Bush gives democracy to Middle East?
Sun Mar 06, 2005 at 06:42:44 PM PDT
The Sunday talk shows made it clear this weekend that Bush is attempting to declare victory in Iraq and to take credit for a sweeping tide of democracy in the Middle East in order to silence critics of his Iraq policy. If Bush can score a victory with the debacle in Iraq, the Republicans will be able to turn Bush into a "great" president and Dems will be on the defense in foreign policy for a long time.
While, we can argue valiantly to the American people that victory has still not been achieved in Iraq, most people just want to move on thinking we won and we would merely come out looking like spoilsports, pessimists, or sore losers if we try to argue that somehow none of it matters because Bush was wrong to invade. I think a better way to go is to argue that Bush is unfairly taking credit for what the people of Iraq, Ukraine, Palestine, and Lebanon have done for themselves. Kind of like Al Gore supposedly saying he "invented the Internet."
We can't let this talking point go unchallenged, so help craft a solution as only the combined might of the pajamahadeen can.
Bush is attempting to silence his critics by declaring a huge victory for his Bush doctrine and to say that the costs of Iraq have been worth it for not only have we toppled Saddam's regime but it seems we have given way to a new dawn of democracy in that troubled are of the world. We must not let this happen for it will hamper Democrats in the realm of foreign policy for years, if not decades, to come.
I think we should rightly point out that the election in Iraq was the result of the desire for change, and that Bush cannot take credit for what the Iraqis did themselves (in fact, in trying to show that security forces are stepping up, I heard a Republican today claim that Iraqis provided the majority of security on election day- this only helps our case).
I am even going to have to make a distasteful analogy here- It's like the Nazis taking credit for giving Jews their own homeland. After all, by perpetrating the Holocaust, Hitler gave rise to an overwhelming desire to secure a Jewish state, so by the GOP's logic, the Jews should be thanking the Nazis for Israel- a flawed analogy perhaps, but an appropriate one if you want to follow the fallacious logic of the Republican talking point.
Don't you think this deserves to be rebutted strongly? Does anyone have any ideas for how best to present the case against Bush?
Permalink | 21 comments