Yesterday Dick Cheney spoke at some length at AIPAC, the American Israeli Political Action Committee. Clearly unhappy about the level of support his war in Iraq is getting, Mr. Cheney said (quote from Jewish Telegraph Agency www.JTA.org):
My friends, it is simply not consistent for anyone to demand aggressive action against the menace that is posed by the Iranian regime while at the same time acquiescing in a retreat from Iraq that would leave Israel’s best friend, the United States, dangerously weakened,”
One would guess from this that AIPAC supports the war in Iraq, and that AIPAC is actively supporting Mr. Cheney’s effort to start a war with Iran as well. Mr. Cheney has been attempting to show that in order to stand firm against the religious dictatorship in Iran, and in order to show support for Israel, it will be necessary to stand with the Bush Administration’s failure in Iraq.
Diogenes was considerably irked by Mr. Cheney using a speech to AIPAC for a blast at the Democratic majority in the House. Many people consider that AIPAC is the strongest lobbying group in the US, and it would be a strong-willed member of the House or the Senate who would deliberately go against the interests of Israel.
But Mr. Cheney does not have the support of all the members of AIPAC (again from JTA):
His message was not received enthusiastically: Only about one-third to one-half of the audience in the cavernous Washington Convention Center hall applauded politely.
Behind Cheney, some AIPAC board members sat stone-faced, including Amy Friedkin, a past AIPAC president who is close to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and a fierce critic of the administration’s handling of the war.
Josh Block, AIPAC spokesman, says that the organization has always advocated economic measures to persuade the leaders in Teheran to give up their nuclear bomb program, and their bloodthirsty denunciations of Israel in general. Block says also:
AIPAC did NOT mobilize to lobby in favor of Iraq in the beginning and it is not our focus today.
Since the Ted Haggard coming out party (and to be fair, some before that), many Evangelical Christian organizations have been taking another look at their support for the Bush program. Some in the Evangelical movement have been criticizing of creating enemies, keeping us at war, and by using the war to increase the President’s personal control of America. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are using the same techniques as always.
They are giving support to some groups, and then depending on the unqualified support of those groups. It is not working for the Christian Right any more, and it is not working so well on the Jews, either.
Mr. Bush gave his blessing to Israel’s war with Hizbollah last year. The government of Prime Minster Ehud Ohlmert is in serious trouble for its own internal reasons, and is in deep need of support from the US Government. Last night’s meeting of AIPAC featured remarks by Mr. Ohlmert delivered by satellite and to faint applause (from JTA):
“When America succeeds in Iraq, Israel is safer,” Olmert said in a live address from his Jerusalem home. “The friends of Israel know it, the friends who care about Israel know it. They will keep the Americans strong, powerful and convincing.”
Diogenes noticed the peculiar sentence structure. It is not merely that English is not the first language of the Prime Minister. It would be very nice for Israel, for the US to succeed in Iraq. Friends of Israel will want to keep America strong.”
By the same token it would be very good for the USA if we did well in Iraq. Even Diogenes would have agreed that Mr. Bush was right, if Mr. Bush had shown that he was right. The Bush Administration has shown that it was not the case. They have shown lack of competence in every area of the war, except for wrestling control of the levers of power. Diogenes thinks we all agree that the destruction of the Armed Services is regrettable. There is nothing we can do for the 3200 Americans who were killed in the Iraq war. The Bush Administration tried to scrape all the money out of the care of those wounded in Iraq, and continue to lie about the actual number of casualties of the Iraq war. It will be up to the Democrats to see that those people are treated properly.
The Bush people, not content to destroy the military and to prevent the people from trusting the Government, are now planning the last step in the Iraq War. They are plotting the same end to this war as there was to the Chinese Civil War after WWII.
After Chiang Kai Shek was run out of China, but taking the national treasury with him, he paid the Republicans to keep repeating the lines “Who lost China?“ and “20 years of Treason!” referring to the Truman administration. Mr. Bush is now trying to assume the mantle of Harry Truman, but really, he is the spiritual heir of Joseph McCarthy.
It is time now for Democrats to ask the question now and every day for several years, “Who Lost Iraq?” The opportunity to actually do some good is gone, it was lost in the first 100 days of the war, when Secretary Rumsfeld said the reports of violence were overstated, that all the news videos showed the same vase being stolen, run time after time. Mr. Rumsfeld is not making public statements just now. If her were, he might say, “You don’t go to war with the President you want, you go to war with the President you have.”
It is time to start the process of ridding ourselves of our religious dictators.
