[Peace-discuss] Lies and Misdemeaners

[Brussel Morton K.]

On the topic of "Joe" Wilson and his outbursts.

…Of course there are very good reasons for people to be angry today.  
The United States is still fighting two wars. The recession continues  
to hit hard. And the government sometimes seems more concerned about  
bailing out banks and defense contractors than helping working people.  
If the populist left doesn't focus this anger on the appropriate  
targets, then the populist right will channel it in racist,  
xenophobic, and paranoid directions.

One of those appropriate targets should be the war in Afghanistan and  
the Obama administration's decision to kick U.S. involvement up a  
notch. …

Here's the complete article.
Lies and Misdemeanors

Last week, I inadvertently found myself back in second grade. This is  
how it happened.

I recently published an essay on the tradition of suicide missions in  
the West that generated a lot of letters, some of them negative. But  
even the detractors generally respected the norms of polite discourse.  
Then, last week, several conservative blogs picked up on the article,  
and the tone of the letters became considerably more aggressive.  
Suddenly, as several emails informed me, I was a "boob," a "libtard,"  
"pond scum," and providing "moral support to terrorists."

For a brief moment, in other words, I was caught up in the rabid  
right's crusade to find vulnerable targets under their new banner of  
"one, two, many Van Jones." Since I'm not in a position of particular  
power - and thus not worth the bloggers' frenzy - the frothing beast  
held me in its jaws only briefly before dropping me relatively  
unscathed and moving on to a worthier victim. For those few moments,  
though, I was sorely tempted to respond in kind. My inner second- 
grader was yearning to come out and play.

"Extremism in the cause of liberty is no vice," Republican  
presidential hopeful Barry Goldwater once said, "and moderation in the  
defense of freedom is no virtue." The heirs of Goldwater certainly  
took this maxim to heart over the last week as they brought American  
politics down to the second-grade level for us all. They claimed their  
first victim - Van Jones, the green jobs "czar" in the Obama  
administration - for the "crimes" of signing a petition, uttering an  
epithet, and supporting a death row inmate. Then the "tea-baggers"  
poured into the streets of DC in the tens of thousands last Saturday  
with placards denouncing socialist health care (if only), tax hikes  
(Obama actually implemented a tax cut for the middle class), and big  
government (no one seemed bothered by record Pentagon spending). They  
expressed their support for "Joe" Wilson - real name Addison Graves  
Wilson, Sr. - who behaved like a bully in the back row of class when  
he shouted "You lie!" at the president during his health care speech  
in Congress.

This extremism of emotions is accompanied by an extremism of beliefs:  
Obama is not an American citizen, he supports "death panels," Mexico  
is poised to retake the Southwest with the help of illegal immigrants,  
and so on. This lunatic fringe, aided and abetted by savvy  
conservative organizations and their media darlings, isn't interested  
in debate. It's out for blood.

Popular anger is nothing new. For eight years, large numbers of  
Americans were in a perpetual state of outrage at the Bush  
administration. "They lied, people died," was a popular bumper sticker  
of the era. Democrats howled during Bush's 2005 State of the Union  
address. But, as New York Times columnist Gail Collins points out,  
"The difference between that and 'You lie!' is about the same as the  
difference between calling an opponent wrong and accusing him of  
'hatred of America' as Wilson did in a TV debate with a congressman  
opposed to the Iraq War."

We have our anger, and we have our lunatic fringe too. (I am, for  
instance, heartily sick of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.) But during  
the Bush years we were protesting against a presidential team that  
broke laws and indulged in lies so huge they changed the rules of  
geopolitics. Bush administration policies led to more American  
casualties than 9/11 and a ghastly number of civilian deaths in  
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. What comparable misconduct brought  
the crowds to Washington on Saturday? A plan to address the obvious  
flaws of our health care system. The mismatch between policy and  
protest is almost satirical. Moreover, as Michael Kazin points out  
inThe Nation, the conservatives are tilting at the same windmills that  
they helped construct: "[T]he very ineptitude of conservative  
governance in the recent past makes Americans more open to the right's  
arguments now that it is out of national power. Why trust the federal  
state to do anything it promises?"

Of course there are very good reasons for people to be angry today.  
The United States is still fighting two wars. The recession continues  
to hit hard. And the government sometimes seems more concerned about  
bailing out banks and defense contractors than helping working people.  
If the populist left doesn't focus this anger on the appropriate  
targets, then the populist right will channel it in racist,  
xenophobic, and paranoid directions.

One of those appropriate targets should be the war in Afghanistan and  
the Obama administration's decision to kick U.S. involvement up a  
notch. As Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan points out,  
the administration's policy is founded on several myths: that it's a  
war of necessity, that counterinsurgency can work, that NATO is behind  
us. Those myths stand in stark contrast to the reality. "The Karzai  
government has stolen the election," he writes in Afghanistan: What  
Are These People Thinking? "The war has spilled over to help  
destabilize and impoverish nuclear-armed Pakistan. The American and  
European public is increasingly opposed to the war. July was the  
deadliest month ever for the United States, and the Obama  
administration is looking at a $9 trillion deficit."

In the next month, the peace movement will step up efforts to stop the  
war. Code Pink is organizing a national week of media action this  
week. United for Peace and Justice is planningevents for October 7,  
the eighth anniversary of the war's start.

But even as we mobilize for our actions and demonstrations, there also  
has to be room for civil debate and discussion, which are the  
lifeblood of democracy. Thanks to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and  
"Joe" Wilson, our democracy has suffered an embolism, and our  
capacities for speech have sadly deteriorated.

Saturday Night Live once featured a Point-Counterpoint between Dan  
Aykroyd and Jane Curtain that quickly devolved into Aykroyd's infamous  
tagline: "Jane, you ignorant slut." Yesterday's satire has become  
today's headlines. The fine art of argument is dead. In its place, we  
must endure playground taunts and invective.
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