All the Enemies of America

A little trenchant moral equivalence from Ray D. at Davids Medienkritik, who can’t stop using that capital S:

Apparently, Germany’s Socialist(s) aren’t the only ones thrilled with the (US midterm) election results. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is also hailing the outcome.

And from the same post, for our yeah-right file:

Whether we like it or not, George W. Bush will be gone in two years, but the damage done by “journalists” like (Michael) Naumann (of Die Zeit) to transatlantic relations will endure for years to come, whether Democrats or Republicans are in power.

One good thing about the Democrats’ complete lack of power and spine in Washington since 2001 is that no one from the pro-war camp could blame the unholy mess in Iraq on anyone besides the guys who started it — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and all the hordes of Republican functionaries and bloggers who dog-piled war critics by calling them unpatriotic or anti-Semitic or objectively pro-fascist for objecting to a bad idea.

That changed last week. Anything that goes wrong from now on will be rolled at the feet of the Democrats, simply because they’ve been voted back in. Bush has known for a while that his tactics in Iraq would have to change — up to and including negotiations with Syria and Iran — and the idea of retiring Rumsfeld, of course, didn’t just occur to him in a blaze of light on Wednesday morning. But he’s waited to shift course until after the elections, when there would be someone to share the blame.

I kind of liked Rumsfeld, as a source of entertainment, and I loathe the idea of negotiations with Syria and Iran. But the problem can’t be solved by the Pentagon anymore, and — to be nice and clear about one important point — America was brought to this low position by the Bush administration.

I suspect the Iraq catastrophe, in both morals and blood, still hasn’t been fully told, and Democrats now have the thankless responsibility of trying to help mop up. But Just You Wait: The rabid fringes of the blogosphere will find a way to blame Nancy Pelosi when Iraq finally implodes. In fact, they’ve already started. That’s just how they work.

     posted 10 November 2006 by Michael Scott Moore