How many lies must one tellbefore they become the truth?

Hyperbole and nonsense — these are the hallmarks of the Bush administration.

The president, in his speech today at the American Legion national convention in Salt Lake City, was slinging of bit of both — along with a whole lot of something more, well, malodorous.

The president wants us to believe that the anarchy in Iraq, the insanity in Israel and Lebanon and the occupied territories, the recurring breakdown in Afghanistan and nearly everything else that is happening in the Middle East is linked and that the theme is a general antipathy toward freedom.

He wants us to believe that the war he misled us into, a war that was likely unwinnable from the get-go, a war that has only exacerbated tensions and destroyed our credibility around the globe, a war that we should not be fighting, is a necessary part of our battle against al Qaida.

He wants us to believe that the insurgents and militias in Iraq that are targeting American troops and doing battle against each other are actually on the same side, that Hezbollah’s missiles are not a political response to what they believe is Israeli aggression, that Hamas is not reacting to occupation, that all of these disparate groups are out to destroy our Constitution and the freedoms it protects.

(This post is not a tacit statement of support for Hezbollah, the insurgents or militias in Iraq or any of those groups. Their methods are brutal and inhuman, their aims questionable and their leaders dangerous. And that I have to state this explicitly is an indication of how degraded our public discourse has become.)

The president wants us to believe — echoing the Vietnam era slogan, “We must destroy the village to save it” — that the very same freedoms that are allegedly under attack by our Islamo-fascist enemies can only be protected by metaphorically burning our Constitution and allowing people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to dance on the ashes. We must, the president seems to be saying, destroy our Constitution to save it.”

Perhaps I’m overreacting. Perhaps my own penchant for hyperbole has overtaken me. Perhaps.

But then, I’m getting a bit tired of this endless attempt to recast everything as a campaign issue. I’m getting tired of the lies and the lives they cost.

I’m just plain tired of all of it.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet