05.23.07
Recalibratorily Stupid
John Edwards is so goddamned stupid that he has actually caused me to stop and look around the room for the inevitable hidden camera:
NEW YORK (AP) – Democrat John Edwards Wednesday repudiated the notion that there is a “global war on terror,” calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush Administration that has strained American military resources and emboldened terrorists.
In a defense policy speech he planned to deliver at the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards called the war on terror a “bumper sticker” slogan Bush had used to justify everything from abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison to the invasion of Iraq.
“We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes,” Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery. “By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set—that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam.”
This idea that we are not in a real war and that Osama’s got us right where he wanted us all along and that Iraq is the best recruiting tool the terrorists ever had and blah, blah, blah is just fucking embarrassing. For one thing, if we aren’t really at war, then why don’t the terrorists (and Edwards did actually use that word) know that? They seem to think we are at war. They are engaging in hostilities against our military by conventional and unconventional means —so what the fuck is Edwards talking about? He doesn’t approve of the idea of this being war semantically? I mean —what? He’s a fucking dolt.
By the way, why do Democrats forgive Edwards for helping to make possible Bush the Yonger’s re-election in 2004? Have a look at what Bob Shrum is saying in his new book about John Kerry’s choice for running mate that year:
Shrum says that, in the end, Kerry “wished that he’d never picked Edwards, that he should have gone with his gut” and selected Dick Gephardt. And the feelings between Kerry and Edwards seem fairly mutual. After Kerry reached out to Edwards in the wake of his wife’s disclosure of a recurrence of cancer, Shrum writes, “Kerry told me that the Edwardses simply stopped returning calls or talking to him and Teresa.”
Who’s got time to return phone calls when there’s money to be made giving speeches to college kids of the evils of poverty in America?
A “hyper-ambitious phony.” That’s what Bob Shrum says of Silkiness. Pretty devastating, I’d say. But, really, I’d like to know what my commenters think of it.
