So John Kerry makes what he terms a "
botched joke", one that every sawed-off Republican I've heard has both misinterpreted
and taken out of context and you would have thought the world had exploded. Wherever you look, the right wing is jumping on Kerry as though he had himself stabbed a soldier in the back, only to wipe the dagger off on an American flag. But before I get to my larger point, let me explain something to the
idiot caucus out there. Something that may come as a surprise to many of you who willingly ignore reality. Something that the rest of us have known for quite some time. And that's this:
You're wrong. Not only that, but also this:
You're even dumber than we've given you credit for.Kerry, to those somehow allergic to context, was talking about
the president. Look it up. Just before he made the statement in question, he
discussed the fact that he had just returned from Texas, "Where the president used to live - now he lives in a state of denial." Then, he continued, "Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." So, you see, Kerry wasn't criticizing the troops, calling them stupid. Only stupid people, people like the president and
his base, would think that. Kerry was, quite simply, urging those Pasadena City College students in attendance to make the most of their education. Do that, therefore, and you will succeed. Don't and you'll end up making poor decisions like this president, himself a sub-par student. But Kerry's words, as is often the case with the so-called liberal media and the administration's friends in the right-wing press, were misinterpreted. But that doesn't even matter, something that gets me to my larger point.
Did Kerry's comments change
one thing about the unmitigated disaster this war has been? Did they bring back to life a single American soldier among the
100-plus dead in October or the
nearly 3,000 dead overall? Did they change the fact that President Bush dragged our country off to war -
an unjust war - built on a pack of lies? Did they change the fact that the Republicans who claim to support the troops more accurately support them
with a knife in the back, sending them to Iraq ill-equipped, without a clear mission and without an end in sight? Did they change the fact that it was Bush himself
making jokes at the soldiers' expense by going on a wild goose chase for weapons of mass destruction
around his office? Did they somehow transfer
ownership of this quagmire from the Republicans to the Democrats?
Of course not.So to the Republicans wishing to make this
the dominant campaign story headed into next week's election, I say this:
Bring it on. Bring on any discussion of your failed foreign policy. Bring on any discussion of your abandoning the
real forces behind September 11 to wage preemptive war in Iraq. Bring on any discussion of your not having a sound strategy in Iraq. Bring on any discussion of your not having any shred of an exit strategy. Bring on any discussion of your not supporting the troops. Bring on any discussion of your incompetence, your support of war profiteering, your greater concern for propaganda than the men and women doing your dirty work.
Bring it on. Kerry shouldn't apologize for what he's said. You should apologize for what you've done.
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