Soapbox

Not 20 Questions- just One.

This month America has watched the unfolding spectacle of one small woman facing off against one big lie. Cindy Sheehan lost her son Casey in Iraq in 2003. So for the month of August, while President Bush spends an unprescedented 5 weeks on vacation, she and a growing band of supporters are camped out a short distance from Bush’s “ranch”, waiting for the President to answer a simple question she would like to ask.

“You said that my son and others died for a noble cause, Mr. President. Please explain to me what that cause is.”

Seems pretty straight-forward to me, but the president won’t speak with her, and the right has set their attack dogs on Mrs. Sheehan. She has been called a “moonbat” and “unhinged”, a “tool of the hard left” and even a traitor… because she has a question and she thinks the president owes her an answer.

The problem is, the more they think about it, the more a lot of America realizes that they have the same question. George Bush is launching a 5 day “War-a-palooza” tour, not to answer those nagging questions, but to try to “sell” the war. I suspect he will have all the sucess he had selling social security privatization, because he’s offering excuses and evasion, not answers. He kicked the whole thing off by once again equating 9/11 with the war in Iraq and saying that America must allow the troops to complete their mission. But no one seems to be able to tell us exactly what that mission is!

So, in honor of the fact that the conservatives are telling us that it is un-American to disagree with the president, here’s a little quiz for America I like to call “Name that Hypocrite”. Ready?

Who said,
“I cannot support a failed foreign policy. .. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions…. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep… There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today.”

Wow-pretty un American to question a president about his war objectives, huh? I mean, we’re all supposed to support him in a time of war and shut our mouths, right? So who’s the nitpicker? Was it:

A) Cindy Sheehan, the American traitor
B) Howard Dean, the unhinged lunatic
C) Tom DeLay, (R.- Texas) who now acts like it is treason to question the president, talking about then-President Bill Clinton’s Kosovo strategy.

Think you know the answer? Here’s another. Who said,
“(The President) is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He is yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And, he has not informed our nation’s armed forces about how long they will be away from home.”

Was it:
A) Michael Moore, treasonous America-hater,
B) Dennis Kucinich, lefty peacenick
C) Senator Rick Santorum, (R-Penn.) on why he voted against military action in Kosovo.

If you answered “C” to both, Congratulations! You have not been taken in by the hypocritical right’s pretense that democrats invented things like the filibuster and questioning the president.

One more question: Why were such questions reasonable then but treasonous now? Let me know if you come up with a good answer for that one. In the meantime, I’m with Cindy:

Just answer the question, Mr. President!