Support The Troops

For some reason this warm happy furry puppy slogan has been translated into meaning endless financing to keep our troops mired down in a civil war.

You can't support the troops unless you insist they remain hostage to a lunatic White House policy of Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL).

Town scold Jonathan Alter over at Newsweak cajoles the dirty fucking hippy far left of hurling epithets like "Dick Cheney Democrats" for voting in favor of the Iraq capitulation bill. He rightfully points out that the razor thin majority held by Democrats is insufficient to override a Presidential veto.

The unspoken claim about defunding the war is the default belief that President Bush would simply let them sit there until they ran out of ammo and fuel and food and were completely overrun and slaughtered by the enemy.

Is this why the Democrats signed a blank check to The Mad-Man-In-Chief? If they didn't "support the troops" no one else would? The President would leave them stranded?

That seems to be the view among the American people. Certainly the compassionate conservative-in-chief would bring troops out of theatre if no funding existed, wouldn't he?

Shedding a little light on this matter would be a mighty public service by our intrepid media. Perhaps someone should ask Dubya if the war were defunded, would he abandon the troops to slow starvation and certain death. For a follow-up it would be curious to know if Bush did decide to bring the troops home, due to congressional defunding, how many American troops lives would be saved as a result.

I have been truly stunned overall at the across the board defense of the Democrats votes on this issue last Thursday by the media. It is as if they sensed the white-hot anger of a thousand supernovas was about to be released, and they instinctively reached for the fire extinguishers.

They completely missed a golden opportunity to gleefully point out the spineless nature of Democrats. Perhaps they knew others would be using that term quite prodigiously and decided to use their time, like Jonathan Alter, to cast pearls of wisdom before the dirty fucking hippy crowd of ignorance.

May 24, 2007 - It isn't easy to make the case for capitulation and gamesmanship when human lives are at stake, but I'm going to try. That's because many Americans—especially on the left—don't understand why Democrats in Congress had no choice but to proceed the way they have this week on the war in Iraq.

Okay, let's unpack what Mr. Alter is saying here. First off, let's just eliminate the modifier "especially on the left", M'kay? Well over sixty percent of Merkins, you know, folks who like baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet, are opposed to the war in Iraq. That isn't even "many Americans", that is actually "most Americans."

As far as the claim "Democrats in Congress had no choice" is knee-slapping funny. The issue of Iraq was the ignition that sparked groundswell opposition across America that Democrats rode into power. For them to merely turn around, drop their laundry, bend over and grab their asscheeks as an invitation for an empty cod-piece-in-chief to have his way with them, is an affront to every political activist nationwide.

[...]
But it's one thing to be tough; it's another altogether to criticize any member of the party who doesn't vote with MoveOn.org and others on the antiwar left as “Dick Cheney Democrats” cruising for a primary challenge, or at least a flaming from the liberal blogosphere.
[...]

Well, Mr. Alter, in November the primary issue was Iraq; either you are for it or against it. In a completely stunning election, that even defied "the math" as established by Karl Rove, the pro-war assholes, aka Republicans, lost both the House and the Senate. The message was "End The Fucking War." Now, when you win on primarily a single issue, you better damn well deliver.
Popularity ratings of Dick Cheney and the Iraq war are in the same range as explosive diarrhea, and several social diseases, so please refrain from labeling those opposed to such things as dirty fucking hippies, who everyone knows is all that peoples the antiwar left.

[...]
It's fine to urge opposition to the Iraq spending bill, but it's juvenile to toss around threats or make it seem as if voting wrong on this bill means you aren't sincerely against the war. In fact, what's going on inside the Democratic Party now is a family argument about tactics, not principle.
[...]

Aw, now the town scold is chiding us as wayward children, who won't eat our veggies and shit. Perhaps he has confused us with the bratty Motherfucker in the Oval Office who wants everything his way with no strings attached or he'll stomp his baby Gap boots. This is the whole point. We have an infantile dry-drunk frat-boy snot with his twitchy finger inches from the button. A rubber-stamped congress got us into this mess. There is no adult at the steering wheel of the mightiest country in the world and we are adrift, heading for an abyss of third-world status.
We have every right, in fact a duty, to be extremely disappointed in the blank check the Democratic congress just sent to a degenerate chicken hawk war junkie. We categorically reject the notion that we are being big ol' babies for not welcoming with open arms the continuation of a catastrophe that will only result in more death and misery, with absolutely no benefit to American national security.
The rest of Mr. Alter's article explains why Thursdays vote could not have played out any other way, and grudgingly it makes sense, only because the Democrats have completely failed on messaging.
If the tables were turned we have no doubt their would have been an endless stream of Republican operatives given ample media time to screech about the obstructionists Democrats trying to slake their unquenchable thirst for power from the blood of our troops.

What I cannot abide by is this idea of the antiwar left (most Americans) labelled as juvenile for wanting their Representatives to represent the wishes of (most Americans) to end the war. Those Representatives like Rham Emmanuel who try to put lipstick on this pig and call it a "victory" will suffer the fate of any mealy-mouthed politician.

Let's make it real simple. This vote will be a death sentence for many in our military, who fight for Democracy in a country that wants it less than us.