New targets, bad aim
I’ve got to hand it to Ann Coulter. She actually got through an entire column this week without mentioning her favorite target, Bill Clinton. Maybe she’s enrolled in a 12-step program or something. This week she’s flailing away at MSNBC. It seems MSNBC provides extensive coverage of that “Scooter” Libby trial and, according to Ms. Coulter, “no one else cares about the trial – except presumably “Scooter” Libby.”
Wait just a doggone minute! If nobody cares about the “Scooter” Libby trial, why has Ann Coulter devoted her last two columns, 1,922 words and endless cheap shots carrying on about that very subject? She knows that a guilty verdict in the trial makes her favorite president and vice-president look mighty, mighty bad. That’s why!
That’s enough about Ann Coulter’s new obsession with MSNBC and “Scooter” Libby. I don’t want her driving to Fayette County wearing a diaper with a map to my house.
I’ve got other stuff to talk about this week, and I’m going to do it.
Allow me to draw you a mental picture. Let’s say you’re engaged in a street fight. Let’s say you sucker punch the other person and they say, “Oh My! I didn’t know you could hit that hard. That hurt.” (Stay with me now) Would you say that response “emboldened” you? Of course it would. You’d haul off and punch that person again, for good measure.
So, when the president of the United States, his Press Secretary Tony Snow, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and all of those people in congress keep reminding us that we underestimated the will, determination and the resources of the insurgency – they’re really saying, “Oh My! I didn’t know you could hit that hard. That hurt.” They’re the ones “emboldening” the enemy.
Those people who continue to unflinchingly support the president’s 21,500-troop surge are quick to point out how opposition to it is “emboldening” the enemy. To those Bush supporters, anything but blind faith in this plan should be called treasonous.
They’re trying to convince the American public that the insurgents are sitting over there reading the Congressional Record every morning over breakfast. That they’re paying so much to America’s growing opposition to the war, they’re getting trigger-happy. Well, they’ve been trigger-happy all along. It’s just that the Bush Administration didn’t want to admit it.
In recent months, George Bush and his merry band of finger pointers have trotted out new ways to avoid having fingers pointing at them.
Whenever somebody even hints there’ve been mistakes made regarding anything leading up to and in Iraq, they’ve defaulted to that tired old “underestimated the will, the determination and resources of the enemy” argument.
Now, I’m thinking the insurgency just loves that kind of PR. If they could have bought air time during the recent Super Bowl, they could have put together one of doozy of a commercial: “President George W. Bush says we’ve got will, we’ve got determination, and we’re resourceful. We’re the insurgency. And we mean business!”
I can imagine the next day the president would hold a news conference and say, “See, I told you they were resourceful.”
None of these claims about “emboldening” the enemy could be made if the people making them would have ever been in a street fight, instead of seeking the refuge of repeated deferments or their daddies.
Those same people hint that calls for some form of scaling down of U.S. involvement in that civil war in Iraq, is really giving aid and comfort to the enemy. But what about giving aid and comfort to the U.S. military?
The will, determination and the resources of the American people have diminished for matters involving Iraq. If the current resident of the White House were really paying any attention, he’d see America is “emboldened” to look elsewhere for solutions to it.
Edward A. Owens of Uniontown is Webmaster of “Red Raider Nation: Where Champions Live.” E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.