Demon of the Month

Where would the American Left be without someone to demonize? Answer: Nowhere.

When the Left first tried to demonize Republicans over the results of the 2000 election, arguments that the Presidency was stolen gained acceptance by only the True Believers. The temporary support it gained from other Americans quickly wore off when people started to realize that our system of government worked exactly as it was supposed to in resolving a close and highly contested election, and that Al Gore simply lost according to the dictates of the Constitution.

Then, September 11 came along and wiped the remnants of the Left’s lame election complaints off the front page. What to do? What to do?

Left-leaners resorted to demonizing George Bush, first calling him too stupid to draw breath. That lasted a while, until the truth leaked through the media wall that Mr. Bush, who is not the smoothest off-the-cuff speaker in America, is anything but dumb, and the Left was once again without a demon.

Mr. Bush has been the Demon of the Month pretty consistently since he was elected, but nothing much made any sense and didn’t gain traction among the citizenry. Then came the war in Iraq. “Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” was the battle cry. Echoes of that one are still around.

When efforts to demonize Mr. Bush fell on deaf ears, or when the American people got tired hearing the same old bellyaching from the Left, another demon was needed. Enter Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. Rumsfeld was blamed for operating torture chambers for captured terrorists, for failing to listen to the generals and admirals, and most seriously of all, working at a desk designed for someone standing, not sitting. Inaccurate and dumb? Yes, but it worked. For a while.

Today, complaints about Mr. Rumsfeld have once again been brought forth, with Congressional Democrats threatening censure and calling for him to resign or be fired. As if any of that has any bearing whatsoever on Mr. Rumsfeld’s future. It’s all just a lot of sour grapes whining and wasted hot air from the Left.

The Left believes it has a winning issue in the Iraq war, so it is moving full speed ahead criticizing everything associated with the war, including our brave men and women in uniform. Their strategy is working; many Americans are not happy about the war. With the invaluable assistance with a Left-leaning media, the news about war is bleaker than the reality of the war. People believe what the media report, right or wrong.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s great sin is that he hasn’t run the war to suit the armchair generals, who snipe and whine from the safety of their comfortable offices on Capital Hill and in the halls of main stream media headquarters in Washington and New York. Most of the armchair generals reside in the Democratic Party and the media, but there are even a few in the Republican Party. Armchair generals are easy to find.

Being generals you might expect them to actually understand what war is all about. But because they don’t fight at all, but analyze what they don’t understand from the comfort of their offices, they really don’t have a clue. This war is unlike any other. For the first time in our history, we aren’t fighting a national armed force. So there aren’t any rules, there aren’t any tried and true tactics, we’re writing them as we go. Imagine armchair explorers nit-picking the voyages of Columbus, or the exploits of Lewis and Clark. It’s easy to do that when you weren’t there, and with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight.

So the substance of their sniping and whining is, well, without substantive. Translated from nebulous, foggy thoughts to words, their message is: “We don’t know what the hell to do, we have no clue how to do this better, but by golly that’s not going to stop sneering contempt.” The Left’s desperation is palpable.

That begs the question, “Where is the American Left with someone to demonize?” Answer: Nowhere.

Technorati Tags: Democrats, Liberals, War, Donald Rumsfeld, Politics, Demons, 20-20 Hindsight