Sometimes I write letters.
To the Honorable Mike Bilirakis and the Honorable Mel Martinez:
Enough is enough. The White House, specifically one Karl Rove, has stepped over a very large, bright line.
To wit:
"Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Rove said. "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."
"Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said we must understand our enemies."
(Both of the above from an AP article)
"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."
(From an article on the same speech from the NYT)
The White House has defended these remarks and mailed them as talking points to the Republican party, so Mr. Rove wasn't simply pulling those sentiments out of his ear.
I am a liberal. I am your constituent. I am also a specialist in the Florida National Guard. To say something so patently offensive about all of us who simply wish our country would think a little bit before it acts (Saddam Hussein /= Osama bin Laden) and accuse us of wanting U.S. troops to die is just jaw-dropping. I, for one, didn't wake up feeling particularly suicidal this morning.
I ask simply, sir, that you and your fellow House Republicans publicly rebuke Mr. Rove for his offensive and STUPID comments and ask him to either publicly apologize or resign, or both.
For the record, if we liberals wanted U.S. troops to die needlessly, we could hardly have done better than to send us to Iraq in numbers too small to accomplish the mission set before us and ill-equipped to boot. Oh, and fill the troops' heads with the delusion that they'd be greeted with flowers and parades. Thanks, Mr. Wolfowitz, that one was *highly* entertaining.
As the great Sun Tzu said, the key to defeating your enemy is to KNOW him, so if liberals wanted to understand the people who attacked us on 9/11/01, it was in order to more effectively combat them. By holding liberals' desire to understand our enemies' motives as a bad thing, Mr. Rove shows himself to be a strategic nincompoop.
If this were the 18th or early 19th century, Howard Dean would be well within his rights to challenge Mr. Rove to a duel and blow his pudding-filled head clean off his shoulders for what he said.
If this war is so important, what members of Mr. Rove's family are over in Iraq or Afghanistan fighting it?
*ahem*
Thank you for your time, sir.
Proud to serve,
James Cornwell