The following is an e-letter I sent to a "Bushmonger" (They're like warmongers, except they only support righteous Republican wars) following a discussion we'd had on the phone on a weekday morning. I think the topic is relevant enough to share with other "Bushmongers," as well as right-thinking Americans….
Dear Bushmonger,
Sorry about this morning. I will try to avoid getting us into these discussions during work hours. However, if your are reading this at home, now is a good time to ask you…
Did you not support the Bush War II attack on Iraq, beginning with “shock and awe” campaign, with the skyline of Baghdad lit up with all the bombs we dropped on a city of 5 million men, women and children? How many of them do you suppose died in that? Was that a military action that was “forced upon us”? Can you possibly stretch the definition of self-defense to cover that? Who is the aggressor here? Or did Poland really attack Germany in 1939? (Sorry, but you brought up the Neville Chamberlain analogy.)
You can’t have it both ways, my friend. You can’t cheer (or even quietly support) that campaign and then cry “foul!” when someone draws the logical conclusion that you find permissible the killing of sleeping Iraqi civilians for ill-defined goals, based on an imagined threat coming from non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” (Marvelous, magical phrase, that, isn’t it?)
Yes, you assume that our CIA and other government agencies know more than you and I as ordinary citizens do. Right. To quote Ronald Reagan, their problem is not that they’re ignorant, it’s that they know so much that isn’t so. As I referenced in the article on the Rockwell Web site, you read “The Best and the Brightest” by David Halberstam. Have you forgotten the phoniness of the Gulf of Tonkin “incident”? If you look hard enough for a cause for war, you can find one. Or if you’re clever enough, you can manufacture one. I know you lived through Watergate. Yet you still think “I believe my government” is a good enough reason to go to war. (By the way, should the Germans in ’39 have believed their government about the need to go to war? Weren’t they entitled to assume their government knew more about what was going on than they did?)
As for our exchange about believing Michael Moore in "Fahrenheit 911," you still don’t get it. I’ll explain it again. (Please read slowly.) You agreed that the footage we saw of the opening of the “Shock and Awe” campaign was the same footage that had been on our TV screens, courtesy of the Pentagon. (If you’ve changed your mind about that, please say so.) I have yet to see or hear anyone claim that the footage had been doctored by Moore. You saw the tremendous explosions in and over Baghdad, which is, I repeat, a city of 5 million people. You also heard von Rumsfeld say the targets had been chosen “with such meticulous care… So much humanity went into the choosing of these targets.”
So then I asked you, “Who you gonna believe, Rumsfeld or your own eyes?” Now do you see, counselor, why you’re answer – “I’ll believe Rumsfeld before I’ll believe Michael Moore” – is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT! Unless you want to reverse yourself and claim that Moore doctored the footage and we didn’t drop tons of bombs all over Baghdad, then Moore’s credibility had nothing to do with what you saw with your own eyes!
I can understand why Republicans want to focus on Moore’s credibility (or Dan Rather’s), rather than whatever shreds of credibility still remain with the Bush administration on this war. The challenge is still out, my friend: Tell me what that lousy leftist Moore said that is as patently untrue as Rumsfeld’s statement about the weapons of mass destruction: “We know where they are.”
Finally, you said I made fun of you in my Rockwell article. Hell, I didn’t even mention that you were played “Fahrenheit 911” by Britney Spears. (“I just think we should support the President in whatever decision he makes.”)
Spera in Deo! Jack
September 23, 2004
Manchester, NH, resident Jack Kenny (send him mail) is a freelance writer.
