The Height of Shamelessness

Comparing W to FDR is a piece of gymnastics so shameless it would be disgusting, if it weren't so amusing. I can't wait to see this parsed on the.
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His ship increasingly buffeted by the storm, today Captain Ahab and his handlers saw fit to compare the Iraq War to World War II. More precisely, W linked his own commitment to an ill-chosen invasion of a country peripheral to the central conflict to the courage and leadership of the nation's greatest Twentieth Century President, FDR. Guess no one told W FDR was a Democrat, and how the hell was he supposed to remember something like that? Hell, it's been sixty years, right? Something like that.

This W is a glutton for punishment. He made this speech in the same town where he made his ill-fated "mission accomplished" appearance on the deck of an aircraft carrier. He did it with World War II veterans in attendance, as if they don't know the difference between legitimately defending freedom against well-defined enemies and fighting an entrepreneurial aggression on carefully concocted false pretenses. W is less than one month away from looking at one of the most massive protests the Mall has ever seen, if he just happens to be in or near Washington September 24, but then why would we expect that? He's the President, right, and he doesn't really think he has to worry what the people think.

No, you right-reflexers eager to paint liberals as unsupportive of military effort, the urge against Bush's Iraq Fantasy is not an urge against the troops, that's just a desperate accusation aimed at changing the subject away from reality. There is no distinction between World War II heroes on land, air and sea and their brave counterparts in Iraq. The distinction is between executive decisions which make this country safer and those which further endanger it. In that league, comparing W to FDR is a piece of gymnastics so shameless it would be disgusting, if it weren't so amusing. I can't wait to see this parsed on the Daily Show.

By the way, somewhere in midsummer I developed a pinched nerve condition so bad it made it impossible to write at a keyboard for several weeks. This I blame on Karl Rove. When I filled in one day doing progressive talk radio for Ed Schultz, I dislocated my hip and missed the second appointed day. This I also blame on Karl Rove. I'm okay now, but he's still out there.

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