Hate

Recently, we heard from Mr. Paul Burgess, a former White House staffer and a self-admitted hater. In the comments to that post, jimbow8 brings us this comment from Digby:

One thing to keep in mind about this: he's not getting his hate on about politicians. It's about his fellow citizens. They complain mightily about "Bush hatred," and there's been plenty of it. But there's a difference between hating the leader of a political party and hating your fellow Americans.

When I get up to Chicago, I am greeted by some wonderful billboards from a local conservative radio station (which also happens to carry the Illini). The slogan they've chosen to attract listeners is "Liberals Hate Us." As Digby pointed out, there are plenty who hate the President and others in his administration, and there are a number of popular media figures (the sort who would be on said radio station) who inspire a great many to a fearsome level of anger and hate. On the other hand, I don't think most liberals hate most conservatives. (Schmidlap, I'm not speaking for you.) We have the (amazing) ability to hate a policy without hating the person. To hate a president without hating a country. To understand that the world is complex, not black-and-white.

In his venom-filled screed, Mr. Burgess starts off by suggesting that there was some sort of resistance within the White House to attacking the President's opponents before 2005. I'm not going to dig up all the evidence to the contrary, but you know it's there. He then tells us that he is no longer "immunized". He can hate. Apparently, so can the President, since he's on a never-ending hate spree against his political opponents. Mr. Burgess attacks some people who've gotten notoriety, some of whom are considered whackos by most everybody, and brushes half of America with the same brush he uses to go after, say, Ward Churchill.

However, he saves his biggest spout of vitriol for those who opposed the war from the beginnning:

Most detestable are the lies these rogues craft to turn grief into votes by convincing the families of our war dead that their loved ones died in vain. First, knowing what every intelligence agency was sure it knew by early 2003, it would have been criminal negligence had the president not enforced the U.N.'s resolutions and led the coalition into Iraq. Firemen sometimes die in burning buildings looking for victims who are not there. Their deaths are not in vain, either.

Second, no soldier dies in vain who goes to war by virtue of the Constitution he swears to defend. This willingness is called "duty," and it is a price of admission into the highest calling of any free nation--the profession of arms. We have suffered more than 2,300 combat deaths in Iraq so far. Not one was in vain. Not one.

This is a delusional pack of lies. Every intelligence agency did not come to the same conclusions as our CIA, or Germany, Russia, France, etc., would have been in Iraq with us. We know that the data was weak at best, and that the Bush White House deliberately used data which wasn't corroborated to promote the invasion of Iraq, even after the CIA asked them to stop. There was also the subtle point that perhaps killing someone for a crime they have not yet committed violates a few precepts of basic reality, much less causality.

Our soldiers have not gone to war by virtue of the Constitution (BTW, what the hell does that mean?). We're in an undeclared war against people who were no threat to us, and our soldiers are dying in the middle of their civil war. We haven't accomplished a damn thing over there. That's dying in vain, Mr. Burgess. Their deaths have meaning, but not that we associate with the men and women who died on the beaches of Normandy or on the fields of France. Their deaths are a tragic reminder of an adminstration that wanted war at any expense and would brook no delay or opposition. Of too many politicians from both parties who were afraid to stand up and oppose this aggression. Of voters, who, when given a chance in 2004, failed to act. That, Mr. Burgess, is something I hate, and my hate grows with every soldier's death. I don't hate you - you're not important enough.