GOP Civil War
Colin Powell fires back at tin soldiers Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh on the Sunday news shows. Powell a decorated Vietnam Veteran has been under malicious attack by two of the most infamous Chicken Hawks in American History.
New York Daily News writer Mike Lupica adds a fiery column of his own today, reminding the GOP you are in danger of shrinking your "base" to a tiny rigid fascist core thereby assuring the destruction of an American Political Party. The war for the Future of the GOP continues and in my personal opinion it is already lost.
Leave the ashes to Limbaugh and Cheney the GOP the DO Nothing Party deserves its coming OBLIVION!
GOP led by toy soldiers - Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh - insulting heroes like Gen Colin Powell
Mike Lupica
Monday, May 25th 2009, 4:00 AM
This was at 166th St. and Boston Road in the Bronx Sunday morning, in front of the amazing old building that was still called Morris High School when Gen. Colin Powell graduated from there more than 50 years ago and began a life of service to his country.
This was an hour before Powell would appear on "Face the Nation" to discuss comments made about him by former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose most famous moment carrying a gun came when shooting a lawyer once instead of quail.
These days there are now five smaller schools on the Morris campus. Once, though, this was the first high school in the Bronx. And even with a lot of construction going on, the place is still something to see.
"Like a castle," Michael Moran, 42, from the neighborhood, said.
"Colin Powell went here," he was told.
"You think we don't know that up here?" Moran said.
A week ago Cheney - whose idea of a foxhole is Fox News - went on "Face the Nation" and said he assumed Powell had left the Republican Party after endorsing Barack Obama. Then Cheney said if he had to choose between Powell and Rush Limbaugh to lead the Republicans, he would go with Limbaugh.
But that really is the current Republican Party, isn't it? Angry old white men like Cheney and 
Limbaugh talking to each other. Two toy soldiers who enjoy insulting a real one like Powell. Trying to convince the country that if you don't believe in torture, you don't want to keep it safe.
Only here was Powell, who came out of Morris High to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs and secretary of state, telling the real truth about his party Sunday, and about the old men who think they speak for everyone in it.
"In every demographic ... the Republican Party is losing," Powell said.
Of course Dick Cheney wants to talk about torture now. It's all he's got. He doesn't want to talk about the soldiers he sent off to die in Iraq. He doesn't want to talk about all the wounded soldiers from that war, or the trips he didn't make to Walter Reed while he was still vice president.
He doesn't want to talk about how the Republicans lost both houses of Congress and finally the White House while he was vice president, as millions left his party on the dead run. And he certainly doesn't want to talk about what kind of country he left to President Obama, and to the rest of us.
So he talks about the potential danger of closing Guantanamo and puts it all on Obama, failing to mention that his own boss, Bush, also wanted to close the place. It is completely gutless of Cheney, and completely predictable. He continues to live in a weird parallel world, accepting no blame or responsibility for Sept. 11, but making it clear that if anything happens again it's all Obama's fault.
In a quiet voice Sunday, Colin Powell pointed out the obvious about Guantanamo to Bob Schieffer:
"[Cheney is] disagreeing with President Bush's policy."
Then Powell said Obama wasn't closing down Guantanamo to appease the intellectuals of Europe, as Cheney snarkily suggested, "but to reassure people all around the world that we're a country of law."
Understand: Powell is not some kind of perfect American hero; he will always have to live with the appearance he made at the United Nations when he was helping Bush and Cheney sell their intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, reluctantly playing the good soldier to the end.
He is still better than the people to whom he was forced to respond Sunday. He has still led a great American life and served his country more honorably than Cheney ever has or ever will. At the end of his time on television Sunday, on the eve of Memorial Day, he praised the young men and women fighting Cheney's war in Iraq as "another greatest generation."
"This is a time when we reflect on the privileges we've had because we had other citizens put their lives on the line," he said.
Maybe Dick Cheney should do some reflecting, take a good look around this Memorial Day. Or just take in the kind of parade in which he'll never be asked to march. Maybe Cheney could then think about devoting the rest of his life finding ways to help the soldiers he sent off to war, instead of finding ways to keep pinning medals on himself.
It is worth remembering today that guys like Colin Powell, Morris High '54, put their own lives on the line. Cheney always did it with somebody else's.
There is nothing civil about any war.
ReplyDeleteIn honor of this day I wrote this:
Words of the Fallen
I chose to serve
Now I am gone
All those bits of time are not to be
All those moments are forever lost
Potential ends
What might have been will not be
Remember me
Well Dewayne no surprise regarding Dick and Rush. Both of these jokers are idealogues. They push, whine, cajole, and browbeat to get a theory put into reality.
ReplyDeleteThese assholes and Newt Gringrich (remember that pompous wingnut?) took pride in bumping off then Speaker of the House Jim Wright for an ethics violation (Wright wrote a book) and eventually got himself enshrined in the same office, albeit a short tenure because the medicince he prescribed for other was done onto him. Good riddance to rubbish in a suit.
Dick, Rush and Newt speak only for themselves. Think of them as Hitler, Goebbels, and Goering. They spout jingos and paint terrifying word images to scare the crap out of people without foundation in fact.
Let's take the case of Dick and wifey pooh, Lynne. Dick was the cheerleader without the the skimpy skirt but he did push up and out his chest to attract undue attention to himself well crying over the airwaves how Saddam Huissen had weapons of mass destruction (the Bomb and chemical/biowarfare weapons) to rain down on the Land of the Free and Brave and our Courageous Allies (the latter Dick did not really believe because as an Absolutist, Isolationist, Totalitarian Ultra Right Wingnut he did not want our Allies to have any meaningful role other than material, logistics support and otherwise toeing his line) and scare the crap out of unsuspecting and trusting citizens.
Why just think of all of those single colored, one word backdrops Dick and Shrub would stand in front of while giving pep talks to the masses. Single word themes, God Lord where did the idea for those backdrops come from--Nazi Propaganda Chief Goebbels.
What result on Dick's WMD? There were none. Zilch. Diddly squat. Null. Zip. The Big ZERO (sort of like his IQ).
OK,so Dick missed the target like a squint-eyed, nearsighted cowboy with a misaligned gunsight who mistook his "friend," the liberal, Texas judge bird hunting and shot him in the face at near point blank range. Eyebrow raising isn't it.
This doesn't mean that Dick couldn't have got it right in other areas. That's fair. Did he?
Torturing prisoners was supposed to get the US quality intelligence to prevent more Twin Towers incidents. Historically, it is known by many cultures through time that information obtained from torture is relatively useless. The torture victim will say anything to get the torture to stop and none of it worth repeating. Did Intelligence services learn anything of value? Prevent another plot? No. Null. Zilch. Zip. The Big ZERO.
Well at the very least Dick is consistent, consistent in trying to keep his lying ass out of jail.
Yes. Let us remember all those young men and women, living and dead, as well as those of our Nation's allies, who gave their lives for Dick's Folly, a waste of resources and lives if ever there was one to perpetuate a bunch of right wingnuts in political office because they are collectively too goddamned stupid to come up with viable social programs that make people's lives better.
Great truths Rob, you sum it up quite well and I whole heartedly agree with all you have to say, Thank You!
ReplyDelete