Antiwar.com Blog

National Review‘s Rod Dreher on Rep. John Murtha’s change of heart:

Don’t know how many of you caught Rep. John Murtha’s very angry, very moving speech just now in which he called on the White House to institute an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. CNN didn’t air the entire thing, but as I listened to it, I could feel the ground shift. Murtha, as you know, is not a Pelosi-style Chardonnay Democrat; he’s a crusty retired career Marine who reminds me of the kinds of beer-slugging Democrats we used to have before the cultural left took over the party. Murtha, a conservative Dem who voted for the war, talked in detail about the sacrifices being borne by our soldiers and their families, and about his visits out to Walter Reed to look after the maimed, and how we’ve had enough, it’s time to come home. He was hell on the president too.

If tough, non-effete guys like Murtha are willing to go this far, and can make the case in ways that Red America can relate to — and listening to him talk was like listening to my dad, who’s about the same age, and his hunting buddies — then the president is in big trouble. I’m sure there’s going to be an anti-Murtha pile-on in the conservative blogosphere, but from where I sit, conservatives would be fools not to take this man seriously.

Jonah Goldberg gets off to a bold start at the LA Times:

What if Bush did lie, big time? What, exactly, would that mean? If you listen to Bush’s critics, serious and moonbat alike, the answer is obvious: He’d be a criminal warmonger, a failed president and — most certainly — impeachment fodder. Even Bush’s defenders agree that if Bush lied, it would be a grave sin.

But they’d be wrong, see, because FDR lied a lot, too.

Even the most cursory reading of any presidential biography will tell you that statesmanship requires occasional duplicity. If great foreign policy could be conducted Boy Scout-style — “I will never tell a lie” — foreign policy would be easy (and Jimmy Carter would be hailed as the American Bismarck). This isn’t to say that the public’s trust should be breached lightly, but there are other competing goods involved in any complex situation. …

If Bush succeeds — still a big if — the painful irony for Bush’s critics is that he will go down in history as a great president, even if he lied, while they will take their paranoia to their graves.

This last bit doesn’t even make sense, of course, because it ain’t paranoia if it’s true, but Goldberg’s butter-fingered grasp of logic is the least of his problems. Great move, LA Times.

Laura Rozen lays into Dick Cheney, and it isn’t pretty:

“The guy supports torture. He hides out in bunkers. He conspires with big oil to deceive the Congress. His chief of staff has been indicted for covering up that office’s role in outing a CIA officer to the media as political revenge. He bought sci fi Iraq intelligence from whoever was selling. He obstructed a Senate Intelligence investigation of pre-war intelligence. Basically, I don’t think the Dems are going to have any problem continuing to let the public know about Cheney, whose popularity rating stands about as high as Saddam’s in Iraq, right? Only in Cheney’s Anbar province, Wyoming and Utah, does his approval rating break 50% …”

Ouch!

If the Republicans want to survive as a party, there’s just one course for the rational amongst them to take. As I put it last month: “Earth to Bush: Ditch Cheney.”

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), in a November 15 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, in Washington, D.C.

“The Iraq war should not be debated in the United States on a partisan political platform. This debases our country, trivializes the seriousness of war and cheapens the service and sacrifices of our men and women in uniform. War is not a Republican or Democrat issue. The casualties of war are from both parties. The Bush Administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge or criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democracy nor what this country has stood for, for over 200 years.”

He also said: “I believe the United States should begin drawing down forces in Iraq next year” — essentially the same position as the bipartisan “Homeward Bound” resolution, which would begin withdrawing U.S. troops “no later than October 1, 2006.”

As antiwar momentum builds, we are beginning to see the reappearance of a species we all thought was extinct: the rational Republicans.

This headline has got to be the stupidest ever: “Bush, Schwarzenegger Flee to World’s Biggest Red State“! So who is ridiculous enough to be red-baiting (albeit semi-humorously) the nation’s two top Republicans? Who else but Arianna Huffington? She’s plastered it in big red letters at the top of her “Huffington Post” website — at a moment when the really big news is that that both parties are readying resolutions setting the stage for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

The really funny part is that, when you click on the headline you’re greeted by an Associated Press story that says: Schwarzenegger Promotes Trade in China. Aha! Obviously it’s all a Commie plot — why, those traders!

The “Huffington Post” was meant to be a left-wing version of the Drudge Report, but it is no such thing. Matt Drudge, whatever his faults, at least has a nose for news: the losers over at Huffpuff wouldn’t know a real news story it grabbed them by the hair, threw them down on the bed, and … well, you get the picture.

Ms. Huffington and her crew are so wrapped up in their California Dreamland of partisan ideology that they have lost whatever connection to reality they once had. Arianna can be a perceptive writer, but as an editor she lacks judgement, i.e. she hasn’t any at all. And I suspect her underlings are worse.

“World’s Biggest Red State” — indeed!

Hollywood actor Bruce Willis, expressing far more displeasure with the Bush administration’s prosecution of the “War on Terror” than he cares to admit, has stepped up to the plate and offered a million dollars for information leading to the capture of al Qaeda leaders such as bin Laden. That’s damned generous of him. Perhaps, if this works, John McClane himself will offer to lead the occupation forces in Iraq in their heroic attempt to crush all resistance to Washington DC.
Wishful thinking. I seriously doubt that the type of fanatic who would fly an airplane into a building is looking for material rewards. Besides, pampered rich-boys like Willis and public war-hawk intellectuals seem perfectly willing to allow someone else to do the killin’ and the dyin’.
Willis, a neocon-ish Republican and Bush supporter, also offered criticism of the press for not reporting “really good things happening in Iraq.” What a shock. Does anyone, anywhere in the world, think the press is doing a good job? Here’s something you never read: “My, my, my, my, my, is the press ever doing a spiffy job reporting on [insert issue here]. And they’re certainly not demonstrating any bias against my point of view, are they?”
Perhaps Willis could elicit the kind of reporting he approves of if he offered a million bucks for it.