Unmask the plans for the Iraq war made by Cheney’s “Energy Task Force.”

The Democrats can pull out the facts by subpeona.

Pull the loose thread and the whole garment will unravel.

But one thing about the “hippie” theme that we need to remember. The Republican “culture warriors”, especially the Christian Right variety, are obsessed with their horror image of “the 1960s”.

And it’s easy to overlook now, with a lot of relatively benign images of the 1960s hippies out there, that the Ronald Reagans and Spiro Agnews of those days used “hippies” as a buzzword for “evil black people” – and would express contempt and hatred for “hippies” in terms that it had become counterproductive to use against blacks.

No, today’s war critics aren’t hippies. (Dang, I wish I still had enough hair to grow it shoulder-length, though.) But in the eyes of the Republican culture warriors, most of America are either “hippies” or dangerously corrupted by them.

The netroots can accomplish certain things, but let’s get real: the country isn’t in the fix it’s in because we haven’t fucking BLOGGED enough! Bush isn’t the problem, he’s a manifestation… Until we understand that, we won’t get anywhere. The progressive blogosphere perpetuates a false sense of our being good little boys and girls in the majority of the just, except there is no such thing. If there were, we would have stopped the war (or never started it).

The collective is insane. We can certainly change, one at a time, but that is who we are. Accordingly, I’ve stopped writing political posts on my own blog. I blog to write, to explore, to be as true to myself as I can be. THAT’S what needs to happen here, wholeness multiplied a billion times.

Oklahoma kiddo @
32

The simple matter of it is: more American troops (and where do they come from exactly) means more killing. This in NOT a difficult concept. Damn.

OKKiddo,

The American military machine has killed at least 20 million people since AFTER WWII. We’ve disabled at least that many more. Bill Clinton was responsible for the premature deaths of a half million Iraqis, mostly women and young kids. George Bush is so incompetent that even after unleashing the dogs of warhell, he can only outdo Clnton by 40%.

We’ve never gotten ourselves into a position this alarming that I can remember. But blaming poor minority kids with awful educations, home lifes and future prospects – even blaming them a teensy bit -for filling the ranks of our military for what our leaders force the military to do is beyond dense.

I’ll be back later when there’s more adult supervision here….

ET,

I think you and OkK agree, not disagree. Sending more troops to Iraq WILL result in more American deaths, and Iraqi deaths. This is not logically inconsistent with observing that many minority folk make the decision to join the military because their other economic options are slim. I have a niece and a nephew in this category.

You guys are not disagreeing. You are talking about two different dimensions of staffing the military.

If they escalate the war, do they recommend a draft too?

A draft wouldn’t be necessary. They only need 100,000 more men and women and they’ll get them by hook or crook.

No matter how many more men they send to Iraq it’s only going to make things worse. So, calling this a defeat for progressives is naive.

Would a “compromise” have been better? How?

The reality is that only total withdrawal of ALL U.S. forces (including all mercenaries and other U.S. contractors) is going to disengage us from this war.

There IS NO COMPROMISE in sight, because the reality is that we’ve lost the war. It’s over. Just like Vietnam.

Bush can stay another two years or start the “Iraqisation” efforts and it won’t make a difference.

As always official Washington is at least 2 years behind reality.

So, the debate is over whether Bush will recognize reality enough to channel Richard Nixon instead of Lyndon Johnson? How is that any better?

There’s been endless speculation that Bush would adopt a “strategic enclave” strategy similar to the one Generals Taylor and Gavin proposed for Vietnam.

But, no! Bush elected to escalate instead.

That just means we’ll skip the entire Nixon administration, because by 2009 Iraq will be such a disaster and the people will be so fed up with the mess that we’ll just have to withdraw, period.

At that point all the “responsible people” will be saying that we need to withdraw the combat troops and put in more advisors — just as Bush should have done in 2006 after the election, but didn’t.

And of course, THAT will be 2 years behind reality as well. But, by that point, it won’t matter what the insiders think. The American people will only tolerate so much and 2008 is the end of the line for the war hawks.

They can only string things along so far before the pressure on Congress to shut down funding and force a withdawal becomes overwhelming. By then they’ll be forced to end the war.

Swopa, thanks, as you know, I could not agree more with you about the need for Dems to annunciate clearly the PRINCIPLES of the Powell Doctrine.

Ambassador Joe Wilson got even more specific in his comments at FDL about it.
No Easy Calls on Iraq

Joe Wilson says:
December 4th, 2006 at 11:22 am *

[…]

It is tough but I think that we should reshape the debate domestically from the terms currently in use (stay the course, cut and run; strategic redeployment, timetables, and withdrawal) to one in which we consider what it is we are asking our troops to do at this stage of the occupation and whether what they are doing is in our strategic of operational interest. If not they shouldn’t be doing it. The military talks of deployments in terms of troop to task ratios and force protection requirements. We should too.
In short, we should ask the generals to justify the national security requirement of every task US troops are undertaking and if the case cannot be made they shouldn’t be doing it. […]

Bold is mine.

This typo keeps appearing in our comments.

Strategic OR operational interest. [Ambassador Wilson comment]

I took a look at Kucinich’s position re reproductive rights on his gov website as well as the 2002 Nation article. I think he has evolved. He is a catholic, from a big family that struggled. It is not like he is unaware. I don’t know his philosophical or religious views now but he doesn’t seem doctrinaire. I do think he analyzes the republican position for the hypocrisy that it is. People grow.

I for one can’t support him, and it’s not because he looks like a Keebler Elf, or because he’s unmarried, or because he’s unapologetically anti-war. It’s because of his anti-choice record.

I’m glad he’s out there, I’m glad he’s anti-war, I support a lot of the things he’s trying to do. But I can’t support a presidential candidate who doesn’t respect my right to an unoccupied uterus. It’s a deal-breaker for me.

Bush has always played to his base; always acted to please the people who agree with him, and always acted like they’re the only people who matter. (It’s tempting to suspect he doubts the existence, sanity, or American-ness of the other 70% of us.) So him pandering to the righty blogs is par for course.