In every war, there are those unscrupulous businessmen--mere human leeches--who turn the misery and destruction of war into fat profit margins; this piece is not about them. In every significant political conflict, politicians and leaders of every stripe have become enflamed with emotion and, losing all perspective, made extremist claims about their domestic opponents; this piece is not about these figures.
That political debates often devolve into personal defamation is not news; and neither is the fact that every war allows the immoral to profit. However, in the past few years, a new innovation in illicit profiteering has emerged--specifically in the form of those politicians who seek to use war for political profit by smearing their domestic opponents as traitors to everything their country stands for.
Most Americans can agree on what is to be done with the businesspeople who make exorbitant profits on black markets, or in supplying weaponry for ludicrous profits during wartime. These people or businesses should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Most Americans also agree as to how deeply we should hold it against our leaders if they lose perspective during a political dogfight and malign their opponents unfairly; they should be remembered for their passion as well as their achievements, but not for the mud they have slung.
Ann Coulter, the Paris Hilton of political commentary, has made a career in recent years mining this specific meme--with a recent book claiming that the very essence of liberalism is treason. But such extremist rhetoric is by no means confined to Ms. Coulter's forked tongue--up and down the ranks of the Bush administration and the "conservative" media, this potent political weapon has been used (in a Machiavellian fashion) to bludgeon both liberals and the Democratic party at the expense of the virtuous Republicans.
Most recently, former Speaker Newt Gingrich joined a number of prominent conservatives in comparing Osama Bin Laden's recent message to the responsible criticisms of prominent Democrats by saying that our enemies "take great comfort" in our "free society and open debate". Bush himself asked Democrats to "conduct the debate [on the War on Terror] responsibly". He did so by warning them not to criticize him in any way that might give "comfort to our adversaries", alluding to the legal definition of treason. There is little reason to remind our fellow countrymen not to side with an enemy that hates our very essence, unless of course, we are trying to insinuate that these fellow citizens are "fellow travelers". As the patron saint of conservatism, Edmund Burke himself, has said: "The critics of democracy can be its greatest friends, but only when they are within the fold, for then they criticize the existent by the standards of the ideal; they don't oppose the ideal itself." It is hard to argue (though Coulter and other manage to) that Democrats oppose liberal democracy as the ideal form of American government is labeled. The president certainly suggests that Democrats oppose his "ideal"--though this ideal seems to have less to do with democracy and more to do with executive prerogative.
These insinuations are merely a recent example of an organized campaign to repeatedly link the Democratic party with twin specters of terrorism and treason, by directly and indirectly suggesting that they sympathize with terrorists. From the 2002 Georgia campaign where Senator Max Cleland was pictured next to Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in attack ads, to Karl Rove's remarks this past year pretending that liberals wanted to "offer therapy and understanding" to the 9/11 hijackers, the Republican party has shamelessly, knowingly and deliberately exploited the horrendous attacks on September 11 and rhetorically portrayed the Democratic party as a proponent for anti-American terrorism.
Abraham Lincoln famously explained that no one could "fool all of the people all of the time". For almost five years now, the Republican party has adopted an oftentimes explicit strategy of using the War on Terror for political gain. Karl Rove issued memos telling congressmen to use the war to push for unrelated domestic programs and then staged the Republican Convention near Ground Zero in September to distract the public from the misguided events that followed this unprovoked attack. Thus conservatives and Rove managed to prevent the 2004 presidential election from turning into a referendum on the conduct of the war, or even a debate on how best to secure American lives, by rhetorically linking Senator Kerry with Bin Laden and tarring his military record. All the while, Rove and his allies credited the president with America's unification in the face of Islamist evil, in the face of the terror that individuals inspire when they give their earthly lives away for what they assume will be a pleasant afterlife. In the days after 9/11, we united as Americans because we were faced with evil, faced with an enemy who did not respect our common values; we rallied around a president who had never attempted to represent all Americans--only Republicans; after the attacks, Bush was unable to meet his domestic challenge, to channel the force of a united America to seek just revenge and prevent another such tragedy; in the months after 9/11, it was the tactics of the Bush administration that once again divided us into factions as it pretended that the essence of the American dream was tax cuts and pork barrel spending, big business and big government, an Orwellian security apparatus spying on us all while national decisions were made behind closed doors.
Reasonable people can disagree on the most effective means of protecting national security; they can also disagree on what actions are within the bounds of morality and sound judgment in responding to a crisis. They can disagree as to what extent a president should assert his executive privilege in times of crisis.
And those who disagree have a responsibility to speak of their concerns. This is the weakness and the strength of any democracy, as matters of national importance are discussed and then made in public, in front of both enemies and friends. Edmund Burke, the great statesman that he was, knew this and thus respected his opponents. The Bush administration has made no attempts to prosecute liberals for "aiding and comforting the enemy"; they have not done so because they know that they neither have a legal case nor a political one to stifle such domestic dissent. Yet even while knowing this, they have used every American soldier killed in Iraq and every innocent who perished on 9/11 as a shield against rightful criticism (of their incompetence, of their honest mistakes, of their blatant partisanship). At the same time, they have used these lives they claim to hold sacred as a tool to consolidate their power and to push their partisan domestic agenda.
Just two days ago, Rove tried to distance himself from this campaign that he started--saying that liberal views do not make one "unpatriotic", just cowardly appeasers who want to "cut and run". Of course, he framed all this within a plea for political civility and vowed to use the War on Terror as a political weapon again in 2006. But perhaps we can read something hopeful in Rove's attempt to deny responsibility for the smears of treason--perhaps Rove has found that this particular political weapon is losing its power. Perhaps Rove has realized the truth of the first Republican's aphorism.
In any case, after four years of constant slurs and smears, we now have a new understanding of what it means to be a war profiteer. And Karl Rove and much of the Republican party in Washington today should be ashamed that they are its new face.
Got more like this, but a warning--I'm not a typical Kossack. I'm certianly looking for any kind of feedback...
If you want, check this out: Oceanside Politics