Ted Rall: Iraq Fiasco Exposes Faith-based Reasoning

from CommonDreams:


Published on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 by Ted Rall
Memo to Republicans: Shut up, Shut up, Shut up!
Iraq Fiasco Exposes Faith-Based Reasoning
by Ted Rall

Attention right-wing neoconservative Republicans: We Americans have done things your way since 1981, when an actor named Reagan convinced us that we weren't entitled to anything from the government other than a canceled check for our taxes. We supported dictators against democratic movements. We started wars against tiny weak countries like Grenada and Panama and Afghanistan just because we could. Even when we had a Democratic president, he bought into Reagan Republicanism; Clinton cut rich people's taxes, signed NAFTA and got rid of social welfare programs.

Twenty-six years into the NeoCon nightmare, everybody hates the United States. We're broke. Here's how screwed up we are: we can't even get out of a war that 91 percent of Americans are against. Republicans got us into this mess.

I say: Enough is enough. Three thousand dead soldiers and $2 trillion say it's time for anyone who ever argued in favor of invading Iraq to shut the eff up. Sell your laptop on eBay, Ms. Coulter. Use your ill-gotten gains to take some Middle Eastern history classes, Mr. Friedman. Step away from the golden EIB microphone, Mr. Limbaugh. Resign, Senators Clinton and McCain, and never show your faces in public again.

Yeah, right.

Since these pundits and politicians were and are so spectacularly wrong about such a straightforward and momentous issue as this idiotic war, no one should take them seriously again. Right-wingers deserve to be marginalized and ignored. The American left--the real, non-accommodationist, non-Hillary, left--ought to define the mainstream from now on. Only the left, from Noam Chomsky on the left left to Howard Dean on the right left, have been consistently correct. Not to worry, we still have two legitimate political parties: Democrats and the Greens.

The post-Iraq bankruptcy of the GOP thinkers came into sharp relief the other night in the form of Dinesh D'Souza's latest radio editorial, on NPR, of all venues. "Iraq," he began, "is not Vietnam. And here's why." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0131-30.htm