How they really feel

For all their rhetoric, some days it becomes blatantly obvious just how truly cold and callous are the right wing pundits and politicians. Today is one of those days.

First you have Bush's "indispensable confidant," House Minority Leader John Boehner, who answered a question from Wolf Blitzer about the "loss in blood, the Americans who are killed every month" by saying that those losses are a "small price."

Boehner's statement is just one of the latest showing how the right really thinks about the loss of life in Iraq, but they are everywhere to be found, if one looks. Consider, for example, this post at The Corner by National Review contributor David Freddoso.

Breaking: Clueless, Graceless Jerks [David Freddoso]

Code Pink disrupts a dicussion [sic] on the war at the Heritage Foundation, all captured on C-Span. They rushed the stage and took control for about five minutes, I am told, while the peeved panelists looked on. They were finally led away.

It's all well and good to oppose the war and to protest, but these people need to get a life.

Do you get that? People are dying in George W. Bush's stupid war, but it's clueless and graceless to get so pissed about that waste that you would dare interrupt a panel of Heritage Foundation "scholars"—including Fred Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon—as they pontificate about a war in which their every prediction has proven wrong.

So the message from the right is this: Please "get a life" and quit being so "graceless" in opposing the war because, after all, 3744 dead Americans is a "small price" to pay for a complete and utter fucking failure.

I agree

Andrew Sullivan found this quote from a once-renowned military thinker.

The Vietnam experience left the military leadership feeling that they should advise against involvement in counterinsurgencies unless specific, perhaps unlikely, circumstances obtain -- i.e. domestic public support, the promise of a quick campaign, and freedom to employ whatever force is necessary to achieve rapid victory. In light of such criteria, committing U.S. units to counterinsurgencies appears to be a very problematic proposition, difficult to conclude before domestic support erodes and costly enough to threaten the well-being of all America's military forces (and hence the country's national security), not just those involved in the actual counterinsurgency...(Emphasis mine)

Silly New Orleanians and Their Pre-11/02/2004-mindsets

Robert Draper talking about his new book at Salon notes this bit from the Preznit:

In the wake of Katrina, (Bush) sort of pushed back on his aides who said he should take more responsibility. And saying, People not getting bottles of water, do they expect me to be the one doing that? There was sort of this petulance.

However, back in September, 2004...

On Wednesday afternoon Red Cross President and CEO Marty Evans joined President George W. Bush, his brother Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Mike Brown on a tour of several eastern Florida communities damaged by Hurricane Frances earlier this month.

The President handed out relief supplies with volunteers at the Lawnwood Recreation Area. Evans said that many unsuspecting drivers did double takes as President Bush cheerfully asked them, “What can we help you with?”

“It was apparent that people really appreciated seeing the President roll up his sleeves to help disaster victims," said Evans.

The caption for the Red Cross photo below? "President George W. Bush hands out water and ice to hurricane victims in Florida."