Wasn't one of the Colt handguns known as The Peacekeeper? Sometimes keeping peace means to interrupt a pattern of violence and, more often than not, that entails a violent involvement to get to that place.
Support for this war is not waning due to the nature of the initiation but due to the pain of the daily reports of dying.
Saddam had never started any sort of violence toward the U.S. He was incapable of starting it at the time of our invasion. There was relatively little violence going on inside Iraq as well. It is ludicrous to compare Iraq pre-invasion, and Iraq now, and say that we've been keeping the peace. But it doesn't matter. That isn't what Bush said. The gun was called the 'peacemaker' I believe. That implies that there is already violence, and the gun will end it. Keeping the peace is the exact opposite of disrupting the peace. Bush disrupted it.
The New McCarthyism By E. J. Dionne Jr. Tuesday, June 28, 2005; Page A15 In the 1950s the right wing attacked liberals as being communists. In 2005 Karl Rove has attacked liberals as being therapists. Thus is born a kinder and gentler form of McCarthyism. Named after the late Sen. Joe McCarthy, who never let the facts get in the way of his lust to charge liberals with sedition, McCarthyism has come to mean "guilt by association." What gave McCarthyism its power was the fact that the senator from Wisconsin did not invent the danger posed to the United States by Soviet communism. The Soviet Union was a real threat, and there were real communist spies working in America. What made McCarthy and his allies so insidious was their eagerness to level the "soft on communism" charge against even staunchly anticommunist liberals. One of them was Secretary of State Dean Acheson, an architect of Harry Truman's tough policy of containing Soviet power. In the 1952 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon pounded Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson for earning a "PhD from Dean Acheson's College of Cowardly Communist Containment." The McCarthyites' real enemies were not communists but the New Deal liberals who had dominated U.S. politics for 20 years. The McCarthy crowd was willing to divide the nation at a time of grave international peril if that's what it took to beat the liberals. Rove's instantly famous speech last week to the New York State Conservative Party should be read in light of this history and not be written off as a cheap, one-time partisan attack. On the contrary, the address by Rove, President Bush's most important adviser, provides the outlines of a sophisticated strategy aimed at making liberals and Democrats all look soft on terrorism. Here are the key passages: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and 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. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban; in the wake of 9/11, liberals believed it was time to submit a petition. . . . Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said: 'We will defeat our enemies.' Liberals saw what happened to us and said: 'We must understand our enemies.' " Liberals and Democrats were enraged by Rove because virtually every officeholding liberal and Democrat closed ranks behind President Bush on Sept. 11. They endorsed the use of force against the terrorists and, when the time came, strongly backed the war in Afghanistan. But Rove knows how to play this game. The only evidence he adduces for his therapy charge is a petition in which the current executive director of MoveOn.org called for "moderation and restraint" in the wake of Sept. 11. Rove then slides smoothly from the attack on MoveOn to attacks on Michael Moore and Howard Dean. Finally, Rove tosses in an assault on Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) for his statement that an FBI report on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, might remind Americans of the practices of Nazi and communist dictatorships. In the ensuing controversy, Rove's defenders cleverly sought to pretend that there was nothing partisan about Rove's speech. "Karl didn't say 'the Democratic Party,' " insisted Ken Mehlman, the Republican national chairman. "He said 'liberals.' " It must have been purely accidental that one of the "liberals" mentioned was the Democratic national chairman and another was the Senate Democratic whip. It must also have been accidental that both of them, like most other liberals, supported the war in Afghanistan, not therapy. At the time, Durbin called the war "essential." On Friday White House spokesman Scott McClellan narrowed the Rove attack even more. McClellan found it "puzzling" that Democrats were "coming to the defense of liberal organizations like MoveOn.org and people like Michael Moore," when in fact Democrats were coming to their own defense. McClellan also ignored what Mehlman had conceded the day before -- and what the text of Rove's remarks plainly shows: that Rove was attacking liberals generally, not just these two targets. That's how guilt by association works. Make a charge and then -- once your attack is out there -- pretend that your words have been misinterpreted. Split your opponents. Put them on the defensive. Force them to say things like: "No, we're not soft on terrorism," or, "I'm not that kind of liberal." Once this happens, the attacker has already won. Respectable opinion treats Rove's speech as just another partisan flap. It's much more. It's the reincarnation of a style of politics that turns political opponents into traitors or dupes who are soft on the nation's enemies. Welcome back to the '50s. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/27/AR2005062701317.html
No, it's the combination. People die in war - that is tragic, but expected. However, soldiers dying in a war based on lies, with no discernable benefit or merit, tends to make people bitter about the casualties. You can't have it both ways: "Realities of war" (as you are fond of saying) can't be both unavoidable and unlamentable. New information can and will change what people believe and support. It's sad that you focus your disgust at those who lament the unnecessary death, rather than on those who caused it.
It is no coincidence that as concrete proof emerges that Bush lied about his intentions with Iraq before the war, and Cheney is running around saying the insurgency is in its last throes, and that gitmo prisoners have everything they could possibly want, that support for the war is falling. I'm suprised they were able to sucker as many people as they did for as long as they did, but it is finally catching up to them. I don't think people need a timetable on when troops would be pulled out, but a concrete objective would be helpful. So far the only objective and way to measure success is when this mythic democratic utopia in Iraq is established and stable. That isn't going to happen. The administration should have clear realistic examples of what needs to be accomplished in order for the troops to come home. Part of it is due to the casualties. There is nothing wrong with that. When people are dying for something that is unclear, and they were mislead about they should stop supporting the action. Since the Iraq invasion, our reputation has been tarnished, the credibility of this administration has flown out the window if not the U.S. as a whole, in war against terrorism where our best hope is to work with allies and friends around the world, we have fewer friends and have sewn distrust among many friends that we once had. The way the administration deals with it isn't to listen to our allies, it is to insult them, and try to bully people into doing whatever we say. That isn't the way to treat friends. Terrorism hasn't decreased, it is increased. The invasion has had many negatives and the only possible positive is that Saddam is gone. However when the people in charge now are continuing to torture, lock people up without charging them with anything or giving them a trial, there is little difference.
As par the norm, FB has said it better than I could. Unfortunately, I feel that these eloquent arguments will fall on deaf ears.
Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly Like judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But i see through your eyes And i see through your brain Like i see through the water That runs down my drain You fasten the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion As young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud You've thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood That runs in your veins How much do i know To talk out of turn You might say that i'm young You might say i'm unlearned But there's one thing i know Though i'm younger than you Even jesus would never Forgive what you do Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul And i hope that you die And your death'll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And i'll watch while you're lowered Down to your deathbed And i'll stand o'er your grave 'til i'm sure that you're dead
