9/11, Bush's Failures, and Right Wing Hypocrisy

The fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is today. Numerous warnings of an impending attack were ignored. The administration fought desperately to prevent an investigation into the attacks. Osama bin Laden is still not in our custody. Al Qaeda and its allies, in the last four years, have inflicted horrific damage in Indonesia, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and Britain. Despite the fact that it has suffered defeats and losses, Al Qaeda continues to spread its cancerous influence in the Islamic world. Imagine if President Gore had allowed this.

A Pakistani nuclear scientist has sold deadly secrets to potential terrorists and has not been brought to justice. Pakistan continues to shelter terrorists. North Korea is building a major nuclear arsenal. Imagine if President Gore had allowed this.

The U.S. war against the terrorists has been stripped of resources by a useless war in Iraq based on false intelligence and outright lies. Almost 2,000 Americans have been killed in this senseless conflict and more than 10,000 others have been wounded. The war is devouring $200 billion a year in resources, and the ultimate outcome of it may be a civil war and a militant Iraqi Islamic state. Imagine if President Gore had done all that.

The truth of the matter is this: if Gore had done these things, O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Novak, Mark Steyn, Hugh Hewitt, Britt Hume, the idiots at Town Hall, Free Republic and NewsMax, and every other rightwing bastard among America's commentators would be screaming for his impeachment. Ann Coulter would be calling for his assassination. Savage and Liddy would be in agreement. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson would be publicly damning him. Every rightwing fruitcake in the country would be up in arms. But Gore, of course, is responsible for none of it. It all lies at the feet of George W. Bush, whom the fanatics of the right continue to defend.

It is this complete moral bankruptcy, the sheer two-faced ethical hypocrisy of the right that so disgusts me. The conservatives (if such profligate, reckless deficit mongers can be called such) have to be removed from office for many reasons, but not the least of them is the violence they are doing to the very concept of moral and ethical consistency. It's one of the many ways that Bush and his people are killing the very idea of America.