Monday, July 2, 2007

MoveOn Is Not Anti-War and Neither Was "Fahrenheit 9/11"

MoveOn Is Not Anti-War and Neither Was "Fahrenheit 9/11"

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

I have a love-hate relationship with The Nation magazine nowadays. One week it's Alexander Cockburn's "Beat the Devil" which I love, the next week it's Eric Alterman's "The Liberal Media" which I loathe. Last week Alterman "exposed" Chris Matthews to be pro-Bush. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of "Hardball." In fact, I can't stand the show, so I don't watch it. And I don't need to because my pal Andy K. sends me video clips of the show whenever it's relevant. Andy also sent me this quote from a SF Chronicle piece Matthews wrote in 2002, "This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut, and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe. What will set it apart, distinguishing it for all time, is the immense--and transparent--political stupidity."

And here's Matthews, early this year, trying to get Tony Snow to say whether or not Bush will start a war with Iran without congressional approval:

"MATTHEWS: No, I'm concerned because, very much in the years, in the months building up to this war in Iraq, we heard a kind of a drumbeat of the dangers from Iraq and the nuclear weaponry and what we're going to do about it, and then gradually we went to war...

"My concern is we're gonna see a ginning up situation whereby we fall in hot pursuit any effort by the Iranians to interfere with Iraq. We take a couple shots at them, they react, then we bomb the hell out of them and hit their nuclear installations without any action by Congress. That's the scenario I fear, an extra-constitutional war is what I'm worried about.

"SNOW: Well, you have been watching too many old movies--

"MATTHEWS: No, I've been watching the war in Iraq, is what I've been watching."

I first became exposed to The Nation in 1991 and at the time it seemed so Left-wing to me, but I was still in high school. I voted for Bill Clinton the next year, but by 1996 I resented him and wrote-in Nader. The Welfare Bill that Clinton/Gingrich passed was the last straw for me and many others at the time. The next year The Nation cut Cockburn's "Beat the Devil" down from two pages to one page.

Here we are in 2007, The Nation is big "D" Democratic and many people don't seem to remember Bill Clinton's despicable legacy: NAFTA/GATT, the death penalty-expanding Crime Bill, the Anti-Terrorism Bill that was a precursor to the bi-partisan PATRIOT Act. Not to mention his murderous assault on Iraqi civilians. The sanctions he supported killed thousands and he dropped plenty of bombs on the Iraqi people while Congress was impeaching him. Which is why the bumper sticker that reads, "No One Died When Clinton Lied" really should read, "Americans Didn't Die When Clinton Lied." This is a time of phony anti-war entities like MoveOn and Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." Leave it to an American film maker to produce a documentary on the Middle East that doesn't mention Israel. The motivation for that omission is crystal clear if the film is seen not as an anti-war film, but as a pro-Democratic party film. The Palestinian plight is simply not discussed by the Zionist Democratic leadership.

Is Israeli lobbying the story behind the pro-Iran war rhetoric of H.R. Clinton, Barrack Obama and John Edwards? The man who said he "was wrong" to support the Iraq war recently gave a speech in Israel supporting military action on Iran. Direct and to the point, Edwards stressed the "need to keep all options on the table" when dealing with Iran. Obama gave a speech to the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) that was more of the same tough talk on Iran. Obama's a better politician. Stop Me Before I Vote Again's Michael J. Smith compared the two presidential hopefuls, "All in all, (Obama gave) a more polished performance than John Edwards' recent pole-dance for the same outfit."

MoveOn rigidly frames their Iraq war criticism on George W. Bush without a peep regarding his Democratic enablers. It was 2006 when John "A.B.B." Kerry finally supported withdrawing from Iraq, and as late as 2005 he was undercutting Murtha's call for an exit. In regards to the recent $124 billion that the Democrats approved for Bush's war effort, MoveOn has no criticism of their Party. As Cockburn points out in this week's "Beat the Devil," "The focus stays always on Bush, over whom MoveOn will never have influence, as opposed to Democrats, whom MoveOn could have pressured with its 3 million-strong e-mail list."

It looks like the US will be in Iraq at least until 2008. If a Democratic President inherits the war, MoveOn will officially stop acknowledging that the war issue exists.

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