Calling Their Bluff
MichaelW on May 24 2007 at 8:01 pm | Filed under: Domestic Politics, History, Media, MichaelW's Page, Notes on the war
One of the aspects of blogging and commenting on political topics that I find quite overwhelming sometimes is tackling the vast amounts of disinformation and false premises that form the basis of a good number of arguments. It gets tiring 
having to continuously find the links to the same real sources, or to once again put together the actual chain of events, or what have you. Suffice it to say that I have passed on more comments and blog posts than I have written because I was awed by the sheer enormity of re-salting old ground, which should be devoid of any life by now, just so I could establish a common basis of argument.
Invariably, debate with anyone on any topic concerning Bush is rife with tropes and conventional wisdom. Hacking through the tall grass of bumper-sticker arguments (”Bush lied! People died!”; “selected, not elected!”; “No blood for oil!”; etc.), and media-enhanced myths (”Bush was AWOL!“) is both tiresome and annoying. Unfortunately, those who most fervently push such arguments and myths comprise the netroots crowd, who happen to have a great deal of influence over the Democratic majority in Congress. Accordingly, the national legislative agenda is largely driven by the Hobbesian maelstroms emanating from those who seek to destroy their political enemies at the expense of their own country.
One method of accomplishing this goal, which is very popular amongst the netroots populous, is to impeach Pres. Bush (or perhaps VP Cheney). To their credit, the Democrats have mostly resisted such calls thus far, but the chorus continues to grow.
The Anchoress takes a different tact in her post “Let’s do it; let’s Impeach Bush” (HT: PJM). In her post, the Anchoress encourages Pelosi and pals to go right ahead and start the impeachment process, so that we finally get all of those false premises on the record, and have the political version of a no-holds-barred cage match (all go in; one comes out):
Please. Impeach the president. Do it. Bring all of your accusations, narratives, memes, large conspiracy theories and small distrusts, petty dislikes and visceral hatreds. Let’s make it a very thorough impeachment, with long, hard looks and bright, hot lights, and everyone under oath and on the record! You won’t mind if - once we finally lance the purulent boil that is George W. Bush - some of the pus splashes up on you, will you? For the good of the nation?
The Anchoress helpfully provides a list of several of the most prominent anti-Bush memes and either links to various sources debunking them or 
spells out the logical reasoning undermining the less well-conceived memes. For example:
2) Bush Lied Us Into War!
Let’s have President Clinton, Senator Clinton, John Kerry, , Edward Kennedy, Madeline Albright, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha, Sandy Berger and all the rest (including - again - the NY Times) testify - under oath - that when they were telling the world - from 1998 right up to the Iraq invasion - that Saddam Hussein “had WMD†and given half a chance would “use them,†and that the intelligence they saw from President Bush and SecState Powell either was (as Sen. Clinton said) “consistent with the intelligence we saw in the White House [from 1998-2000],†or it was not. Let them testify that they were telling the truth then, or that they were lying through their teeth, all along and the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act was mere hogwash. Oh and, when they voted for the war, they didn’t actually mean it, too.
Let’s get it on the record, and settled once and for all. And while we’re at it, let’s shine a little light on some real voter fraud.
As they say, read the whole thing.
Technorati Tags: Impeachment, President Bush, Rathergate, netroots, political arguments, anti-Bush memes
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One thing is common to all these leftwingnuts is they are suffering from, “Bush Displacement Syndrome”
You forgot,
Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here
Freedom isn’t free
Stay the course
We’re turning a corner in Iraq
We win, they lose
The smoking gun of a mushroom cloud
And many more “tiresome and annoying†bumper sticker arguments.
But by all means, don’t let those bumper sticker arguments get in your way of chasing the bogeymen from underneath your bed.
Netroots… Scary stuff. Just look at the impact they’re having on… no wait… nevermind.
Is this request by you and the anchor lady limited to only liberal “netroots†people?
Or can we impeach or discredit all of them and call it a day?
While I rarely encounter (nor do I make) such arguments, I think it’s fair to say that the left has cornered the market on bumperstickerisms (look at me, I made up a word!).
Not according to everyone’s favorite sycophant.
And in the comments to that post:
On the main, I agree with you that the netroots are a lot of noise without a great deal of influence, but they do have the ear of Congress, and they have been successful in driving at least some of the policy.
Well, I sure like where you’re going with that one, Pogue ;)
The Anchoress omitted a few things too:
•Virtually all the evidence of WMD stockpiles in Iraq comes from the United Nations and predates the Bush Administration for several years.
•The whole “Bush lied about Saddam’s complicity in 9/11″ when in reality the only piece of evidence of any link before the war (Atta’s day trips from Florida to Prague) was unequivocally denied by the administration on advice from the CIA and still is to this day. This meme didn’t start until a gallup poll conducted seven months after the war started claimed 70% of respondents thought Saddam had a role in 9/11.
•within 72 hours after Katrina the Feds had rescued almost 20,000 New Orleanians from their attics and rooftops. And Brown was probably the most hurricane experienced emergency administrator in the country the morning Katrina hit; he had been the head of FEMA during dozens of hurricanes including the year when Florida was hit by four killer storms in sixty days.
•Although everyone in Louisiana knows this, few outside the state realize that it is now understood that it wasn’t so much Katrina that flooded NO than several substandard canal walls built and managed for decades by the Army Corp of Engineers that indeed could have failed at any time, and that the Corp has publically accepted responsibility for it.
As a Texan for the last fifteen years I’ve had four opportunities to vote for Bush for office and four times I’ve voted against him. But the litany utterly unfounded, dishonest, and unhinged acusations and false witness hurled at this President have turned my stomach, frankly. Until now I’d thought much, much better of my countrymen, including the left, but today I’m left wondering if our nation remains fit for liberty it has inherited from better generations past. It’s perfectly clear that the American left isn’t.
yours/
peter.
Not only extremely well said, but also a point of pathological denial by those responsible. For a somewhat toned down version of this (in substance, not style) see the recent Rosie v. Elizabeth arguments on The View.
Note also that the local level authorities responsible for maintainig the levee system (the Orleans Parish Levee Board), have been investigated by the state and found, shall we say, wanting. In fact, the entire Parish Levee Board system has been disbanded and possible criminal charges may be filed against board members in office prior to Katrina. Virtually everyone with a pulse and a brain in New Orleans prior to Katrina knew that the Levee Board was a joke and a bad one at that. The sad part is that the punchline was on the citizens of SE Louisiana.
I share your sentiments, Peter. I have been wondering the same thing for about 15 years.
Americans have been getting the political leadership they deserve since the beguning of this nation. During times when the electorate has paid attention, we have received the greatness we needed. Our first president could have been King.
Washington was advised to run for a third term and establish a dynasty. His refusal to run for a third term assured the nation would remain a democratic republic. We were in the growth and expansion of the American Empire. The public cared, paid attention to the fledgling democracy, and got what it deserved, a leader who put the national interest above his own.
As our new nation grew, most of our leadership was dedicated to America. When the question was “Is it good for the country or is it good for me and my party” and it really counted, America came first. As in every political system there were petty squabbles, attempts a power grabs, and gaming the Constitution. Men are men. We were led by humans with human weaknesses. You have to expect that, however when it really counted, greatness emerged.
The prospect of being hanged sharpens mens minds. The widening split between the North and South, which led to the Civil War, was foremost in the minds of the populace. They were engaged in politics. They deserved greatness, and received it with the election of Abraham Lincoln. He was one of the few with the intestinal fortitude to deal with the country’s greatest crisis.
After the war, the public’s attention diverted to fulfilling it’s ‘Manifest Destiny.’ Again we got what we deserved, a string of mediocre presidents. It was not until the nation stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific that Americans began once again to pay attention to politics. We got what we deserved, Theodore Roosevelt, another one of the ‘greats.’
America was ambivalent if not hostile, to the country’s involvement in the “Great War.” We got what we deserved, Woodrow Wilson, an idealist who was unfit to lead the nation through the crisis. The ‘Jimmy Carter’ of his time, he talked a good game, but when the chips were down, he was a failure.
The “Roaring twenties” diverted Americans from the nation to the pursuit of pleasure. No one cared about Washington until Black Monday when the stock market crashed, the great depression, unemployment and food lines brought attention back to politics. FDR emerged as the man of the hour, began the restoration of confidence, prepared and led us through the Second World War.
The ‘cold war’ kept American eyes focused on Washington, resulting in string of good presidents until Vietnam and Watergate soured the public on politics. We never recovered. The American Empire had reached its zenith. It was the start of our slide down the razor blade of decline.
For a short time, the disaster of the Carter presidency, attracted the public attention. That brought another and perhaps the last of the ‘greats’ Ronald Reagan. During the ‘Reagan revolution’ the public’s attention turned inward, the Zeitgeist changed to “What’s in it for me” where it remains to this day.
I’m glad you brought up Cheney. Whenever some nimrod goes off about how we need to impeach Bush, I mention that that would place Dick Cheney in charge. It is unusually effective at silencing the whole waste of breath.
Yeah, I’ve never understood that line of thinking either, although, to be fair, the most consistent strategy would be to impeach them both for the same things. I have heard that strategy pronounced before, but only the rare occasion.