[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
Such was the repeated call by Dick Cheney and George Bush in 1999 to military audiences, even though their own service records were laughable and reeking of cowardice. The assurances were rapturously received nonetheless, for here at least were politicians who honored the butchery and maiming of humans as a profession instead of recoiling from it like those god damn liberals, and if these charlatans didn’t have a clue as to what they were talking about at least their militarism would deliver better pay, living conditions and equipment.
Even in such a wildly militaristic society as the United States its service members will often demand a better validation and condition of life in a way that those who have never worn a uniform will not understand. The work is incredibly hard in a brutal hierarchy designed to wreck a family, but those in service intimately know the Uniform Code of Military Justice is their constitution on active duty, not that quaint parchment thing lawyers argue some useless Bill of Rights endlessly about.
There is no America for those who serve her, and without proper acceptance and understanding it leaves the door wide open to follow and adhere any political movement that alleges to reward that paradox, even if the bearers of alleged good news are totally obvious flakes and liars. Bush and Cheney were and are two such men, and the United States Army and Marine Corps are now undergoing a living hell for making the mistake in 2000 for believing that deliverance had arrived with their particular Republican patina of militarism.
If experiencing the agony of having their own people come home in bags or horribly maimed in countless paths of lifelong pain weren’t bad enough, the Army and Marine Corps now live in a vicious clamp of silence, for Democrats are obsequiously silent for fear they’ll be branded as traitorously disrespectful, while they themselves are chained to silence by their lying masters in a viciously enforced code of hierarchy discipline. A Christian nation a constant handmaiden to murder and maiming, it goes on and on, that’s our American Bush and Cheney Merry Christmas.
This is certainly not what the Army and Marine Corps understood as Help Is On The Way. Tragically, even as the Army is wrecked in equipment and officer retention, it still has the frightening ability to produce a lying political enabler like General Patraeus. Something has gone horribly wrong with the leadership of the Army when it sacrifices its people for lies, yet another crushing burden for our women and men in the service in these terrible times.
How I desperately wish I could stand before American service members with the knowledge my political party had done everything it could to keep this from happening, and was fighting with all it could to stop the insanity now, but of course I can’t. I can say that although the Democrats are letting you down now one of them never, ever would have gone to war with lies like Bush and Cheney have.
Yesterday the Democrats and the entire liberal blog community were thrown a nasty curve, for Bush, incredibly, vetoed the recent Defense Authorization Bill (had service member pay raise in it) for no good reason. Worse, he did it in a mean, immature spiteful way, deliberately designed to humiliate Congress.
No one can offer a rational explanation for this, for no one can ever rationally explain sickness and psychosis, that’s what makes the behavior sick, it’s inherently irrational. Bush is the worst president of all time, deserted by all his old key people, a sick killer intellectual nothing dancing on the strings of that megalomaniac Dick Cheney. The pressure grows by the day and dysfunctional Bush just did something more sick and self-destructive by vetoing the defense bill that was allegedly so critical to America’s security.
An incredible mess, as excellent blogger Steve Benen so aptly observed. Bush is smashing all his political furniture in fits of self-destruction as his utter disaster of a presidency is more of a roaring wreck with each passing day. Somehow the Democrats will find a functional adult to deal with next month in the Bush administration and the bill will pass, with a pay raise for the troops, yes, but no way to stop the insane war in Iraq.
Help will truly be on the way when a Democrat is elected November 2008, circumstances and the country forcing the next president to end the war and occupation in Iraq. It is a screaming disgrace it will take that long for the insanity to end, but, appallingly, it is the best that is to be expected and hoped for in these grim times. It will be hard enough for the Democrats to save the country from Bush’s psychotic behavior--such as yesterday’s veto--in his last year as the worst of all time, that is the best than can be achieved right now.