Darkest Instincts
The words of two men separated by almost sixty years, submitted without comment:
Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.
-Karl Rove 6/22/05
Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
-Hermann Goering 4/18/46, when the gig was up
posted by The Cunning Realist at Thursday, June 23, 2005
27 Comments:
I'm a liberal more-or-less. I think Atrios put what I'd like to say in response best,
"For the record, my motives aren't to get more troops killed. If those were my motives I'd ship them off to a war on false pretenses without sufficient equipment to keep them safe." He might have added, "a war in a country whose border is 1000 miles from where the people responsible for the September 11th attacks are."
"Therapy and understanding"? What, does Rove think that every liberal in the US lives in Marin county?
-Jake
TCR, great post.
Now, now, Jake....no need to bring Marin-bashing into this!
Uh, we in Marin were not willing to give the perpetrators of 9/11 peace and comfort. But I don't think that was your point, so I'll let it slide for now.
But I can't say as much for Rove & Dubya. They've had 4 years to capture they guy who was responsible & what do they do? They attack a weakened despot who had nothing to do with it, thus killing and maiming thousands of our kids, not to mention how many others.
This kind of rhetoric from Rove is down right scary.
He's a despicable human being, for all the unthinkable things he has done to McCain, Cleland, and other good people.
Is there a Mrs. Rove? I read some place that his mother committed suicide. You just wonder what creates such a monster.
I read that Rove is the first of his kind, position, like a "political officer", to have his own office in the Whitehouse. Bush called him "the architect" in his acceptance speech. He has an office right next to the Oval office. Bush doesn't do anything, and I mean anything, without consulting Rove. Isn't it amazing the impact one man can have on a party, on our country, on our democracy.
Rove would make Nixon proud, breaking into the Democratic office as a youngster. He honed his criminal skills at the U. Utah --- gee, do the Morans know that:
"Rove enters the University of Utah and joins the College Republicans, who send him to Illinois to work on the successful Senate bid of Ralph Smith. Rove will later admit that during the campaign, he goes into the offices of a Democratic candidate for state treasurer, steals stationery, and uses it to mock up fake invitations advertising a party with "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" -- at the same time as the Democrat's campaign headquarters is scheduled to open. Rove distributes the invitations at hippie communes, concerts, and soup kitchens, and twice as many people as expected show up at the opening."
That doesn't sound like the moral party to me.
Sorry, kindness. No offense intended. It was a bit of rhetorical excess no doubt prompted by my growing up in the east Bay and hearing stories, memories of "The Serial", and reading about a bit of softheaded reasoning by the Ninth Circuit Court yesterday.
-Jake
Scary stuff, TCR. Thanks for the post and the perspective.
That's cool. It is easy to slam Marin. I didn't take it personally. I understand your point & I thought I said as much.
Slightly off point but not really ... I have been looking for a good biography of Geobells, anybody read a good one? All the other nazi bad boys get the academic treatment but Goebell for some reason not so much.
As for Rove, he's a maniac. Or rather a bezerk. You send him in ahead of the troops and hes so nuts he scares the enemy. He is also not doing anything unusual. In fact, he is taking electoral practice to the logical extention of its traditions. Campaign practices have long been dishonest. What example in the past would induce him to behave otherwise? People like Rove are always compared to Nazis. It makes it safe to do so. It makes him a monster and then it easier to forget how close he is to what we irresposibly accept as the norm.
2008 cannot come fast enough.
A 9/11 widow addresses Karl Rove.
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
-- George W. Bush, May 24, 2005.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
-- Joseph Goebbels
Remember when Bush said he was "truly not that concerned" about Bin Ladin in March 2003?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html
Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --
THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.
Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.
So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.
And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.
Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.
But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.
And we've got more work to do. See, that's the thing the American people have got to understand, that we've only been at this six months. This is going to be a long struggle. I keep saying that; I don't know whether you all believe me or not. But time will show you that it's going to take a long time to achieve this objective. And I can assure you, I am not going to blink. And I'm not going to get tired. Because I know what is at stake. And history has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom.
"....when the gig was up."
Indeed.
Interesting, I had never seen that Goering quote before.
Evertime I think of Rove - which I try not to do because he makes me ill - I think of Screwtape and his letters to Wormwood.
I think Rove hit it right on the head, even IF Bush is guilty of all the the things his critics say he is [in regards to the Iraq War] guess what?: We STILL have to win there.
So, breathe deeply, admit you were duped by Dubya and his Machiavellian machinations, and realize that, you know what, I STILL hate Zarqawi and Baathists more than Bush...
"I think Rove hit it right on the head, even IF Bush is guilty of all the the things his critics say he is [in regards to the Iraq War] guess what?: We STILL have to win there."
We do? How is defeat unimaginable? How is it implaussible? How are we supposed to judge what victory is? What the hell are we doing there anyway? We are undersupplied. We are under- intelled. We have few people who speak the language. Most of those problems lead right back to a giddy lack of leadership at the very top and near the top. And almost every expert on the country told us we would be in exactly this situation before we went in. Who the hell is supposed to come up with an idea for getting us out with victory? Anybody who knows the ME has thrown up thier hands. Oh. Except Friedman, our great apologist. We didn't have a plan for victory when we went in. Why should fate grant us anything buy drek.
No. The plausible scenario to everyone who was ever really paying attention was defeat. Say I hate america and all the rest of the infantile verbiage of the so-called conservatives but the facts have always been against this administration whether God said them or GW or who ever the hell is supposed to be leading this cluster ---k.
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I STILL hate Zarqawi and Baathists more than Bush...
How many Americans had Zarqawi killed before March 2003? I believe the number is zero. How many Americans had the Iraqis killed in the decade before March 2003? Again I believe the number is 0. After Clinton levelled the Iraqi intelligence agency they suspended terrorism against the US.
I happen to hate Bin Ladin more than Saddam. After all Bin Ladin nearly killed friends and family of mine. Everyone I knew lived but 3,000 were so lucky. It's nearly four years later and Bin Ladin is still out there. We did not press 100% against Bin Ladin because Bush and Rove and Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted to go into Iraq. All the reasons they used to convince America we needed to go to Iraq have turned out to be false. Hell, Bush put Zarqawi on the map. Bush made Zarqawi a star. Now Zarqawi's organization which was independent of Al Qaeda has now been folded into Al Qaeda. The invasion of Iraq has reinvigorated international jihad like nothing since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Take it to Karl - Karl Rove is dividing our nation with lies and hatred, and now he is attacking our military men and women:
"...the main contrast between liberals who answer the call of duty and Karl Rove, who smears them and participates in endangering them in order to play politics...."
Karl doesn't care about us, our country, or conservative principles; he cares about winning his own political game, whatever that may be, at any expense.
There goes Karl Rove again... with his broad brush he paints anyone who disagrees with the administration's policies as lugubrious liberals.
The Bush administration has been holding an experience-it-yourself course in irony. Let's consider life sacred in its barely manifested state, then send scores of our kids over to Iraq to be killed. Let's talk about spreading freedom and democracy abroad and then stifle civil liberties at home. Mr. Bush is convinced that he is following the orders of the Almighty, Who, I presume, contacts him through his famous "gut."
Mr. Rove plays a key position in Mr. Bush's inner circle; rather than vet ideas coming from the opposition in the name of dialogue, or the interest of hearing out his citizens, the president has withdrawn into a mental bunker of his own making. How pathetic.
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