Sunday, January 27, 2008
Uncomfortable Facts and Convenient Fictions
General piece by
Geoff Metcalf
“All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.” —John Arbuthnot
In the wake of all the partisan and intra-party acrimony and perpetual chronic spitting matches, most of the news cycle attention is being diverted to the overly long presidential wannabe races.
The Wall Street Journal recently revealed the ‘Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy’
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120122030875015291.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries in which they announced “The Democratic epiphany about the political tactics of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
· Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said about Bill Clinton, “I think it’s not Presidential,” about Mr. Clinton’s steady barrage against Barack Obama. “It’s not in keeping with the image of a former President, and I’m frankly surprised that he is taking this approach.”
· “This is beneath the dignity of a former President. He is not helping anyone, and certainly not helping the Democratic Party,” added Vermont Senator Pat Leahy.
· Former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian, who once backed Bill Clinton but this week called his political attacks “reprehensible” described one of Mrs. Clinton’s TV ads (which was eventually taken off the air) about Mr. Obama as “a lie.”
· John Kerry, the Democratic Party’s 2004 nominee for president, took aim at Bill Clinton and told the National Journal the former president does “not have a license to abuse the truth.”
· Uber Liberal talk host Ed Schultz said the former president “is lying!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-X9tEOp19o
I have been a harsh critic of the Clintons since 1991 and it is fascinating to see smart, insightful career politicians admitting to either myopia or duplicity. I guess it was okay for the Clintons to lie, cheat, bully and employ thuggery…as long as their systemic corruption was directed at republicans. Now that they have demonstrated the capacity and relish to ‘eat their own’ suddenly, Dems are ‘surprised’?
Meanwhile, proving that no good deed shall go unpunished, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120122043065715303.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries President Bush’s special envoy for human rights in North Korea, Jay Lefkowitz, recently pointed out that our current approach to Pyongyang is failing. Duh!?! His reward for articulating empirical reality was a Condoleezza Rice trip to the woodshed.
Lefkowitz, Rice groused, “doesn’t work on the six-party talks [on North Korea], he doesn’t know what’s going on in the six-party talks and he certainly has no say in what American policy will be in the six-party talks.”
In response to Lefkowitz replacing State’s revisionist/vain hope gospel with truth, he is being written out of the Administration’s North Korea policy for a speech he gave last week at the American Enterprise Institute. Noting that it has been more than two years since Pyongyang pledged to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and more than two weeks since it violated the latest deadline to disclose the full extent of that program, Lefkowitz observed that “it is increasingly clear that North Korea will remain in its present nuclear status when the Administration leaves office in one year.”
Once upon a time Lefkowitz’s comments would have been a clear reflection of President Bush’s own views. Not anymore (despite his proclamation being accurate)…as Bush seems content to accept the Rice position that sweet talking, wimpy concessions or another bribe (aid shipment) will cause Kim to play nice? Not even!
The Metcalf bromide that ‘some people don’t want to be confused with facts that contradict their own preconceived opinions or prejudices’ seems to have taken hold at Foggy Bottom.
North Korea has provided arms and probably training to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and (more grievous) Hezbollah in Lebanon. Evidence of Pyongyang’s continued nuclear proliferation are either being ignored (or worse) suppressed by the State Department.
At a time when China continues to enable North Korea, Russia rattles sabers (and fires missiles way too close to allies), Pakistan tests missiles that can lob nukes, and Iran continues to flip off the world, the drive by media is focused on mitigating the disingenuous, duplicitous lies of mean spirited hardball pols. Go figure?
Napoleon once observed, “The great orators who rule the assemblies by the brilliancy of their eloquence are in general men of the most mediocre political talents: they should not be opposed in their own way; for they have always more noisy words at command than you. Their eloquence should be opposed by a serious and logical argument; their strength lies in vagueness; they should be brought back to the reality of facts; practical arguments destroy them. In the council, there were men possessed of much more eloquence than I was: I always defeated them by this simple argument—two and two make four.”
Truth, facts and honesty still matter…except apparently in the swamp of political discourse.
Geoff Metcalf
HowardWasRight 
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