So now we’re “insurgents” …
Newt Gingrich was on Fox today, talking about how the anti-Lieberman voters and by proxy, voters who are opposed to the war in Iraq, are an “insurgency.” It also appears that our ultimate goal is to “run and hide.”
You can watch him here. It will probably be only a few more weeks before the sons and daughters of Senator Joe McCarthy begin calling their political opponents “terrorists.”
Newt needs to learn that when you find yourself in a completely fucked up situation, the answer is not always to “stay the course.” The Titanic stayed the course and crashed into an iceberg, even after her captain received warnings of ice. I know, I know — lame analogy. But it holds. There are situations where doing the same thing — and in the case of Iraq, this means doing nothing, essentially — can lead to a catastrophic result.
Here’s the thing — everyone in America knows now that the rationale behind the war was bullshit. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq did not represent an imminent threat to the United States. So their efforts to paint dissenters as traitors and terrorist sympathisizers will fail. The only people left in the country who still cling to the lies are the Republican base — they’ve drunk the kool aid, and they’re already on the team. The rest of us in America — moderates, liberals, libertarians, traditional Repulicans, etc. — aren’t going to have our minds changed now because Newt Gingrich tries to link opposition to the war with the insurgency in Iraq. It’s not going to happen.
What we need to do is start asking a more important question: Why was the war in Iraq fought? What was the real reason?
There’s an answer out there somewhere. I only hope it takes the press, and not historians a century from now, to find it.
