Just hit back!

I've been stupefied throughout this Iraq war at some of the rhetoric and analogies being used by President Bush's supporters. For example: Iraq/Saddam is Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo, and postwar Iraq is Japan and/or Germany--it's going to TAKE TIME to build that democracy that's just waiting to be born. Never mind that Saddam was a local despot who was increasingly losing touch with reality, or that Germany was a homogenous, functioning democracy for years prior to Hitler...anyway, and then there is the old war horse recycled from Lyndon Johnson's stable down someplace in Texas: "If we don't fight them in Iraq, we'll be fighting them in the streets of San Francisco"--or is it San Diego, since this incarnation of Republicanism wants to drop the bomb on SF? In any case, you get the drift.

the above is GOP Stupid, Then there's GOP-McCarth-ee, just vicious and aspersion-casting, e.g. John Kerry and John Murtha, sure, they saw combat, but after the first bullets fly, they're cutting and running like the cowards they are. And GOP-rich, really rich, since Karl and co. never heard a shot fired in anger and probably don't know the old adage, "maybe in the next war, we will see that sight unknown in human history, the jingo with a bullet in him." You can try to combat and counter GOP-stupid with op-eds, expert testimony and soapboxes, but it won't be heard on the Rush Limbaugh program and anyway, it won't fit in a 15-second tv report. But you CAN fight GOP-McCarth-ee--with a hard slap back, hard enough to throw the calumnizer back in his or her heels.

Murtha showed everyone how to do this today on the House floor. Some pipsqueak GOP Congressman, probably a southerner, stepped up to the podium during debate on the Iraq "cut and run" resolution and declared that if Murtha had been deciding about the invasion of Normandy or Okinawa, we would all be speaking German or Japanese. That was GOP-Stupid AND GOP-McCarth-ee in one sentence, no mean feat. But Murtha was unimpressed. He asked if the congressman had been at Normandy. No, he hadn't. Okinawa? nope. Did the congressman fight in Vietnam? Uh, no, didn't make it there. Iraq? Well, the congressman had...been there a few times, and you already heard that voice kind of wavering. Sure enough, he ended with a whimper, thanking Murtha for his service while he retreated, tail between his legs. It was a maginificent performance. So the lesson for this day, and all days, of GOP Stupid or GOP-McCarthee is: HIT BACK, as HARD and as OFTEN as you have to. Maybe you will stun them sufficiently to get some brain wave activity.