By LAUGHING MATTERS BY JACK NEWORTH
With just 10 days remaining until the mid -term elections, both political parties are pul ling out all the stops. The Democrats attack Bush on the war, the debt, the environment, Katrina, the Foley scandal and corruption. The Republicans fire back,“And your p oint is? And, oh yeah, you better hope Osam a doesn’t get a nuclear bomb.”
Yet I can recall, not too long ago, hearing Bush say,“I don’t think about Osama tha t much anymore.”He could have added,“Exc ept around election time.”
The war in Iraq is the overriding issue, an d frankly, I think it’s taken an unfair beating. For example, the missing WMDs. Dick Cheney says it’s possible we’ll still find them.
Of course, Cheney also said there wasn’t an i nsurgency. Then he admitted there was, but s aid they were “in the last throes.” I suppose it depends on your definition of “throes.”
Liberals say if the war was such a fabulous idea, how come we had so few allies? I a dmit the “Coalition of the willing” was not t he most enthusiastic label. Some even called it the “Coalition of the Coerced.” The Nether lands seemed quite enthusiastic with their fe w hundred troops, and one doesn’t normally think of the Dutch as that enthusiastic abo ut anything.
Hello? “Dutch treat?” The criticism about the coalition is just q uibbling. There isn’t much left of it anyway. I t just proves the old saying,“If you want som ething done right, you have to do it yourself.” That way when it goes as bad as things have in Iraq, you don’t have to make excuses for everyone else.
Everybody says the war has gone on too l ong. Sure, we’ve been in Iraq longer than all of WWII, but look at it this way. It’s been no where near as long as the Hundred Years War, at least not yet. Now they say we’ll be there a t least until 2010. That’s still way less than a h undred years. Actually, the Hundred Years W ar went on for 116 years, but that doesn’t sou nd quite as catchy.
Another whining complaint from the liberals is the war has cost too much money. He y, what’s a half a trillion dollars among frien ds? In this case, the friends being Haliburton. Sure, Wolfowitz said it would cost only $50 billion and the Iraqi oil would pay for the rec onstruction. It doesn’t seem fair to hold som ebody to every little thing they say. It’s easier to promote them to the head of the World Bank and move on.
Some also say fighting in Iraq drains reso urces from the real battle against terror in Af ghanistan, a country that actually harbored t he people behind 9/11. They’ve never heard of “multi-tasking?” All these anti-war sentiments could send the wrong message, assum ing we had a message in the first place. It’s ev en affected Bush, who now says he never use d the expression,“Stay the course,” as if to sa y,“Are you going to believe me or your lying ears?”
His “new and improved” mantra for Iraq is, “Constantly updating and changing.” To me that’s the mother of all flip flops, but wha t do I know?
Listening to talk radio (KLTK 1150 AM), I hear that on Saturday in Hollywood, there will be a Peace Parade led by Mahatma Gand hi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi. I suppose, if yo u’re going to have a peace march, Arun’s not a bad choice to lead it. When I heard it was G andhi’s grandson, I imagined a kid in knee p ants. But Arun is 72 and quite accomplished, having battled apartheid in his nativ e South Africa. Apparently “peace” is the fam ily business. It sure beats oil.
I confess, when I first heard Gandhi, I im mediately thought of Ben Kingsley. Of cour se, for the longest time, I thought the telephone was invented by Don Ameche. If you get that joke, you’re probably as old as I am. I wonder if Arun would get it? Somehow, I do n’t think I’ll tell him.
The full name of the march is the “Harris on on the Edge” Hollywood Parade for Worl d Peace. It will start at Hollywood and Vine, and culminate in a “Celebration of World Pe ace and Global Unity” at Plummer Park, on Fountain and Vista. There’ll be a message fro m outgoing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Ann an, Mike Farrell, Cindy Sheehan and Arun G handi, along with musical performances thr oughout the afternoon.
So if you’ve wanted to speak out against t he war, but thought no one was listening, be there at noon on Saturday. To be “fair and ba lanced,” I hear the other side is having a para de of their own, “Give War a Chance.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 27, 2006. Read the original PDF.