Thoughts on Success

I've been putting this off... I don't like the way I feel about this Administration... I want to admit that perhaps they were right about just plopping our culture and values into a country like Iraq and everyone living happily ever after... I can't do that and it irritates me. This is the guy who was flown out to the Abraham Lincoln on May 2, 2003, to announce "mission accomplished" in Iraq... not that we had Sadam Hussein in custody at the time... or Osama bin Laden for that matter (remember him?... the one who did attack us?). I just can't buy into it.
I think Eric Alterman captured where I'm coming from today. It goes a little deeper maybe... Even if the new Iraqi government goes on to write a beautiful constitution and to hold fair and free elections and survives in peace and prosperity for a thousand years, that does not make invading Iraq right. A happy ending would be nice, but we have not treated others as we would wish to be treated.
If you scroll down in Alterman's blog, you'll notice a letter from Charles Pierce that I'm going to copy here, too. It mirrored my thoughts as I looked at the pictures of people who had walked for hours to stand in line to vote in Iraq. On the best day of George Bush's life all he did was to perhaps hasten their opportunity. Those folks... .whether it was 70% or 50% or 10%... literally walked the walk... no kevlar... no armor... to vote. Bless their hearts.
From Charles Pierce:
You do not own their courage.
The people who stood in line Sunday did not stand in line to make Americans feel good about themselves.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line to justify lies about Saddam and al-Qaeda, so you don't own their courage, Stephen Hayes. They did not stand in line to justify lies about weapons of mass destruction, or to justify the artful dodginess of Ahmad Chalabi, so you don't own their courage, Judith Miller. They did not stand in line to provide pretty pictures for vapid suits to fawn over, so you don't own their courage, Howard Fineman, and neither do you, Chris Matthews.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line in order to justify the dereliction of a kept press. They did not stand in line to make right the wrongs born out of laziness, cowardice, and the easy acceptance of casual lying. They did not stand in line for anyone's grand designs. They did not stand in line to play pawns in anyone's great game, so you don't own their courage, you guys in the PNAC gallery.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line to provide American dilettantes with easy rhetorical weapons, so you don't own their courage, Glenn Reynolds, with your cornpone McCarran act out of the bowels of a great university that deserves a helluva lot better than your sorry hide. They did not stand in line to be the instruments of tawdry vilification and triumphal hooting from bloghound commandos. They did not stand in line to become useful cudgels for cheap American political thuggery, so you don't own their courage, Freeper Nation.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line to justify a thousand mistakes that have led to more than a thousand American bodies. They did not stand in line for the purpose of being a national hypnotic for a nation not even their own. They did not stand in line for being the last casus belli standing. They did not stand in line on behalf of people's book deals, TV spots, honorarium checks, or tinpot celebrity. They did not stand in line to be anyone's talking points.
You do not own their courage.
We all should remember that.