Where have all the flower children gone, long time passing?
: George McGovern is still living in his past. He writes a long screed in The Nation going after George Bush and his war:
That terrible American blunder, in which 58,000 of our bravest young men died, and many times that number were crippled physically or psychologically, also cost the lives of some 2 million Vietnamese as well as a similar number of Cambodians and Laotians, in addition to laying waste most of Indochina–its villages, fields, trees and waterways; its schools, churches, markets and hospitals.
I had thought after that horrible tragedy–sold to the American people by our policy-makers as a mission of freedom and mercy–that we never again would carry out a needless, ill-conceived invasion of another country that had done us no harm and posed no threat to our security. I was wrong in that assumption.
George McGovern was always a naive politician. I supported him when he ran for president because I opposed that war. But he never could see forest.
In this piece, he goes after many topics. He said we should have supported Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam (oh, that’ll bring down a storm of POW/MIA flags on you, old fella). He complains about Bush’s too-big tax cut (I agree with him there — and so does most of Congress; the only question now is the number). He says that this war and “other costly wars now being planned in secret” are fattening the military-industrial complex (just saying that takes me back to the ’70s; where’s my tie-dye?). He argues strenuously that God is not our copilot in war (fine).
But it’s what McGovern does not say that’s shocking — and emblematic of the problem of liberalism.
There is not one word in sympathy, compassion, and support for the people of Iraq. Nothing about the tyranny that ruled them. Nothing about their murders at Saddam’s hands. Nothing about their suffering. Nothing about their freedom.
Even if you are simply against war (that pacifist cloak does not cover McGovern; he talks about his time as a bomber pilot in World War II), you still have to deal with the human problem of Iraq; you still have to recognize the oppression; you still have to look for solutions. My fellow liberals are, lamentably, not doing that.
So what still makes them liberals? [via The Christian Science Monitor blog]
