Americans are the Enemy

The Bush Administration, in searching for yet another avenue to shift the blame for the mess in Iraq from where it belongs – squarely on them – to another party, has begun a campaign to blame those of us here at home who have questioned their tactics. “If only these unpatriotic Americans had just supported us, we’d already have wrapped this up,” goes the line. The battle call for this new shift was a letter from Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman, a former underling of both VP Cheney and one-time protégé of Paul Wolfowitz, to Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) after the Senator wrote a letter to the DoD inquiring as to whether or not there was a plan in place in case Americans were called to withdraw from Iraq. In other words, Clinton wanted to know if, during a larger debate both within the Congress and within America at large, there were contingency plans for bringing American troops home from abroad should they be needed. This, of course, is entirely reasonable. I would say that our leaders would be derelict in their duties to not pursue this information. The Bush Administration, however, sees it as the next best thing to treason… when it comes to politics. And don’t think that Clinton, as a Democratic presidential contender, was picked at random. Edelman wrote in part:

Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.

Let’s put aside for a second that this man compared a protracted war such as Vietnam with two short-term, self-contained peace-keeping missions like those in Lebanon and Somalia – something for which any of my college professors would have slapped me silly – and focus on the purely un-American point of his rhetoric. He is essentially saying that a free and open debate on the events of the day is wrong, that it provides aid and comfort to the enemy. Do they see America as so weak, so vulnerable, so flawed as to be afraid of the words of its own citizens? The day that Americans cannot question their government is the day that our Republic truly will be unredeemable. This right has been a cornerstone of our liberty since our founding and it must remain sacrosanct for America to be America.

No matter how Gestapo-like the White House would like to be, however, very often its one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing… and thank goodness. Edelman had forgotten while blathering on as he was above, that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – yes, Edelman’s boss – had said the following only weeks prior:

I believe that the debate here on the Hill and the issues that have been raised have been helpful in bringing pressure to bear on the Maliki government and on the Iraqis in knowing that there is a very real limit to American patience in this entire enterprise.

You see, Eric, debate really is a good thing.

Postscript: Senator Clinton has called the DoD to task for this matter. You can also see commentator Keith Olbermann’s special comment on this topic here.

20 July 2007