For 3 years, 8 months and 7 days, the US fought in World War II: from December 7, 1941, the “Day That Will Live in Infamy” to August 14, 1945, VJ Day.
As of this date, November 11, 2006, the US has been engaged in the Iraq War for 3 years, 7 months and 22 days, the time lapsed since March 19, 2003.
The US was engaged in the Korean “Conflict” for 3 years and 1 month, from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953.
In short, the US has waged war in Iraq longer than in Korea and, as of a little after this upcoming Thanksgiving Day, longer than in World War II.
Having resigned as Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and others in the Bush Administration, will lose the immunity traditionally accorded those in senior governmental roles and will be sued shortly in a German court – a German court – for war crimes.
We can expect subpoenas to be issued by the new Democratic majority in regard to falsification of the reasons for going to war as well as the billions in misspent taxpayer funds over the last 3+ years.
Still, the other day, a Boston talk radio host was railing about how the United States’s declaration of war on Iraq was based on so-called world consensus, i.e., the UN’s resolutions against the government of Saddam Hussein.
In point of fact, the UN’s head of weapons inspection, Hans Blix, reported no evidence of WMDs to the UN Security Council on February 14, 2003, over a month before Bush declared war.
This past Tuesday, the majority of the 44.3 percent of eligible voters in the US gave the Democrats the leadership of the House and the Senate, largely as a result of collective disgust with the conduct of the Iraq War and the accompanying evidence of corruption, waste and mismanagement of human life and the public treasury.
Put another way: the majority of the 44 percent that bothered to vote actually assimilated and acted on the truth.
Still, I for one are not doing handsprings, for several reasons. I don’t like the major political parties, neither one of them. The margins of victory, or for that matter defeat, were tiny in a number of races, evidence that this is still a very divided body politic. With Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate, a Republican candidate for President in 2008 will have the advantage.
Still, in the world of reality, the Republicans have blown their so-called Conservative revolution, and at this point, the Democrats may be our best hope for an overdue sea change.
Along those lines, the job-starved upper Midwest wrested itself from the inexplicable Republican hammerlock of 2000 and 2004, making the South and a few renegades (“what’s the matter with Kansas?”) the sources of the GOP’s national strength.
For a stunning graphic study in shifting public sentiment over the last two years, check out the differences in the 2004 and 2006 maps on Princeton’s Purple America site.
So, “what’s the matter with Kansas”?
Do you think Lou Dobbs’s hammering on lost American jobs to cheap overseas sweatshops has had an effect?
And look at what happened in the “Libertarian West”: Montana has a Democratic senator, and compare the 2004 and 2006 maps for Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
In spite of these remarkable shifts in public opinion, after only one merciful day of relatively silent contrition, the far Right is back in the saddle with their vapid, petty sniping, this time, about the fact that Nancy Pelosi was praised by the Washington Post fashion page about wearing an Armani suit to her meeting with Bush.
That’s right, a certain pundit thinks that the public airways with which he is unfortunately entrusted should be employed to opine on matters of great substance like these.
You’d think that after Tuesday, every Republican party shill with a talk show would have learned their lesson: stop the opinions and assertions that have no basis in reason or fact and (by the way) go after the money.
Yes, the money, folks. Look at the maps of the fastest-growing regions in the US and the wealthiest regions of the US. These are no longer in the pocket of the GOP.
The talk show hosts, especially those with national audiences need to get a clue, even if it’s only based on enlightened self-interest: Stop babbling about southern values (religion, morality, tradition) and start hammering on the western ones (freedom, independence, privacy).
And that’s enough for today. Thanks for reading.