How Can Anybody Be Enlightened - Truth Is After All So Poorly Lit

By a vote of 72-25, the U.S. Senate on Thursday passed an amendment to the Defense appropriations bill, an amendment condemning the personal attack against General David Petraeus that MoveOn ran in the New York Times this past Monday.

The no votes on the above amendment were all Democrats, and one Independent. The yes votes were about two-to-one Republican to Democrat. The above amendment mentions General Petraeus, and only General Petraeus, by name - and refers to no one else. This amendment was proposed by Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas.

By a vote of 50-47, the U.S. Senate on Thursday defeated an amendment to the Defense appropriations bill, an amendment supporting the troops and decrying all personal attacks on those who have served honorably in the armed forces.

The above amendment was defeated along party lines, with a handful of Senators crossing the aisle to vote the other way. The above amendment mentions only Petraeus by name - but also refers specifically to former Senator Max Cleland and current Senator John Kerry, both of whom have previously had their integrity attacked in advertisements. This amendment was proposed by Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California.

American soldiers are still dying in Iraq for no good reason, while the Senate is wasting time passing amendments condemning MoveOn for name-calling. What’s worse is that Democrats were falling all over themselves to vote for the Republican bill that so lustily praised Petraeus for his decorated career in the military and equally lustily condemned MoveOn for having the temerity to call out Petraeus.

And it is sort of ham-handed to direct such venom at a guy like Petraeus, who’s just a puppet, regurgitating to Congress everything he was told to say by Bush and Cheney. It would have been refreshing to hear him go before Congress and tell the truth about Iraq, but no reasonable person still expects anyone propped up by the Bush administration to be honest and forthright with the American people, especially when it comes to something that might just one day get someone’s kid killed.

Things get a little bit better in one province (Anbar), and you’d think we’d won the damn thing. Of course, in a war that has no point, how do you know when it’s over? In a war that has no direction, how can you measure success? Nobody wants to get close to MoveOn, because they all have to run for re-election at some point - even if those clowns at MoveOn are right. I go back and forth on those guys. They’re liberal, which is correct, but they’re so damned confrontational. I sometimes wonder if a softer, subtler approach might not be a better idea.

There's something telling about those proposed amendments. The one proposed by Boxer condemns personal attacks against all those who have served honorably in the armed forces. The one proposed by Cornyn does not use the word honorably; it simply asks that we salute everyone who has ever served in the military - no doubt including people like Lynndie England and William Calley. Now those are model citizens. Of course, they’ll just tell you that the orders came from higher up, which is correct - but that sort of implicates the whole machine as corrupt.

Are we defending our own freedom, or are we trying to Americanize the rest of the world? And what if the rest of the world doesn’t want to be Americanized? Should we leave them alone, or is that too inconvenient for us? Or is this country just the playground bully, puffing out its chest and acting all holier-than-thou to weaker countries?

You’ll notice we’re not picking a lot of fights with countries that have nukes. You have noticed that, right? Bin Laden is hiding in the mountains of Pakistan somewhere, but we won’t go get him because Pakistan has nukes (and an unstable government), and they’re about a shish kabob away from dropping those nukes on India, which also has nukes and would return fire in a heartbeat. We don’t want to get near that. We want all of you to buy into the American Dream (by which I mean invest in the dollar), but we won’t force you to unless you’re too weak to fight back.

We’re not doing a very good job of leading by example, and the general public is not doing a very good job of making our elected leaders understand that. It’s long since time to stop swallowing the bad medicine this failed administration is pouring down our throats.

Mr. Bush, you owe us an apology. And you need to do as much as you can in your last year as president to fix this mess. If you were disgusted by the MoveOn ad, believe me, sir, it is nothing to how disgusted we are with your leadership. General Petraeus did betray us, but not by what he said before Congress. He betrayed us by accepting the appointment to be your stooge.

Now playing on iTunes:
"Travelin' Soldier" by the Dixie Chicks (which, believe it or not, is a coincidence, because I have iTunes set in alphabetical order by album title, and the album this song came from is right after the Rush album Hold Your Fire, which I was listening to because it's where I got the quote for the title of this post)