test, and risking failing the ultimate test

I thought I had defeated my need to post on politics, but after reading at The Moderate Voice this quote from a recent column by Thomas Friedman I had to add my $0.02 regarding my biggest issue with Conservatives in the past two years:

Conservatives profess to care deeply about the outcome in Iraq, but they sat silently for the last year as the situation there steadily deteriorated. Then they participated in a shameful effort to refocus the country's attention on what John Kerry did on the rivers of Vietnam 30 years ago, not on what George Bush and his team are doing on the rivers of Babylon today, where some 140,000 American lives are on the line. Is this what it means to be a conservative today?

Had conservatives spoken up loudly a year ago and said what both of Mr. Bush's senior Iraq envoys, Jay Garner and Paul Bremer, have now said (and what many of us who believed in the importance of Iraq were saying) - that we never had enough troops to control Iraq's borders, keep the terrorists out, prevent looting and establish authority - the president might have changed course. Instead, they served as a Greek chorus, applauding Mr. Bush's missteps and mocking anyone who challenged them.

Conservatives have failed their own test of patriotism. In the end, it has been more important for them to defeat liberals than to get Iraq right. Had Democrats been running this war with the incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld & Friends, conservatives would have demanded their heads a year ago - and gotten them.

The one glaring -- almost inexplicable -- characteristic of this administration is its inability to seriously acknowledge some mistakes and give a reastic assessment of the challenges that face the U.S., its military, and military families. If Bush loses -- apart from his initial debate performance - it will be due to his inability to cut his losses and deal with the Mistakes Issue.

I am sick of the hypocrisy I see from both the right-wing and the left-wing. I am writing more about that of the right-wing recently because the right-wing is currently in charge and making a hash of things, despite the rose-colored glasses that those surrounding our President-in-a-bubble are wearing. I hold the left-wing in equal contempt, and I am sick of their behavior and attitudes as well, but at the least they are not serving as the Greek chorus while things go off the rails.

For those of you who say "things are not as bad as the biased media present", I beg to differ and recommend to you to pay attention to news reports from agencies located outside the US. Refusing to see things the way they are by blaming the messenger is just as criminal as not trying to be informed at all. Yes, good things are being done in Iraq, but at what cost, in lives, in treasure, and in relations with other countries? American cannot stand in isolation, regardless of our military might, no matter how much we might want to. Just as a group of kids will band together to take down the neighborhood bully that none could confront alone, we risk aligning other nations against us if we continue on the path we have started upon, because we are beginning to be viewed as "the bully."

We have soiled our reputation by issuing "memos" and "guidances" that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are not covered by the Geneva Convention, making accusations of torture (whether true or not) more credible. We have allowed things to get out of control at Abu Gihrab, with photo evidence showing deliberate humiliation of prisoners, and regardless of the lack of official sanction for those actions, they still sully our nation. Some people say "I don't care what they do to them because these people are our enemies." That attitude sickens me. Is this the way we want it, to adopt the methods and tactics of those we are fighting? In saying "I don't care how we treat our enemies" we are lowering ourselves to the same level as those we claim are "enemies of civilization." Why don't we just start sawing heads off and televising it while we're at it? All we are accomplishing is that accusations of how America is evil, once held as ridiculous, are now being given a hearing even by those who once admired America.

Some are expressing outrage that there will be foreign monitors in the United States during this next election. Well, people, welcome to a new view, for this is how we've treated the rest of the world. We have expected everyone else to live up to our expectations of them. Now, when the shoe is on the other foot, you can experience first hand the outrage that citizens of other nations have felt from our lecturing, hectoring, and pressuring. Am I saying we have to ask approval of other nations before acting? No, but if we discard their concerns without appearing to give them a second thought, Dale Carnegie would remind us that is not the best way to win friends and influence people.

There is more to waging a "War on Terror" than military might, and unless the citizens of the United States, among the lowest taxed in the world of developed nations and among the loudest to complain about the level of taxation, are willing to bear an even higher financial burden to face the world alone, then we cannot treat the rest of the world with the contempt shown recently. We cannot allow places we invade to be looted because we rely on high tech weapons to win the battle and have too few troops to properly occupy the victorious ground, we cannot undertake invasions lightly with the assumption that we will be greeted with flowers and gratitude, and no matter how emotionally satisfying to our baser instincts, we cannot allow even proven terrorists to be tortured, for that undermines everything that the United States was founded upon and degrades everything that admirers of America believe of us.

I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers because I don't, I can only begin to make suggestions. I am speaking out because as an expatriate who has been in several countries in the last year, I can speak from a viewpoint not often available, that of someone who loves the United States and has a view from outside. Please, heed my warning. Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "la-la-la-la!!!!" when you are told things are going off the rails and blaming it on "media bias" is irresponsible. There are other sources of news out there. Use them, filter the biases out, and you will find that not all is as it is reported in the US, but all is not what the administration would have you believe, either. Refusing to acknowledge reality is a terminal offense, with the sentence carried out inexorably. Conservatives and Liberals both are participating in that refusal to acknowledge reality and risk failing that ultimate test, and it is up to us to kick both the Republican and Democratic Parties in the ass and tell them to wake up and stop worrying about winning and instead focus on doing the Right Thing. Winning will follow. If we do nothing, then we will indeed be in both good and bad company on the dustbin of history.