THE MORON MAJORITY: An American Warlord Races to Waterloo
My morning wouldn't be complete with a visit to the Jackass File. Ted Rall- the Left's answer to Ann Coulter (another frequent habitue of the Jackass File) is trying to convince us that Shrub's adventure in Iraq is just another trip down the rabbit hole.
[N]o one really believes that the GOP is interested in liberating the oppressed people of Iraq. America's role in the world, after all, typically involves funding dictators--as Bush is currently doing in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan---not democrats.
Like a befuddled chemistry lab student who works backwards from the answer in order to ensure the correct results, the Moron Majority have talked themselves into an excuse they can live with for a war they can't otherwise morally justify. Denial, after all, isn't just a river in Egypt.
By a two-to-one margin, Americans think that their country should adhere to its tradition of attacking other countries in self-defense only, never preemptively. Thirty-seven percent say that they support an invasion of Iraq only with UN approval. This war against Iraq fulfills neither of these conditions, so Americans have managed to morph Bush's insinuations about a Saddam-Al Qaeda link into full-on blame.
Sure, we're about to begin killing innocent men, women and children over in Iraq. It's not self-defense, so let's just call it "vengeance for 9-11." Does that work for you? Great. Osama's gotta be laughing like a hyena now that the heat's off.
There is some good news in all this. I know, "good" is a relative term if you're reading this in a bomb shelter under Baghdad or trapped at your work station under the rubble of an office building some Islamist wired and brought down on your head. But the war on Iraq is likely to lead to the political demise of the man whose evil and illegitimate rule currently represents the greatest threat to stability and peace in the world: George W. Bush.
Well, if I'm going to accuse Ann Coulter of being a clueless mean-spirited troll, I suppose I should extend the same courtesy to Ted Rall. First of all, assuming that this war will lead to the political demise of Shrub is beyond wishful thinking. Don't get me wrong; I would be doing a naked celebration dance in the middle of Hwy. 146 if he were to lose the 2004 election. From where we now sit, though, it's tough to see that happening- unless the Democrats field a candidate with more name recognition than Pee Wee Herman.
I think (well, I HOPE) that most of us are intellgent enough to realize that Saddam Hussein does not equal Osama bin-Laden. There is a different sort of threat accruing from Saddam, and terrorism is only part of the equation. There are those who are convinced that Saddam and Osama are twin sons of different mothers. I guess it just goes to show that not everyone is as enlightened as Rall.
For someone who gained his fame as a political cartoonist, Rall seems hell-bent on establishing his bonafides as a reader of tea leaves. Yes, he understands the pieces of the puzzle, but he doesn't have a clue as to how they will all fit together. None of us do. There are simply too many variables to be able to predict the future in and around Iraq.
Undeterred by all of this, Ted Rall has seen the future, and boy, is it ugly:
By launching an illegal, unsanctioned invasion of a sovereign nation, the U.S. has abandoned its moral standing. We are, by definition, a rogue state. More frightening than that, foreign leaders from Paris to Berlin to Beijing to Moscow are starting to count more on one another than on us. This means trouble for us, sure, but also for Bush as we notice our nation's loss of prestige.
As always, however, the fools will save us from themselves. The 51 percent who currently believe what is patently false will ultimately conclude that they were duped by Bush (though it's not really true). Like stupid Americans before them (those who bought into the Domino Theory, Joe McCarthy and the necessity of interning Japanese-Americans in concentration camps), they'll wonder what the hell they were thinking. And they'll have lots of time to think about it, what with not having a job and all.
Then they'll vote for an Unnamed Democrat, currently leading Bush 48 to 44 percent in the Quinnipiac poll released March 6.
Right. We're mean, nasty, unscrupulous people who will reap the whirlwind and end up with SpongeBob Squarepants as our President (which just might be an upgrade from the current model). Before we begin running in tight circles and broadcasting that the sky is falling, how about we take care of the business at hand first? Yes, Shrub's daddy lost his re-election bid after waging a popular war. His problem, though, was not his conduct of the war, but that he forgot the first rule of Presidential Politics:
I don't think any of us need Ted Rall to remind us of that reality. Time to go back to cartoons, Ted. At least you don't have to make a jackass of yourself to earn a living that way.
