Hardly a day goes by these days that you don't hear someone (usually a politician) complaining about someone "politicizing" some issue. The latest flap is Republicans claiming that Democrats are polticizing a review of prewar intelligence in Iraq. (See
here.)
I'd like to ask something basic here: what do the Republicans have against politics? Why shouldn't important public issues be dealt with politically?
We live in a democracy -- an imperfect one, perhaps, but a democracy nonetheless.
Democracies must make decisions. How do they do it? Well, politics.
Politics is the process through which democracies make decisions. That's all.
If someone is saying that an important issue which involves making judgements and decisions should "not be politicized", it usually means that they don't want those judgements and decisions to be made democratically...