On General Betray-Us

Just when I thought the Senate was incapable of legislating its way out of a paper bag, I was surprised to be proven wrong. Just the other day the esteemed upper house passed an amendment roundly condemning MoveOn.org for their ad pillorying Gen. Petraeus as “General Betray-Us.”
Although most Democrats voted against this silly piece of puffery, some went along, and two Democratic presidential contenders didn’t vote at all. Of course Sen. Lieberman (“Sen. Betray-Us” in my parlance), who makes the powerless Democratic majority possible, voted for the resolution. President Bush, nearly as excited as he was when he got that new mountain bike, jumped on the bandwagon instantly, accusing Dems “of cowering to the liberal political action group …” as Fox News in its entirely unbiased (we report the bull, you decide whether to consume it!) coverage termed it.
Okay, so …. 3,775 Americans and countless Iraqis have been lost to this debacle in Iraq. More die every day. The Democrats, criticized for failing to lead, simply don’t have the votes to alter the failed policies of a stubborn right-wing that clings to maniac dreams of success in a conflict they predict could go on for generations!? I’m sorry, these guys are nuts! We beat Nazi Germany & the Empire of Japan in four years and rebuilt their economies and our own in short order. Every day Iraq descends deeper into chaos, a fragmented entity with perhaps two dozen insurrections occurring simultaneously. Conservatives may blind themselves with images of a glass half-full, but anyone with a grip on reality knows the glass is completely shattered.
Which brings me back to General Petraeus: For months, when challenged on Iraq, the President lectured us: “We have to wait for Gen. Petraeus’s report.” I began to wonder where General Petraeus was, that we couldn’t get any information from him. Was he on a block of ice with sled dogs in the Arctic? Was he on the summit of some mountain peak in Nepal? Does he have a cell phone?
In the age of instant messaging, we had to wait till September 11th (ironic they picked that day, huh?) to hear exactly the lies and distortions that we expected. Armed with the same sort of charts and graphs evangelists use to try to prove the earth is only 6000 years old, Gen. Petraeus told us the surge was working. He told us violence was down. He told us what George Bush wanted us to hear.
He never mentioned that killings were down in provinces where the ethnic cleansings of Sunnis are complete, because all the Sunnis are dead or in exile. He didn’t tell us that we classify deaths differently depending on whether you are shot in the front of the head or the back of the head. (I’m not kidding: really!) He didn’t tell us that the Sunnis in Anbar joined us because they didn’t want to be ethnically cleansed like their brethren elsewhere. Then he told us he was recommending rotating some troops home, but he didn’t mention these were the same troops we were planning on bringing home all along. If any of this surprises you, you probably watch Fox News. They didn’t report any of that either.
So, is it fair to call him General Betray-Us? I don’t know: what do you want to call him?