Least We Not Forget ... Seven Years In Iraq

Today was the 7th Anniversary, when our Court-Appointed President, The Commander Guy, fully embraced the NeoNitWit's, marching us off to invade and occupy the country of Iraq.

Seven-years, and we are still there.

The editorial staff over at Truthout posted an Editorial to mark the dubious occasion

George Vanity of Vanities: The Iraq War Seven Years Later

We are still shocked. We were never awed. We have not adjusted. The senseless waste of our blood and treasure, our honor and our reputation continue. Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom - the latter unleashed seven years ago today - have morphed into a single Operation Enduring Occupation, set to bankrupt this country financially as well as morally, to destroy our own security as it has that of the over 31 million people who populate Iraq and 32 million people of Afghanistan.

[snip]

And as Benjamin Franklin might have agreed ("They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." {notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly, 1775}), perhaps we deserve what has happened to us for allowing ourselves to be cowed into colluding in the ultimate crime against humanity, one which the Nuremberg tribunal powerfully condemned: "To initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

[snip]

Surely, the Iraq war's only obvious "successes" - the enrichment of the military industrial complex at the expense of ordinary citizens, the implementation of an ever more pervasive and intrusive "security" regime at home and the insurance of a second Bush term - could have been achieved without dragging the long-suffering people of Iraq into it. People - it may still need to be pointed out - who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 and harbored no weapons of mass destruction.

Obama doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get us out of there, and, he's even less-so motivated to bring the war criminals who perpetrated this to justice.

That deserves a damning editorial, as well.

I Could'a Had Class ... I Could'a Been A Contender ...

As we run out the clock, on the lamest - ever - court-appointed President (h/t Barry Crimmins), there's going to be a veritable roto-league of legacy wrap-ups.

Well ... Actually ... They'll all look more like a criminal rap sheet.

Yesterday, Brad Reed, over al AlterNet, kicked things off with his "The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency", which Brad subtitles "A shorter version of our long national nightmare?"

And, before you start pounding your head on the table (similar to one that Nancy Pelosi can't seem to find), or writing angry screeds of "Only 10!!!";

Narrowing down the Bush administration's various debacles to a mere 10 was no easy feat. In fact, I expect that many people will express dismay that their least favorite moment was left off the list. "How could commuting Scooter Libby's sentence not even make the top 10??!!" I can hear some of you shrieking already. Well, I'll tell you. Essentially, I tried to rate each Bush disaster by two main criteria: its body count and its damage to the country's reputation. So while Bush's awkward groping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be personally humiliating to everyone, it doesn't have the same heft as, say, the Iraq War.

I won't spoil the fun ...

Go over to "The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency" for a good read.


Bonus Legacy Links

It's Time To Bring Down Rollo Tomasi

"He aggressively and successfully pursued public corruption ..."

"I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person ..."

"Anyway, look, nobody has accused me of being Shakespeare, you know?"

The Condoleezza Rice Ballroom Dancing & Charm School

Sadly No Slaps Down Prom Dress Boy On Bush Legacy

I think, we can expect to see these things trickle out, through the end of the year, and into the next.

The dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds of the Right Wing Freak Show, looking to lay down some gold, frankincense and muir at the alter of our first-and-only Court-Appointed President's legacy.

It seems Commissar Goldberg is about to talk or write about it.

You may remember the new Definer of Fascism from the pages of The Garlic, when we noted the reaction to his book in our "The morning after always looks grim if you happen to be wearing last night's dress".

There's a great interview (with Goldberg splaying all over the place) by Salon's Alex Koppelman ("We're all fascists now");

In the book, Goldberg attempts to convince readers that six decades of conventional wisdom that have placed Italy's Benito Mussolini, Germany's Adolf Hitler and fascism on the right side of the ideological spectrum are wrong, and that fascism is really a phenomenon of the left. Goldberg also attributes fascist rhetoric and tactics to Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and describes the New Deal's descendants, modern American liberals, as carriers of this liberal-fascist DNA. In a sense, "We're All Fascists Now," as Goldberg puts it in one of his chapter titles.

Larisa Alexandrova weighed in also, with her 'Springtime For Hitler' post;

Either Jonah Goldberg is putting on a new production of the Producers or his latest book is a cry for help from a fractured and disoriented mind.

Titled... wait for it... Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, it is a retelling of history through the lens of propaganda.

Recently, Commissar Goldberg put out the call to his RWFS, and his National Review minions - "I thought it'd be interesting to know what NRO readers think Bush's legacy will be. Please send thoughts — hopefully constructive".

We noted the other day, Spencer Ackerman's brilliant definition of the Bush Legacy, recommending Obama adopt it on the stump;

Welcome to the next four years. These people have plunged the country into two failing/failed wars and killed hundreds of thousands of people. (Also, they pulled off a housing crisis and a healthcare crisis and an environmental crisis and when an entire city drowned the administration left the black people to die.) There’s no alibi: when conservatism had its chance to govern, this is what it yielded. If I was one of them, I’d bitch about Rajiv Chandrasekaran or Jeremiah Wright or whatever was necessary to distract people from what I did when I had the chance to do it. Get ready for years and years and years of this puerile and tiresome nonsense.

Probably not the legacy-building constructive narrative Commissar Goldberg is looking for ...

Heck, it's probably registering on Goldberg's Liberal Fascism Meter as we speak

Well, if he doesn't like that one, Brad, over on Sadly No, came up with another gem today.

I highly encourage you all to send Jonah your thoughts on this matter, be they constructive or otherwise.

For my part, I think pictures speak more than a trillion-kabillion words, so I’ll let them speak for me. Ladies and gentlemen, the Bush Legacy

You gotta go over to the post and check it the pictorial Brad lays out - Pretty much on-target!

And Brad adds;

To sum up: Bush has been a smarmy, destructive asshole for the past eight years and he has left the next president with an extremely large pile of shit to deal with. And you, Jonah, dutifully enabled the stupid SOB for years until you realized that he was starting to cost the GOP votes. Lest we forget...

A "smarmy, destructive asshole ..."

Yep, sure sounds like the Court-Appointed President (h/t Barry Crimmins) we have had over the past seven-and-a-half-years.

He'll own that legacy, that moniker, for perpetuity.


Bonus Links

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Dear Jonah: I Am Not Serious, Either

E&P Staff: Jon Stewart Goes After Jonah Goldberg and 'Fascism' -- He Responds

The Hon. Dr. St. Rev. Bradley S. Rocket, Esq, PhD, MD: A tantalizing peek at history’s greatest book