Thursday, April 26, 2007

David Broder, a member of the enabling media


I had not been blogging for better than a week as I have worked instead on launching my two decade old photography business onto the web. Now that it is launched, I can turn again to discussing opinions found in newspapers or news sources such as CNN. Mike Lopresti, a columnist for Gannet News Service gave us his take on the Pat Tillman case As the headline reads, "A man's death is not propaganda," he makes it quite clear in the column to follow, why the military should never have tried to treat a man's death as a matter of propaganda. But then, neither should some Colonel treat Tillman's survivors as beneath his contempt, or a man who had been an Arizona Cardinal (first made, "hero") as "worm dirt" for not being "Christian" in the Colonel's eyes. Christ, I'm afraid would probably offer up that "Christian" Colonel as some worm dirt too. Not only is the "Christian" Colonel rather obscene in his judgments of the dead who fought for this country in Afghanistan, he is also very obscene when it comes to his faith. I am not sure that the "Christian" Colonel has much read his bible recently. Lopresti's column was also republished in the Spokesman-Review.

So, what are we to make of David Broder who makes clear that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should become the target of his most vehement attacks/cum/opinion? Broder is a guy who has often ignored reality when it comes to GW Bush. And with the republication of his Washington Post column in the same newspaper noted above, he has managed to ignore the broader context as well. Two nights ago, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" showed us the two sides of GW, what he had to say in his first term in office as opposed to his second term in office. The very fact that there are indeed sharp and jarring contrasts between the "old" Bush and the "new" Bush puts Senator Reid in the absolutely correct position of calling GW a loser, because he is. And any journalist worth his salt as "dean" of journalists wouldn't turn over to a comedian the job of taking a truly honest look at Bush and his administration and literally having to come to the same conclusion. Broder was never charitable to a man in actually less trouble for his less than saintly qualities (Bill Clinton) and personally wanted to drive him from office for that remarkably far too common a minor offense about lying about an affair with Monica Lewinsky. In truth, the only people Clinton would really have hurt, was his family. But, in GW's case, Broder has been nothing but charitable and rarely can find himself in a position to criticize GW and his administration in their many antics. No, he must leave such tasks to Comedy Central where truly serious debate with a politician of note, Senator McCain, is more likely to be found than any material actually submitted by David Broder.

So, let us remind Broder of the following facts: From his fellow Washington Post Columnist Bob Woodward, comes a factoid of some importance in his possibly final book on the Bush administration. Prior to the war, Rumsfeld not only pushed for as small a force to topple the Hussein regime as he could find, he also pushed time limes, that is correct, time lines for prosecuting the war. Those are the same time lines that lay behind GW's announcement on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln where he declared on 1 May 2003 the end of major combat operations and now reconstruction could begin. Time lines that Cheney Rumsfeld, etc. continued to adhere to, "democracy is a messy business," "the insurgency is in its last throes" with the news media trying vainly to declare a post war situation in Iraq. As of 1 May 2003, GW Bush lost his war in Iraq. By, as a matter of time line, declaring prematurely that it had been won! But since GW can't acknowledge his strategic mistakes in handling wars, he, the GOP and David Broder must now project the problems of his administration's own making onto the useful targets such as the Democrats in general and Senator Reid in particular. Again, without having to rationalize anything, Reid is actually correct. The war is lost. Because, GW proceeded to lose it.

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