Sunday, June 26, 2005
Sunday reading
Remember, when I decided I could read Richard Cohen, again? Well, he keeps getting better and better. This column appeared in my local paper, this morning:
The Other Guy's Sacrifice
...Still, Hussein is gone. "Was it not worth at least some sacrifice to remove such a man from power?"...
...The quote is from a June 19 Post op-ed by Robert Kagan, one of the most thoughtful and influential of the pro-war foreign policy intellectuals. I read that sentence with the eyes of my late friend. I know Dunne would have pounced on it, clipped it from the paper and called someone to ask precisely who or what Kagan was willing to "sacrifice."...
Charley Reese was on fire, too, with his column:
The Democratic Party has a simple problem: Its leaders lack the courage and vision to come up with defensible alternatives to the policies of the Bush administration.
...What is the Democrats' position on the war, which most of them voted for? Well, now that we are there, we have to stay. A young GI sweltering in the heat of Iraq would be justified in saying, "What is this 'we' business?"...
Of course, Molly Ivins is always a must read:
Don't Dismiss Downing Street
...Here are some aggravating factors. Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote that "liberals" no longer want to talk about the war because we were against it to start with and probably hope it ends in disaster. Good Lord, who does he think we are? Does this man actually think we are out here cheering every time another American is killed?
Mr. Friedman, real, actual, honest-to-God American liberals are out here in the heartland, and we know the kids who are dying in Iraq. They are from our hometowns. We know their parents. That's why we hate this war. That's why we tried to tell everybody else it was a ghastly idea.
We are not sitting here gloating because it is the horrible mess we said it would be. We're in agony. There is nothing pleasurable about being a Cassandra...
...The second aggravation is that the very prestigious papers that are now dismissing the Downing Street Memos have already themselves admitted that their pre-war coverage was -- I don't know, you pick the adjective. Slack? Inadequate? Less than rigorous? Wrong? And now they're saying, oh hell, this isn't news, we knew it all along...
Robert Scheer had a goodie, too:
Bush's GOP Allies Finally Breaking Ranks on Iraq How best to support our troops in Iraq? By sacrificing more of them in a war that should never have been launched and has no end in sight, or by bringing them home?...
...Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, was even more blunt: "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse," he told U.S. News and World Report, as the latest suicide bombings claimed the lives of dozens of Iraqis. "The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."..
This was my Sunday morning reading. I enjoyed all four columns. They all raised the same type of thoughts I have had about the whole "war" situation. They, of course, put their thoughts into great words.
Oh, yeah, remember, how back in May, I was talking about one of the "Opus" cartoons by Berkeley Breathed? I found the cartoon: Opus at the coffee shop.
The Other Guy's Sacrifice
...Still, Hussein is gone. "Was it not worth at least some sacrifice to remove such a man from power?"...
...The quote is from a June 19 Post op-ed by Robert Kagan, one of the most thoughtful and influential of the pro-war foreign policy intellectuals. I read that sentence with the eyes of my late friend. I know Dunne would have pounced on it, clipped it from the paper and called someone to ask precisely who or what Kagan was willing to "sacrifice."...
Charley Reese was on fire, too, with his column:
The Democratic Party has a simple problem: Its leaders lack the courage and vision to come up with defensible alternatives to the policies of the Bush administration.
...What is the Democrats' position on the war, which most of them voted for? Well, now that we are there, we have to stay. A young GI sweltering in the heat of Iraq would be justified in saying, "What is this 'we' business?"...
Of course, Molly Ivins is always a must read:
Don't Dismiss Downing Street
...Here are some aggravating factors. Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote that "liberals" no longer want to talk about the war because we were against it to start with and probably hope it ends in disaster. Good Lord, who does he think we are? Does this man actually think we are out here cheering every time another American is killed?
Mr. Friedman, real, actual, honest-to-God American liberals are out here in the heartland, and we know the kids who are dying in Iraq. They are from our hometowns. We know their parents. That's why we hate this war. That's why we tried to tell everybody else it was a ghastly idea.
We are not sitting here gloating because it is the horrible mess we said it would be. We're in agony. There is nothing pleasurable about being a Cassandra...
...The second aggravation is that the very prestigious papers that are now dismissing the Downing Street Memos have already themselves admitted that their pre-war coverage was -- I don't know, you pick the adjective. Slack? Inadequate? Less than rigorous? Wrong? And now they're saying, oh hell, this isn't news, we knew it all along...
Robert Scheer had a goodie, too:
Bush's GOP Allies Finally Breaking Ranks on Iraq How best to support our troops in Iraq? By sacrificing more of them in a war that should never have been launched and has no end in sight, or by bringing them home?...
...Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, was even more blunt: "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse," he told U.S. News and World Report, as the latest suicide bombings claimed the lives of dozens of Iraqis. "The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."..
This was my Sunday morning reading. I enjoyed all four columns. They all raised the same type of thoughts I have had about the whole "war" situation. They, of course, put their thoughts into great words.
Oh, yeah, remember, how back in May, I was talking about one of the "Opus" cartoons by Berkeley Breathed? I found the cartoon: Opus at the coffee shop.
