From Pine View Farm

Fresh Disgust 0

There is an old story about a rock-ribbed New Hampshire Republican.

One day, his neighbor spied him at a Democratic Party rally.

“Zebediah,” said the neighbor, “I didn’t know you had become a Democrat.”

“I ain’t,” said Zebediah. “I just come here to keep my disgust fresh.”

I guess that’s why I read the news.

To keep my disgust fresh. Eugene Robinson (emphasis added):

At least now maybe people will understand what I’ve been saying for months, which is that Bush doesn’t care what anybody else thinks. He doesn’t care that the Iraqi government has failed to meet its political benchmarks. He doesn’t care that Maliki is getting so cozy with the mullahs in Tehran. He doesn’t care that Republicans in Washington are getting so nervous about having to face an election with the war still raging and no end in sight.

Bush laid out his Iraq policy yesterday in plain language, with none of his recent gibberish about al-Qaeda in Pakistan being the same as al-Qaeda in Iraq, only different, but really the same, kind of. This time we heard the classic neocon analysis — the same grand vision that got us into this mess. If Bush hasn’t changed his mind by now, he ain’t gonna.

Bush said we have to stay in Iraq to “change the conditions that caused 19 kids to be lured onto airplanes to come and murder our citizens” — and that’s the heart of the matter. Forget for a moment that Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. The neocon idea is that the only way to eliminate terrorism in the long term is to create democracies that will offer potential terrorists an alternative future of freedom, prosperity and hope.

No one can argue against the flowering of democracy, and the United States should help freedom bloom wherever it can. But what on earth would make Bush — or the neocon ideologues who are his enablers — believe that any nation would appreciate being invaded, occupied for years by tens of thousands of foreign troops and having a particular brand of Western democracy imposed at the point of a gun?

I can’t answer that question. But if you think Bush is going to care what Petraeus’s report says in September, get out of the sun immediately and drink lots of water. You’re delirious.

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