Jon Stewart made some excellent points on the Daily Show tonight that I'd like to share with you. His guest was journalist Christopher Hitchens.
The people who say that we shouldn't fight in Iraq aren't saying it's our fault... [edit] There is reasonable dissent in this country about the way this war has been conducted that has nothing to do with people believing we should cut and run from the terrorists or we should show weakness in the face of terrorism or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves. They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence.
[The president] refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people he needs to convince.
Jon Stewart is, as they say, spot on.
I was never a big fan of the president. Maybe it was the way he handled the ambiguous outcome of the 2000 election, or maybe it was his tone of voice, but I cringed every time I heard him speak. He had an uncanny ability to get under my skin. But it wasn't until around September of 2002 that I started to resent his politics. It was around that time that I can first recall hearing the phrase, "Weapons of mass destruction." From that point on I continued to hear that well-worn phrase over and over again, every single day, from every member of the administration. And that's when my bullshit detector went through the roof.
At that time in my life I had very few preconceived notions about what was right for America, politically. I went about my daily life with confidence that the people in charge - far more intelligent than I - would parse the difficult issues in a way that reflected the will of the people. But that confidence broke when I saw through the marketing campaign that was the buildup to the Iraq war. For the first time I realized that our government officials do not trust 'we the people' with the responsibility to decide what is right for ourselves. What other reason could there be for this marketing blitz? Why did they feel it necessary to sell us this product? And truly, there was no other choice given to us at the time, but to buy it. Sure, there were those among us who felt uneasy being sold this thing, this war. But we were marginalized by the gatekeepers of discourse. We were forced to share our views with each other out of public view, in the back alleys and the dark corners of the world. All we wanted back then was frank, open discussion with everything - the good, the bad, and the ugly - out in the open. It's the same thing we want now. It's a desire to know as much about what's going in the world as possible, so we can try to make informed decisions for ourselves. But that's not what we get from our president. We get platitudes and talking points, and we're left with no hope that anything we say will have any effect on the direction of this country. Jon Stewart understands this, and I can confidently say that he speaks for me.