Here are a couple of interesting responses from MediaChannel.org to Frank Rich’s column from yesterday. I don’t think that Rich would disagree with any of the points made by Danny Schechter and Norman Solomon in these responses. I read Rich’s “war is over” statment as metaphorical/psychological, i.e., the jig is up on this episode of US global domination…politically. Of course the horror and destruction of the world’s most dangerous rouge state continues.
Solomon: Someone tell Frank Rich the war is not over
On Sunday, the New York Times published a piece by Frank Rich under
the headline “Someone Tell the President the War Is Over.” The article was
a flurry of well-placed jabs about the Bush administration’s lies and
miscalculations for the Iraq war. But the essay was also a big straw in
liberal wind now blowing toward dangerous conclusions.Comparing today’s war-related poll numbers for George W. Bush with
those for President Lyndon B. Johnson, the columnist writes: “On March 31,
1968, as LBJ’s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn’t seek
re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.” And Rich
extends his Vietnam analogy: “What lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not
victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or
triage) strategy that may echo Johnson’s March 1968 plan for retreat from
Vietnam.”Schechter: “What’s the best way to ‘support the troops'”
New York, August 15 — When John and Yoko sang “war is over,” they added, “if you want it.” It was a plea for peace, a call to “stop all the fighting.” It was written in l972. That war did not end for three years.
Frank Rich wrote eloquently in Sunday’s New York Times that this war, the one in Iraq, is also over.
“Like the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. ‘We will stay the course,’ he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?”
Rich offers an optimistic scenario even as he does not go the next step and appeal, as John and Yoko did, on the public to act. Perhaps he doesn’t think it necessary, concluding, “The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We’re outta there.”
Not so fast.
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