"I apologized for accusing you of stealing me bike, so now you should apologize for accusing me of stealing your ball."
"But you did steal it!"
The "controversy" over Karl Rove's recent comments about Democrats not appreciating the full importance of the War on Terror is pretty amusing. They're pointing to Senator Durbin's weasel non-apology for calling American soldiers Nazis and claiming that Mr. Rove should now likewise apologize for his critical remarks. I guess the main difference is that Senator Durbin the Turban was wrong, whereas Karl Rove is right.
Rove, the architect behind President Bush's election victories, on Wednesday night told a gathering of the New York Conservative Party that "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he said, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."He added that groups linked to the Democratic Party made the mistake of calling for "moderation and restraint" after the terrorist attacks.
I can't even count how many times I had to listen to whiny pleas to "try to understand why they hate us". Ironically, I'd like to understand that, and fix it, but priority number one has always been to make sure that if more dying is necessary it's them that's doing it, not us. Can't we all just get along? Yes, we can, as soon as they stop blowing stuff up; and since we have no reason to trust them, we'll have to eliminate their capacity for violence.
Anyway, the left has been wobbly on terror since 9/11. That's no secret. Sometimes some hesitation was worthwhile, but most of the time their complaints are designed to hamstring America and protect our enemies out of misplaced (or entirely disingenuous) "compassion".
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, in a letter to Rove co-signed by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Democratic senators from Connecticut and New Jersey, called the presidential adviser's speech "a slap in the face to the unity that America achieved after Sept. 11, 2001."
There are more important things than unity for a country. What's more, the idea that unity is "achieved" and must then be preserved is nonsense. There's unity when people agree about important issues, but unity is the result of that agreement, not the cause of it. In that way, unity is like peace.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday there was no reason for Rove to apologize because he was "simply pointing out the different philosophies when it comes to winning the war on terrorism.""Of course not," McClellan said when asked by reporters whether Bush would ask Rove to apologize.
Ace points to The Therapist's main complaint:
Rove's recent comments, in which he said that liberals sought "therapy and understanding" in the wake of the attacks on September 11th, 2001, is being touted as "the most" incendiary of comments yet delivered in the rapier-thrust arena of politics--primarily in how Democrats charge that Rove "deliberately and maliciously" plotted to not slam American fighting forces. ...Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin said he "knows first hand" how to go about dispensing incendiary remarks, and that Rove's non-comparing of the troops to Nazis was "part and parcel of the nefarious GOP strategy to unite Americans behind America."
Meanwhile, James MacDuff bemoans the connotations of "liberal".
But read Rove's comments again. Remember the Presidential election? How many times did you hear the Democratic ticket described as the 4th and 2nd "most liberal" Senators as if it were a disease? It is truly fascinating how pejorative the term "liberal" has become to our Southern neighbours - if you are a liberal, you are a waffling wimp with no moral compass. A "liberal" voting record is a bad one in middle America, case closed. Conservatives in Canada likely have the same grudge at Liberals for successfully linking the extremist elements to the core of the party, hence its "scary" nature.
I generally use "leftist" rather than "liberal", because to me a real liberal is someone who favors, you know, liberty, which most American leftists abhor. Anyway, if people associate "liberals" with waffling America-haters, whose fault is that?
