i should be happy that there is a growing anti-war contingent among the democrats. i can't because it's just another opportunistic manuever. as the war preparations ratcheted up, the democrats were keeping their eyes on their own reelection chances. they too are guilty of seeing the war mostly as a short-term political event, rather than the increasingly obvious catastrophe (humanitarian, political, geopolitical, national, moral ... ad infinitum) that it actually is.
what's more insulting about it is that they aren't even manufacturing a narrative about the war like the GOP -- which, as far as i can tell, mostly consists of using the words freedom, god, victory, resolve and terror a lot. the democrats, rather than countering this piss-poor, half-assed, brain-dead attempt at narrative-building with something better, did the me-too song and dance, and they sucked at it. i can't count how many times i've seen people express admiration and envy for the republican 'message machine.' i agree that it was superior at one time. it still is. however, the bush administration's message machine is a third-grader's warmed over imagined nostalgia for WWII myths salted heavily with flavors of the Cold War.
the democrats tried to ride bush's wave and they wiped out. they wanted to keep a pinky on the fence too, so they never committed to a firm stance on the war in iraq, and for many people that amounted to a lack of commitment to the war on terror. i think that they just didn't know what to do. people were afraid, and they wanted leaders who seemed like they did. i remember that not long before the election, i stopped to think about it for a second. i realized that i just wasn't deeply enthusiastic about kerry as a candidate. i really wanted him to win, but that's not the same as being a true supporter of the man.
it was at that point that i realized that i hated politics. i can't seem to stay away though.
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